Red Dawns Festival: Queering solidarity and honoring militant historical memory

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"Festival Red Dawns does not advocate a further polarization of genders or "war of the sexes". Instead, the creativity and the mingling of the participants of Red Dawns question the boundaries we take for granted; the isolating boundaries that separate people regardless of our gender."
- Red Dawns festival website

Back in March 2009, I went to the queer feminist festival, Red Dawns/Rdeče zore in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Launched in 2000 by the KUD Mreža Arts and Culture Association -- this being the same year as Ladyfest started in the United States -- Red Dawns pitches itself quite similarily as supporting "women who express their creativity in self-organised ways, capturing the do-it-yourself ethic of constructive rebellion against capitalist consumption. The Festival's ideal ground is to unite the strength of women activists and artists in order to demonstrate the possibility of a festival that is produced, organised and performed by women."

Creating autonomous spaces which are women-led have long been a vital part of the feminist movement, and festivals such as Red Dawns and Ladyfest share many common ideals as those emerging from the Women's Liberation Movement of the 70s and 80s. They also do something a little different - for example, bringing a much more queer, or gender fluid, understanding of sex roles and embodiments to the table, and embracing a whole host of multi-media technologies, events and performances.

Perhaps more so than Ladyfests, which count their ground zero as emerging from Riot Grrrl, Red Dawns embraces a cross-generational audience and legacy. According to the Red Dawns website, the title and motto of Red Dawn is taken from Jewish writer Kurt Held's novel 'Die Rote Zora und ihre Bande' (first published in 1941). This children's book followed the adventures of a bunch of orhpans in a Croatian city who break the rules of society, but fiercely look out for each other. They are fearlessly led by flame-haired Rote Zora (Red Zora).

The daring, witty, anarchist attitude of girl leader Rote Zora became an emblem to a German leftist militant feminist group of the same name who were responsible for dozens of arson and bombings attacks on atomic, gene and reproduction research institutions, sex shops as well as companies that had businesses in the Third World during 1977 to 1995. In an anonymous interview in the German feminist magazine Emma (1984), one RZ member said:

"Our dream is that everywhere small bands of women will exist, that in every city a rapist, a women trader, a battering husband, a misogynist publisher, a porn trader, a pig gynecologist should have to feel that a band of women will find them to attack them and make them look silly in public... It requires a continuous movement whose aims cannot be integrated, whose uncompromising section cannot be forced into legal reforms, whose anger and dedication to non-parliamentary struggles and anti-institutional forms is expressed without limit."

This is the radical intention that Red Dawns picked up on when they chose their name. Zora also means 'dawn' in Slovene - giving a further twist by creating visions of a new horizon and sense of possibility. Rote Zora chose this name for their festival because, citing another RZ militant, "until today it seems to be a male privilege to build gangs or to act outside the law... Radical women's struggles and loyalty to the law - there is no way they go together!"

With an annual festival, open to all and held at an autonomous site, Red Dawns provides innovative, challenging, and participatory spaces for dialogue, information sharing, celebration and fun. Whilst Debi and I were there this year, it was also the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day. On the final night of the fest, this was further celebrated by an all-female choir called Kombinat, who gathering on the Day of Uprising Against Occupation, on April 27th, 2008 and decided to start singing songs of rebellion from all around the world. They say: "We are not nostalgic. We sing with faith in values such as solidarity, allegiance, heartiness and courage".

What struck me most about this performance, and not just for the amazing talent, was how truly intergenerational it was. The place was packed. And it was soul-stirring indeed to hear and see people in the audience getting particularly excited when the multi-lingual choir started singing songs from their own countries.

And these are two elements that I think I miss in other third-wave-esque events such as Ladyfest. I miss the connection into a bigger movement of social struggle, encapsulated in memory through things like names, songs, images, and for that proud stance of maybe old-fashioned notions like "solidarity".

What blew me away about Red Dawns was that it had all the fun and festiness of other queer-feminist festivals, but with none of the historical amnensia.