Toxic Titties Put the Camp Back in Camp!

In 1998, the F-word symposium at the California Institute of the Arts attempted to bridge the gap between the current generation of feminist students and the participants in Womanhouse and the Feminist Art Program at CalArts in the 1970s. Because the history of feminism at CalArts was rarely addressed in the normal course of our education, the Toxic Titties felt that there was a need in 2001 to revitalize community interest in feminist and queer issues. Toxic Titties is committed to continuing the legacy of the feminist art program at CalArts, and expanding the discussion to include the whole CalArts community.

Toxic Titties created a hybrid between a symposium and a summer camp as a way to present our issues in a way that was compelling for the CalArts community. We strategically used the tactics of pleasure and play as a way to involve audiences who would not normally find questions of feminism relevant to them. By housing Camp TT in a gallery space, we framed this event as a conceptual art work. Formally, we followed in the tradition of non-object based work, attempting to use the gallery space as a forum for feminist discourse rather than a place to house objects.