If it were possible to place a ten-year work of Pitchwise festival in one sentence, I believe that would be a sentence that Eve Ensler put forward as a premise of her own art, feminism and activism, and that is “It’s my job to communicate it, because I can see it “, referring thereby to the awareness of women’s position in a patriarchal society and the necessity to work on its change. However, it becomes a conclusion, the message appears as a responsibility of all those who perceived shortcomings and discriminatory situations that are registered in the existing culture. Synthesis which does not allow waiver of all those who have the experience of female body, which is also one of the most important questioned topics of this year’s festival. Eve Ensler linked her discourse about returning to one’s body with returning to oneself, concluding that what we experience inside contradicts what we express, and the reason for that is suppression and stigmatization of female body. Kaouthar Darmoni continues the discourse of restoring the body through the concept of re-appropriation of the female body that is regaining the freedom of the social concept of sexualisation of the female body. The body that has been suppressed for centuries now reifies, conquers public space by creating new performative, new meanings and interpretations, which changes cultural space.
It does not matter whether it happens in a closed area or in square- a woman’s voice echoes. And since the voice is inseparable from the existence and ownership of experience of female corporeality; artists, feminists, activists, theorists who participated in the festival all point out that to conquer the interior space of empowerment is equal to conquering one own’s body which they seek free of the content written by patriarchal views.
Hence follows the conquest of public spaces, concrete ones as well as media, which comes as a result of empowerment. Empowering again, as a process, is a product of two major manifests which both organizers of similar festivals in the region and participants underlined, and those are female friendship and solidarity in action. In a society that promotes and imposes stereotypes of appearance and behavior (how the group Girl be Heard sings) loving yourself is an act of rebellion.
