Alex Martinis Roe

To Become Two (2014 – ongoing) is a project of multiple dimensions : it is an exhibition of six film installations, a series of workshops and public programmes developed in response to each context of presentation as well as an artist book.To Become Two traces the genealogy of “feminist new materialist” and “sexual difference” theory through long-term research and engagement with different feminist communities, and their political practices internationally. The project does this to explore the currency of these historical practices, and engages a younger generation of feminists in practical and performative experimentation with these historical practices as the means to do so.

The project will be presented in two parts: a screening of the films made by Alex Martinis Roe about important places for historical feminism in various cities of the world (Milan, Sydney, Barcelona, Utrecht, Paris) as well as a Salon, presenting in public the outcomes of the discussions that were engaged earlier between the artist and ten participants about feminism and the strategy of the alliance between different feminist groups.

Martinis Roe’s hope is that through the project the virtual futures that emerge through the telling of these histories will become propositions for new collective practices.

To Become Two is co-commissioned by ar/ge kunst, Bolzano; Casco – Office for Art, Design and Theory, Utrecht; If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution, Amsterdam and The Showroom, London. The accompanying workshops and performances are co-commissioned by the Keir Foundation.

The project was produced with the support of the Graduiertenschule der Universität der Künste Berlin and the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, and its arts funding and advisory body.

The presentation of the project at the Centre Pompidou received the support of ifa, Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen and the Research School of Humanities and the Arts at the Australian National University.

Alex Martinis Roe is an artist and researcher. She is a former fellow of the Graduate School at the University of the Arts Berlin, and holds a PhD from Monash University, Australia. She is currently completing her projectTo Become Two: a series of films, workshops, public events and a book, as a social history of the feminist practices which invented the concept of ‘sexual difference’, and collective experiments with this research through the sub-project Our Future Network. This project was co-commissioned as a series of solo exhibitions by If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution (Amsterdam), Casco – Office for Art, Design and Theory (Utrecht), The Showroom (London) and ar/ge kunst (Bolzano) and has also been exhibited at Badischer Kunstverein (Karlsruhe). Parts of the project have been exhibited at, among others, Art Gallery of New South Wales (Sydney), Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (Melbourne), SlyZmud Gallery (Buenos Aires), Dienstgebäude (Zürich), Yvonne Lambert (Berlin), and Hessel Museum of Art (Annandale on Hudson, NY). She is Head of Sculpture at the Australian National University and co-leads the transdisciplinary working group FORMATIONS with philosopher Melanie Sehgal, which began within the framework of the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin in 2015.