Conversation with Sarah Lewison and Nicole Cousino, Los Angeles, 2002

In a garden in Silverlake, L.A., frequent collaborators Lewison and Cousino engage in a conversation about photographing the Women’s Building in San Francisco, which features copyrighted murals. They question whether the privatization of public art fails to critically address deeper societal problems. In their own work on environmental issues, non-hierarchical collaboration among women has been crucial: “We insisted on not having a hierarchy because we felt that it was another method of working—that it was actually five women working together collaboratively and trying to have shared roles throughout... The notion of dispersal of knowledge and agency, and the more it includes women... you start to see the potential for real transformation.” They also mention examples of projects in India, such as agricultural cooperatives and seed conservation efforts, which help women gain agency in a repressive system.

Different feminist approaches have emerged over time, including exclusionary tactics and assimilationist strategies. Lewison describes herself as more assimilationist, striving to expand notions of agency in a gender-neutral way. While the feminist movement has inspired many women, particularly in terms of sharing knowledge and working together, in their view, the current feminist movement has expanded beyond the relatively privileged and predominantly white context in which they initially engaged.

As the conversation progresses, a general sense of skepticism is aired. Cousino in particular admits to feeling disconnected: “I haven’t kept up on things politically. I don’t know what’s going on. I think that women are still in the same fucked-up position.” Throughout the conversation, doubts are raised about whether empowerment alone is sufficient to bring about widespread societal transformation and the need for a more comprehensive reworking of societal structures. Cousino furthers her argument: “You know, the whole glass ceiling story—like, what happens when people become successful? They become a complicit part of it... Do practices change? Does feminism alone implicitly mean that we’re going to have a total reworking of our economic system? Not necessarily.