Kvinder på Værtshus, Herstories Tour, 2000
Kvinder på Værtshus (Women down the pub)
Herstories Tour

Kvinder på Værtshus (Women Down the Pub, Denmark, since 1997) is a group of visual artists. Current and former members include Nanna Debois Buhl, Andrea Creutz, Nynne Haugaard, Sofie Hesselholdt, Vibeke Mejlvang, Christina Prip, Kirstine Roepstorff, Katya Sander, Marika Seidler, Åsa Sonjasdotter and Lisa Strömbeck. The group collaborates on issues of gender politics, representation and language. In addition to organised events and actions, they participate in exhibitions, hold workshops and collaborate with various organisations. In 2004 they published VIEW - Feminist Strategies in Danish Visual Art – a book presenting the broad range of feminist strategies in Danish visual arts since the late 1960s. Another large project was www.sexogpenge.dk (now defunct), which was a forum for discussing sexist commercials, in which Women Down the Pub took the discussion a step further and confronted responsible companies with angry emails sent by both men and women.

artists' website: womendownthepub.blogspot.com

“In the summer of 2000, we started the Herstories Tour, an alternative sightseeing boat tour of the harbour of Copenhagen. The purpose of the project was to identify the gendered inscription of urban space, to create an alternative reading of the city, to challenge traditional history and to question the objectivity of historical writing. The project focused on various women’s life stories and outlined the complexities of city planning and gender.” The tour included visits to such diverse sites as the Dannerhuset, a house for poor working women built in the 1870s; the site of a former women’s prison in the harbour; and the park Fælledparken, where a Women’s Festival took place in 1974 that declared women’s rights as part of a class struggle.

Performance: Alternative City Tour: Copenhagen 2000
Photographs: Natasja Rydvald & Kvinder på Værtshus

Courtesy Kvinder på Værtshus
Format
photographs

Issue date
2000

Tags
collectivity, his/herstory, public space