Debating, Performing & Curating Symbolic Reparations and Transformative Gender Justice in post conflict Societies. (HN)

There is a global momentum to address sexual violence in conflict, as well as an emphasis on women in peacebuilding. UN resolutions and guidelines such as SCR 1325 urge governments and peacemakers to include women in peace and reconstruction processes and address gendered harms, and transitional justice and reparation programmes are now expected to include a gender perspective. Within these processes, there is increasing attention for commemoration and the arts as tools for reconciliation and symbolic reparation. However, both in global governance as in transitional justice processes, there is a tendency to reduce gendered harms to sexual violence, and gender to women. This prevents a more transformative gendered perspective on repair, justice, and social change. Hence, we believe that there is an urgent need for a more complex and feminist understanding of the gendered nature of conflict and post-conflict symbolic reparation as well as transformative gender justice.

This project rests on the following assumptions, drawn from research carried out by the applicants:
The specific manifestations of wartime violence and atrocity tend to take place along lines of existing inequalities and injustices, and gender based violence, especially rape, is a tool to forge and reproduce such inequalities. This is not only a wartime strategy, but precedes it and continues afterwards.
The current high-profile attention for sexual violence in policy and law have not done much to mitigate or end sexual violence in conflict or in peace.
Symbolic reparation, or arts as critical intervention, can potentially question and unsettled known hierarchies. This might be a tool for transformative gender justice.
Art may unsettle and question ongoing legacies of colonialism and persistent inequalities that have not been acknowledged or addressed;
Constructions and performances of masculinities that have not been interrogated, particularly in previously colonised societies, can and should be questioned in innovative cultural ways.

Aims and objectives
Debate, compare and analyse existing projects of commemorating periods of violence in a range of post-conflict countries, particularly South Africa and Peru;
Raise questions regarding the relation between national commemoration, symbolic reparation, and transformative gender justice;
Examine and discuss existing performances of symbolic reparations in relation to conflict related gendered harms in South Africa, Peru and beyond.
Identify, debate and compare counter-narratives for gender justice;
Examine the tension between preserving "heritage" and addressing abusive pasts in curating memory;
Consolidate a global and interdisciplinary network of scholars, artists and curators interested in feminist perspectives on commemorative arts and symbolic reparation.

The project aims to achieve above-mentioned objectives by organising three events plus an interactive web-presence, or Virtual Community, that will record the activities, and invite further reflection and intervention. Event 1 will be a two-day academic workshop held in London to debate feminist perspectives on commemoration, symbolic reparation, and the arts. The workshop will invite international scholars to reflect on different country case studies. Event 2, held in Cape Town, will be an interactive two-day workshop/three day visit involving artists, activists, and civil society organisations to reflect and demonstrate how art and performance can contribute to symbolic reparation and transformative gender justice in post-conflict settings. Event 3 involves a South-South exchange between Peru, Colombia and South Africa, where curators involved in national commemoration projects are invited to Lima to discuss sensitivities and opportunities when curating national histories of violence. The impact is expected to be high and cross disciplinary.

This project has a potential for high impact academically, as well as in the global practice of working for symbolic reparation and transformative gender justice throughout the world, but particularly in Peru and South Africa.

The project aims to influence the debate around transitional versus transformative justice and how to include a gender perspective in these efforts. Focussing on symbolic reparations -arts, memory works, museums etc.- specifically addressing gendered harms, and debating this across disciplinary boundaries, we improve our understanding of the specifically gendered sensitivities and opportunities that symbolic reparations may pose towards transformative gender justice. This is not only relevant to the academic bodies of literature to which this contributes, but likewise to institutions of and practitioners in global bodies with the power to shape symbolic reparations, such as the UN, the World Bank, the International Centre for Transitional Justice, the International Criminal Court, and the FCO/Prevention of Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative.

All three planned events, (1) Debating, (2) Performing and (3) Curating actively involve scholars and practitioners. We specifically aim for an interdisciplinary environment where scholars, artists, curators and advocates can learn from each other and reflect on their own practice from different perspectives. The website consolidates this and will widen the network far beyond those who are invited into the room. While there is an emphasis on Peru and South Africa, we aim to learn and discuss beyond these two countries, and include both in the events as well as in our social media strategy a range of experiences from different disciplines and geographical areas. As such, we aim to have impact on advocates for women's rights and transformative gender justice, specifically in South Africa and Peru, but also globally. For the Performing event in South Africa, we aim to invite activists, artists and curators from across sub-Saharan Africa. Considering the emphasis on memorialising and symbolic repair in transitional justice processes in Kenya, Rwanda, and DRC, as well as the use of art as protest in, for example, Somalia, we feel that including a range of relevant performers from the region would enrich the debate significantly, and engender a cross-regional critical community not often seen. We also explicitly invite practitioners working for reparation and/or gender equality in policy spaces to the activities in South Africa, expanding the debate to include application of art-as-transformation.

We aim to directly influence the reflective practice of curators in Peru, Colombia and South Africa through a joint visit to the controversial Lugar de la Memoria and associated exhibitions and memorials in Lima. This event directly asks curators to engage with different practices of memorialising, and how their practices do or do not facilitate symbolic reparation and transformative gender justice. Peruvian artists and curators will be invited to present and discuss their work and worries with the international guests. The three countries, all in different transitional (or post-transitional) phases of justice and repair, make for an excellent opportunity to explore the possibilities and constraints to curating conflict-related gendered harms for symbolic reparation.

Lastly, the website will be designed in such a manner that it can provide a platform for engagement for interested scholars, artists, curators and advocates around the world, with an interactive interface. The website can serve as a platform for information, debate, showcasing, and indeed, networking. We hope that this network project will lead to further research projects and collaborations in the future, whereby the website can serve as a central point of contact, dissemination, and engagement.