Stockholm Interventions: Feminist Activist Performance

Abstract

Sweden has experienced a veritable explosion of feminist performances in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Although feminist actions, theatre, shows and performance have an established tradition, the current decade has seen an upsurge of feminist events that adopt a performance approach. Feminist cultural festivals are regular and frequent; feminist performance, dance and theatre manage to attract audiences beyond their immediate feminist constituencies. This popularisation of feminist performing arts is, I argue, related to the lively feminist activism in Sweden. Here, I aim to present some examples of different kinds of contemporary feminist performance work by artists and activists who were born in the 1970s, and some later still, in the 1980s. In other words, they were not involved in the feminist activism and debates of the 1970s and 1980s. I limit my examples to the capital, Stockholm, but wish to stress that feminist activism, performance and events are occurring elsewhere in Sweden.