DECLARATION ON THE 8th OF MARCH, NOT FOR THE 8th OF MARCH

After a century of marking the 8th of March as a day dedicated to women, it's the right time for every woman to live out each day with awareness as her own. VoxFeminae reports daily, from today in English as well, on what women  from Croatia and the Western Balkan area do.

VoxFeminae is a space of gender and media culture which acts as a platform of voices. Through the internet portal voxfeminae.net, video production, video and web services, education, counselling and VoxFeminae Festival we support and present the work of female artists, entrepreneurs, civil initiatives, non-governmental organisations and other gender aware and socially responsible groups and individuals.

The VoxFeminae portal was conceived in 2006, and has been operating in its current form since December 21st, 2010. The texts and reports we publish, with the emphasis on original texts, steer towards culture, art, politics and engaged media and socially responsible creation, which we ourselves advocate and generate.
An important part of the portal consists of a base of Croatian and regional female artists as well as a critical domain Cunterview, formerly an independent portal which we restructured and expanded into the current – VoxFeminae.

VoxFeminae Festival – Ladyfest Zagreb has been held every fall since 2007 until present day. Through visual and performing arts, film and musical creation, communication technologies and theoretical education we present to the public in live form everything we communicated through the web continuously throughout the year. In 2010, the film portion of the Festival has taken on the form of a competition which has so far seen 48 films from 19 countries.

The VoxFeminae production and services along with the portal and the Festival make up a unique whole of VoxFeminae activity. Through the construction of web pages, documentary videos, musical and promotional videos and graphic design we have, since 2007 till now, realised a significant number of independent projects and established cooperation with non-governmental organisations, civil initiatives and female artists with the goal of achieving the most efficient media presentation of their work.

The mission of the VoxFeminae portal, Festival, production and services is to increase the visibility and influence of women who, through their work, contribute to the creation of a society of gender equality and by their own example encourage socially responsible action. Therefore, we do not mark the 8th of March as Women’s Day, because that is what social institutions do for their own representation. VoxFeminae voices speak about women daily - about women, men and all of those who do not acknowledge gender as binary.

Your Vox Team

Mission: To increase visibility and influence of women who, through their work, contribute to the creation of a society of gender equality and by their example encourage socially responsible functioning.

Vision: A society in which decisions are equally made by women, men and all those who do not acknowledge gender as binary, which respects and implements principles of harmony, self-sustainable development and abundance for all.

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n.paradoxa is the only international feminist art journal in the world that explores the work of contemporary women artists and feminist theory.

| March 6th 2011 | JELENA GRAOVAC | The journal was founded in 1996 as an online issue, and the printed version was established in 1998. n.paradoxa publishes scholarly and critical articles written by women critics, art historians and artists on the work of contemporary women artists from around the world. The editor and founder of the journal is Katy Deepwell (linked in, paradoxa). For each thematic volume in print she selects well known artists and authors (Carol Duncan, Kaja Silverman, Linda Nochlin, Amelia Jones, Jo Ann Isaak, Martha Rosler) turning each issue into a mini-reader for all those interested or engaged in contemporary art practice. The latest volume of n.paradoxa explores the theme of 'Women's Work' (Vol. 27, Jan 2011).

One of famous Mata Hari postcardsDance costumes as mirrors of multiculturalism

| March 7th 2011 | VEDRANA SUNKO | Even though oriental dance is quite popular in the West there is little or no scholarly research of the subject. The dance originated in Muslim countries where displaying excessive skin is avoided and dancers are in most cases forbidden to perform in public. Therefore it is not surprising that there is little information on the development of dance costumes and dancing.

Ivana Medvedec is among the few researchers of oriental dance and its socio-cultural aspect. She is a dance instructor, who recently held a lecture on this particular subject. Through her research she concluded that today oriental dance costumes have more to do with Hollywood than tradition. With that in mind, oriental dance, as we know it today could be a perfect example for Edward Said's definition of Orientalism. The Western perception of Orient is mainly based on romanticized harem images of writers, painters and explorers who portrayed the East as an exotic place marked with female sensuousness.

| March 6th 2011 | Vesna Balenović is Croatia’s most known whistle-blower. Ten years ago she was a highly ranked INA (Croatian Oil Corporation) employee, who was fired from INA after reporting corrupt activities and malpractices. Recently she was offered re-employment in INA as head of the anticorruption programme. The new president of the supervisory board, Davor Štern who offered her re-employment, said the company still has to find the best model for her re-employment, because of the law suits between Ms Balenović and the company. The Croatian government supports the motion for her re-employment, and Mrs Balenović stated that in the case of her re-employment, she would like her new office to be located outside the company's building so that employees could anonymously come and report corrupt activities.

More Films, Female Directors and Content for Young Adults

| March 6th 2011 | The National Development Programme of the Audiovisual Industry was presented on January 27th, 2011. The presentation took place during an official ceremony held in a fully packed lecture hall of the Croatian Chamber of Commerce. This strategic document defines the guidelines of audiovisual development in the period 2010-2014.

Some of the Programme guidelines include increasing the number of spectators to 5 million (the number of cinema visits per capita from 0.7% to 1.1%), raising the rates of Croatian film in digital cinemas and on TV from 1% to 15%, and of European films to 20%.

| NORA VERDE |

Nina Romić - Daljine

For years now Nina has been enchanting us with her atmospheric folk-pop acoustics and like some sort of a fairy she has been moving softly but securely through the jungle of the Croatian pop rock music scene. After the album “Daljine” was officially released, she became known beyond the closed circles of the acoustic scene in Zagreb. myspace.com/ninazg

Mika Male - Vremenom

Orlan Tus is a sort of a male soul mate of Nina Romić. And Mika Male are small but in the same time grand in their immediacy, simplicity and their feeling for urban and intimate frames that are filled while alone in the dark of our rooms. myspace.com/mikamale

| March 6th 2011 | Croatian author Mima Simić, whose short story "My Girlfriend" was published in the anthology Best European Fiction 2011 was quite astonished to see the editor's interventions in her text, which changed the meaning of her story entirely.

“I don’t write straight stories; and I don’t want anyone to be straightening my stories, in any way, sexual or textual—and certainly notwithout my consent.”

Mima Simić, an activist, writer and gender theorist would never have produced this “corrected“ version of the story (which made the narrator a man and the relationship heterosexual). When she confronted the publisher with these “interventions”, the editorial director replied he did not know why these changes were made. Read more on this at The Facts Behind One Story in Dalkey Archive’s Best European Fiction for 2011.