WORLD

In the summer of 2023, Sonia Kazovsky (DAI, 2017) initiated the publication 'The Lowell Re:Offering - Conjuring the Ghosts of Lowell,’ as part of a body of work stemming from research initiated in 2021 into the official registry of The Lowell Offering ~ a periodical issued between 1840-1845 by women factory workers in Lowell, MA. The girls and the women, employed at the Lowell mill burgeoned a new type of capitalism, in which women could gain newly experienced (relative) independence. The official narration of the archive held an image of The Offering as a testament for a victorious moment in history, a feminist history. Through the writing of these women, and intersected archival explorations, she embarked on a journey revealing a tale of contextual violence inherent in freedom's ideas in a world framed by theological and apocalyptic representation, resonating a (re)current political reality. An iteration of Kazovsky's research is presented at the CBK Zuidoost in Amsterdam, as part of the Local Heroes group exhibition and can still be seen until April the 6th 2024.

Sonia Kazovsky: The Lowell Re:Offering is a conjuring of ghosts through the writings in The Lowell Offering
| tag: Amsterdam

The journey along the voices of these women takes on a catastrophic turn as processes of emancipation are intersected with the context of its production: the settler colony; enslaved people’s labor; the objectification of nature; the extraction of resources; the factory and its exploitative mechanisms; the institution of marriage: all violent forms of social reproduction. The process of un/archiving becomes a time travel taken through different timeless fictions and historical narratives in which waged labor and imperial expansion contracts a relationship to the world. 

The Re:Offering critically examines the roots of (white) feminism, labor histories and abolitionist perspectives.

The publication 'The Lowell Re:Offering - Conjuring the ghosts of Lowell’ that was carefully constructed and designed in conversation with Daria Kiselva is now available also through the distribution of Jesse Presse:  https://jessepresse.nl/.

On Saturday, 23rd of March, Sonia presented an essay-play  based on the script 'The Lowell Re:Offering - Conjuring the Ghosts of Lowell’. This presentation will be part of an extensive guided tour where Bo Bose, Fré Calmes, Ivna Esajas and Delano Mac Andrew will also show and tell about their work.

Sonia has been working on the dramaturgy of the play together with Margo van de Linde. Margo will preform the piece, while Kazovsky herself will act as a narrator. The set, that in part is also presented at the exhibition was made in collaboration with Oded Y. Rimon. 

Local Heroes 

About: Sonia Kazovsky