KISMIF ('Keep It Simple, Make It Fast') is a hybrid conference of DIY theory and practice that celebrated its tenth birthday this year. Behind it is a team led by Paula Guerra, a woman whose vision and persuasive powers pull in (this year) academics and practitioners from seventy different countries to share their knowledge and enthusiasms in a series of workshops, panels, seminars, sessions, gigs, conversations and late-night bar conversations that means everyone leaves having gained not only a huge amount of knowledge but also a huge amount of new friendships.
I'd been before, to present a paper, to show rushes of our She-Punks film, to appear on a panel talking about my book on women and music technology. If there was one academic conference that I would really want to attend despite my academic career being at an end, it was this one. Two years out of the scrum my research has not been refreshed, but my music is alive and kicking so I proposed a collaborative political songwriting session for the Summer School part of the conference and was also asked to chair a panel that included Palmolive who I had never met before, which was really exciting.
Porto was misty and rainy, but still really beautiful. When I arrived on Monday, I made a quick visit to the Crystal Palace Gardens to see the cockerels, the hens and the pheasants, and then turned in for the night.
'How many people will be at the workshop?', I asked the facilitator. 'Oh, about forty', was the reply. Yikes! In reality, there were probably just over thirty people, and we got started straight away. Mary Fogarty was there (hooray!). Between all the group members, we soon filled huge sheets of paper with short phrases that might form a song. A guitar turned up (double hooray!), and 45 minutes later we had a group song. Some participants particularly enjoyed it, because they are not allowed to express personal political beliefs in their own countries. That alone made it worth doing, but it was a remarkably positive experience anyway. I hope to carry on doing this now, maybe with trade unions or other political or campaign organisations. It works, and each song is unique: instigated, formed and developed by a group of people who have a stake in the creativity rather than copyright and personal ownership.
We watched Mary's film of queer dancers that was simultaneously a parody of the dance element of the Olympics, and a celebration of freedom of expression, and then Federica Manfredi's workshop on artistic responses to vulva pain. Simon Zagorski-Thomas was there with a music installation which I never managed to find because the conference was spread over venues all over the central part of the city.
The final experience of the morning was an online presentation on Democracy, Wellbeing and the Environment, about Brazilian indigenous women, by Giovana Mandulao. She is from the Brazilian Ministry of Health, with a focus on indigenous health. It was very interesting.
I went back to the gardens for some peace with the chickens, and then spent the rest of the day with a Vera novel from a charity shop, winding down from all the excitement and social contact.
Next morning, there was a panel with Will Straw talking about queer disco dancing at the end of contemporary films, and Professor Silva, who did a wonderful paper about the Portugese revolution and artistic responses to it. I'd spent half an hour walking round an incredible graveyard with tombs so huge that some of them even seemed to have their own rubbish bins, and I felt steeped in Portugese history by the end of the morning.
I took some time out to research background information for the panel the next day, and then had a walk to the Sao Bento station to look at the beautiful tiling. Porto is up hills and down hills, round corners and up and down stairs... and there was the Puppet Museum, small and perfectly formed in a street that I'd walked past several times. It took an hour to find it, and afterwards the sun came out and I went back to hang out with the real live birds.
It was positively foggy on Thursday morning; the panel with Paloma, Laura Way and Amina Boubia was at a cinema next to an incredibly beautiful tiled building (adjacent photograph) that was almost a ruin; in some ways that made it all the more beautiful.
The beginning of the session was hectic, with some technical issues that included a tech man being on his phone halfway through one of the papers, seemingly oblivious to the fact that we was audible to the whole audience. I tried to kill him with a look, but my looks don't kill and eventually he ended the call. Laura's paper was on defiant older women punks, Amina's was on free music festivals in Morocco, and Paloma's was on her early life in Spain and her journey through to London and the Slits. I learned so much from all three; by then we were running an hour late because of the technical problems. At one point I said 'Shall we just write a song?', and straight away Christine Feldman-Barrett responded with the title 'There Is No Power In Powerpoint'. Now there's a title for a room full of academics!
Lucy Robinson, Matt Worley and Simon Strange were all at that session, and probably lots of other people that I knew, but something about the panel had bonded the four of us and our quick cup of coffee afterwards turned into several hours of hanging out; later, I showed Paloma the gardens, and we all met up in the evening with Christine and Angels Bronsoms to eat together. I think they are all still hanging out together even though I came back yesterday, and Christine left for Lisbon. It was such fun to learn about what everyone is doing. Christine has an album coming out of archive stuff from her riot grrrl band, and those of us with daughters talked about that, and we talked about our research and our music and so many things. Six women: American living in Australia, Spanish living in America, Moroccan, British. What a lot there was to talk about!
I came home feeling energised, loving Porto more than ever, feeling grateful for my life and remembering yet again that (despite the shitty parts of it) it is full of new experiences and interactions that make it endlessly interesting and stimulating. Three cheers for Porto, three cheers for Paula and KISMIF and all who sail in her, three cheers for the song writing group, three cheers for the chickens and peacocks!
And a big, big shout out to Paula and Andy. I cannot begin to imagine the energy and dedication that it takes to co-ordinate this fantastic conference. This was the tenth anniversary! We are still talking about it now; there is absolutely nothing like it. The intensity of information, the community of activists and academics from 70 different countries. As with nearly every conference, it's the conversations around the edges that mean as much as the formal papers. I learned so much, and life is so much richer when you're learning. Roll on next year! I hope they'll have me back.
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