Tate Modern's women's liberation army (original) (raw)

One evening a couple of years ago, 82-year-old Barbara Robson was crammed in a rush-hour London tube train. Politely, she asked a young man near her, smart in his suit and tie, if he might move along a little. "He turned to me," she says, "and told me that, as an old woman, I was a total waste of space. I felt so wounded I could hardly speak."

Robson's experience of social attitudes towards older women is one of many that will be aired this week at London's Tate Modern, in a major performance-art event conceived and curated by US artist Suzanne Lacy. Silver Action will see 400 women aged 60 and over – who have taken part in some of the last century's major political protests, from the 1968 Ford sewing machinists' strike to Greenham Common – converge on the gallery's subterranean performance space, the Tanks, for a live, unscripted performance about ageing and activism.

Sitting at card tables in groups of four, the women will discuss what first spurred them to become politically active, and what still drives them now. Audiences, moving around the tables, will be able to listen in or read transcripts of the conversations, blogged and tweeted as they speak, and projected on to the walls. In another area, dubbed the "kitchen table", eight of Britain's most prominent feminist thinkers – including Irish abortion campaigner Ann Rossiter, and Gillian Hanna, actor and co-founder of feminist theatre company The Monstrous Regiment – will discuss their thoughts about women's activism, its legacy and its future.

Lacy's central aim is to challenge preconceptions about older women. "There's a very large public conversation now about resources," she says, "and what to do with an ageing population. Because women live longer, that will impact them more than men. I'm trying to shift the discourse away from one of isolation and increasing frailty: we should see older women as an amazing resource – not just talk about them taking resources."

Robson, a mental health activist, is certainly excited about Silver Action's potential to change the way she feels about growing older. Along with 13 other women who will be taking part, I meet her at a workshop at Tate Modern, arranged to stimulate the conversations volunteers will have on the day, and compile a timeline of significant events they've been involved in. "This feels like such an important thing to be a part of," she tells me. "Every day I feel invisible – this is a way to feel less so."

Woineshet Fanta has joined the workshop from Ethiopia; she's in London visiting her daughter, Fitsum, who encouraged her to come along. She speaks no English, but tells me through her daughter how much it means to be able to discuss older women's power and potential. "I used to be part of a women's forum in Addis Ababa," she says, "but I've never seen anything on this scale back home."

Lacy, who is based in Los Angeles, has long operated in the borderland between art and activism. She's written books on public and performance art, and created several performance pieces tackling subjects such as rape, poverty and ageing, one of which, The Crystal Quilt, trod similar ground to Silver Action. On Mother's Day 1987, Lacy invited 430 women over 60 to gather in a Minnesota shopping centre and air their views about getting older. The work was as much about aesthetics as politics: the women sat at tables covered with brightly coloured tablecloths, so that, viewed from above, each table looked like a square in a great, patterned patchwork. A quilt was, in fact, made to document the work, along with a film, a series of photographs and an audio piece, all of which were recently acquired by Tate Modern and are also on display in the Tanks.

Images of The Crystal Quilt will be shown during Silver Action, linking the two pieces – but Lacy emphasises that the political context of this new work is different. "There are similarities, of course," she says. "Both are about older women. But here, I'm focused on activism. What's interesting is that a lot of women over 60 in England have fought hard to transform the social and personal sphere. And now that we're looking at cuts to a lot of the rights they fought for, their role in those fights needs to be acknowledged."

So does she believe an artwork such as Silver Action can have a tangible effect on the way older women are perceived? "An artwork is not as effective as a treaty or a law or a budget change," she says cautiously. "I don't think a single artwork transforms society. But what an artwork does is create a cultural milieu within which things will be understood differently. That is what we're hoping to achieve."