‘We want work, but in order to keep the product. No more exploiters, no more masters. Work and well-being for all.’
(Elisabeth Dimitrieff, “Appel aux citoyennes de Paris’, Journal Officiel, April 11, 1871, 25)
From 18 March to its bloody suppression on 28 May 1871, the Paris Commune was a brief time of the most extraordinary political experimentation. For ten weeks, a worker-led insurrection took over the city. Together, men and women built and defended barricades, evictions were banned, night working abolished, education transformed.
Derisively labelled ‘les petroleuses’ and depicted as wild, unnatural, ugly creatures with dishevelled clothing, in reality women played an indispensable and courageous role in every aspect of the Commune.
As Carolyn Eichner comments ‘The Commune, as a short–lived overthrow of the patriarchal status quo, served as an incubator for embryonic feminist socialisms. During the insurrection, feminist socialists played central intellectual and popular roles as journalists, organisers, orators, protestors, nurses, cooks and fighters. they shaped the face of the Parisian revolution and, subsequently, influenced the idea of women and revolution well into the next century in Europe and beyond’.
In the infamous ‘Bloody Week’ of May 21-28, 1871, the Versailles army stormed Paris, using heavy artillery. Around 20,000 Parisians were summarily executed, and 40,000 more were marched to Versailles for imprisonment in France or deportation and forced labor in the penal colonies of French Guyana and New Caledonia.
The acts of ‘naming’ – of ‘re-sounding’- acknowledges and honours a life lived. On the Commune’s 150th anniversary, each week for the next ten weeks, I will remember and celebrate a different woman communard, creating a letterpress name print and produce an informational text on a dedicated webpage. Also, through the act of ‘re-sonation’, I will create a short freely improvised sonic piece (3 mins max) using various instruments for each of these ‘unruly women of Paris.’ The acts of ‘naming’ and of re-sounding – ‘re-sonating’ – aims to acknowledge and honour a life lived.
Check back on this page each Thursday for the next ten weeks to follow the project. Each week I will upload dedicated art, text and soundworks.
Click on the links below to go to the page:
WEEK 1 Thursday 25 March 2021 – Victorine Brocher
WEEK 2 Thursday 1 April 2021 – Béatrix Excoffon
WEEK 3 Thursday 8 April 2021 – Elisabeth Dmitrieff
WEEK 4 Thursday 15 April 2021 – Anna Jaclard
WEEK 5 Thursday 22 April 2021 – Lodoyska Kawecka
WEEK 6 Thursday 29 April 2021 – Nathalie Lemel
WEEK 7 Thursday 6 May 2021 – André Léo
WEEK 8 Thursday 13 May 2021 – Louise Michel
WEEK 9 Thursday 20 May 2021 – Paule Mink
WEEK 10 Thursday 27 May 2021 – Marie Wolff
My letterpress prints are made on paper salvaged from a discarded series of early 20thc technical manuals sourced in Tarnac, a small rural community in Corrèze, one of the ‘reddest cantons in France as a whole’ (Ad Knotter, ‘Little Moscows in Western Europe: the Ecology of Small-place Communism’, International Review of Social History, 2011)
(Also see my free improv collaboration with Lyn Hodnett as Les Petroleuses )
Here are a few useful general sources on the Paris Commune and Women Communards – scroll down individual web pages above for more sources though
K. Ross, Communal Luxury, 2015
C. Eichner, Surmounting the Barricades, Women in the Paris Commune, 2004
G. Gullickson, Unruly Women of Paris, 1996
E. Thomas, The Women Incendiaries, 1966