Conspiracy of Women: Lydia Lunch’s feminist manifesto still echoes louder than ever
Delving into the Dangerous Minds archives, we’re revisiting a submission Lydia Lunch sent to us regarding the Post Catastrophe Collaborative Workshop that she curated in Ojai, California, in 2013.
The Post Catastrophe Collaborative Workshop wasn’t a conference. It wasn’t a retreat. It sure as hell wasn’t a spa weekend with art therapy. This was Lydia Lunch gathering the tribe – women artists, performers, healers, destroyers, re-builders – for a week-long creative survival ritual in Ojai. A scorched-earth salon for the spiritually bruised. A think tank made out of incense, trauma, and righteous fury. This was about making space when the world offers you none. Reclaiming the act of creation from the corporate spectacle. A war room disguised as a workshop.
And why are we going back to it now? Because nothing has gotten better. If anything, the catastrophe has metastasised—ecological collapse, algorithmic warzones, capitalist realism running on fumes. The world feels like it’s circling the same drain, only faster. And yet, the need for what Lydia and her collaborators started back then? It’s even more urgent now. We’re still unlearning the same broken systems. Still searching for places to create without being consumed. That little workshop in Ojai didn’t disappear, it echoed.
Lydia sent me this manifesto not long after the workshop wrapped. It wasn’t polished or prepped for press – it was raw, brilliant, unapologetically dense, and fully her. Reading it again now, it feels even heavier. You can hear it breathing. You can hear the blood in it. It’s a battle cry dressed in theory and rage. A blueprint for rebuilding something that doesn’t want to be owned. You’ll want to read it twice.
I should think if there was anyone you’d want in your corner post-catastrophe, it would be Lydia, so here she is…
“To question why women artists need a workshop by and for each other in 2013 is to ignore the damage done to the sensitive psyche by the brutarian policies of kleptomaniacal plutocrats in their race for global domination.
“From the imperialist profiteering of endless war, to the justification of the psychosis of bloodlust in the name of God, oil or natural resources, from austerity measures as punishment against entire nations for the fraud perpetrated by greedy corporations and their criminal finance ministers, to the blatant arrogance of corrupt politicians who do their bidding with utter disregard for the health of the planet or the life of its inhabitants, we as women demand a safe place in which to create from the ashes of this man-made destruction.
“We are seeing in these times a striking attempt on a global scale to redress economic and social imbalance by sheer physical presence—the Arab Spring, the Occupy movement in the US. Pervasive ecological imperatives have been won (and lost) by indigenous-led groups in South America and Africa. This consensus is essential for large-scale change, and yet, the foundered promise of the movements of the 1960s and 1970s indicate the depth to which transformation must but has not yet occurred in the way we live.
“The dominator model continues to run the world, and in so doing affects us in both obvious and unconscious ways.”
Lydia Lunch
“Indeed this bespeaks a need for the attention to the microcosm, to the immediate community. In the West where we are not bound by blood tribe or homeland, we come together in kindred passions.
“What is absolutely necessary is the fostering of environments, which we must learn together how to more adeptly create, in which the existing hierarchical, dominator paradigm can be further and further subverted by the constant intention to transform our learned ways of relating to ourselves and one another within this powerful action of collaboration/co-creation.
“This by its nascent nature requires a protected space—here by and for women—in which to listen and share the deep language of the body; the creative impulse; the desire to collaborate and the methods to invoke; the experience of time, space and accomplishment unfettered by the anxieties of funding and recognition. This last is extremely important.
“Our current model of success for everyone, artists included, remains competitive and largely solitary in the West.
“Women who create and attempt to move within established systems find themselves indentured into the necessary sales pitch to self-promote, furthering the continuance of the established pattern, which fosters alienation and dissociation rather than community.
“A workshop by and for women can provide a haven of inspiration, encouragement and a sense of community in these extremely trying times. The burden of often deeply traumatized women constantly having to manage their emotions and warp themselves to adjust to social situations that adhere to linear, rational, productive values is soul-killing.
“Art has the ability to act as salve to the universal wound. It gives voice to the silent scream within us all”.
Lydia Lunch
“It rebels as pleasure in times of trauma. It brings a sense of beauty and joy by rising up in celebration of life, a direct contradiction to the widespread brutality of socio-sadistic bullies who seek to divide and conquer.
“A space of protection and clarity to explore the strengths and weaknesses women possess, along with their innate neural capacity for emotional imprint and communal feeling; concurrently with the research and practice of creative techniques together can foster tremendous healing along with powerful work.
“This is an essential contribution toward the continuance of the species and its shift away from trying to dominate the planet toward the recognition that it is simply part of all life.
“This workshop seeks to bring together a diverse and multi-generational collection of women artists who comprehend the importance of community, collaboration and creation as an inspirational weapon in the war against divisiveness, division and death.
“—Lydia Lunch /Vanessa Skantze”.
Was it a success? That depends on how you measure success. No keynote speakers. No branded tote bags. But if you define success as a space where women could speak without being corrected, create without apology, and weep without shame—then yes, it was a success. You can’t measure that in press clippings or post-event surveys. You measure it in what came after. The art. The noise. The connections that didn’t need an audience. That was the point.
Lydia’s been at this for decades – speaking truth with a switchblade tongue, making enemies of the right people, and refusing to dilute herself for anyone. That’s rare. That’s precious. This workshop didn’t just show why her voice matters—it showed what happens when she uses it to build something instead of burn it down. Lydia Lunch doesn’t just critique the system. She creates alternatives. She opens doors. She holds space. She remembers the people the system tries to erase.
That’s not just art, it’s survival.