Edition II explores If I Can’t Dance’s interest in Feminist Legacies and Potentials in Contemporary Art Practice (2006–2008).

What is valid for all the practices of the artists involved in Edition II is their approach to the legacy of feminism as a vivid source for extrapolating ideas for change and ideas of difference. Jacques Derrida recognized that Emma Goldman’s statement “If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution” had both potential for feminism and for chance and the re-consideration of the status quo.

In the interview Choreographies (1981), Derrida explored the potential of Emma Goldman’s statement and the metaphor of dance, as enunciated by her, as a fluid, contingent and undefined locus: “[…] the dance changes place and above all changes places. In its wake they can no longer be recognized.”

We recognize a relation between the artistic practices of the artists we work with and Goldman’s statement, as they connote the power to open up new – non-determined – registers. Registers, which come into being by, and are opened up through, both acts of construction and contestation.

In the practices of the artists involved in Edition II, the presence of feminist notions is not easy to pin down and the status of this presence is latent instead of transparent. These artists’ attitudes towards feminism is indirect, not one-dimensionally to read and paradoxical; even in the case of the more explicitly feministicly oriented practices.