For Art21 Magazine’s “Failure” issue, I created a visual profile of the ff, a feminist network operating mostly out of Berlin. It’s a growing group, one with multifaceted interests and a shared ambition to create a strong (but not exclusively female) presence. I thought the group’s relationship to failure was interesting for two reasons, one being that corralling so many opinions within a collective identity is challenging. The other reason is the specter of otherness implicit in any counter-movement. One member, Melissa Steckbauer, noted that a lot of alternative art approaches are built on ideas of failure, in an antagonistic position to the gallery system. But the ff seeks to work alongside these systems, inventing new ways for the artists to perform and be seen together.
