A Cyberfeminist Manifesto for the 21St Century, 1991. the Art Happens Here

TABLE OF CONTENTS

003 ZACHARY KAPLAN Foreword 005 MICHAEL CONNOR Introduction to Net Art Anthology

PART ONE 1982-1998 015 ROBERT ADRIAN The World in 24 Hours, 1982 018 MOBILE IMAGE Electronic Cafe '84, 1984 023 EDUARDO KAC Reabracadabra, 1985 027 WOLFGANG STAEHLE ET AL The Thing (BBS) , 1991 - 1995 030 VNS MATRIX A Cyberfeminist Manifesto for the 21st Century, 1991 034 ADA'WEB ada 'web , 1994- 1998 038 ANTONI MUNTADAS ET AL The File Room, 1994- ongoing 042 MEZ BREEZE Mezange((e, 1994-ongoing 045 HEATH BUNTING Communication Creates Conflict, 1995 048 GROUPZ LOVE, 1995 051 LYNN HERSHMAN LEESON The Do((ie Clone Series, 1995-1998 054 JODI Automatic Rain, 1995 057 OLIA LIALINA My Boyfriend Came Back from the War, 1996 060 MARTINE NEDDAM Mouchette. 1996-ongoing 064 VICTORIA VESNA Bodies© INCorporated, 1996 067 BUREAU OF INVERSE TECHNOLOGY BIT Plane, 1997/1999 071 VUK COSIC Documenta Done, 1997 074 1/0/D The Web Stalker, 1997 077 MONGREL Heritage Gold, 1997 081 MTAA Simple Net Art Diagram. ca. 1997 086 ALEXEI SHULGIN Form Art, 1997 090 CORNELIA SOLLFRANK Female Extension, 1997 093 SHU LEA CHEANG 1.05 VNS MATRIX (JOSEPHINE STARRS, JULIANNE PIERCE, FRANCESCA DA RIMINI AND VIRGINIA BARRATT) A Cyberfeminist Manifesto for the 21st Century, 1991

A Cyberfeminist Manifesto for the 21st Century gave vivid expression to the emerging political position of cyberfeminism, which aimed to reimagine technoculture from a feminist perspective. Produced by the Adelaide, Australia-based collective VNS Matrix, the manifesto was splashed across a Sydney billboard; wheatpasted in numerous cities; sent by

fax and em ail; and shared on LambdaMOO, the text-based virtual world popular on the early internet. The m anifesto can be thought of as an early meme, and like many memes today, its tone was confrontational. Pronouncing that "we are the modern cunt" and decorated with a labia-like motif, the poster w eaponized biological sex against technological patriarchy. The billboard version, featuring a topless, androgynous unicorn-person with feminine breasts, reflected a more expansive feminism that aimed to destabilize binary dis~inct~o n s imposed on genders and species and evoke the t~ntity play that was common on the early internet.

I I l v VI ~V IV lOLl IJ\ vl l lvl ~c;U II VIII l.IIC vy UCI ~VVO III tJ UU I II I~ 0 southern Australian summer circa 1991 , on a mission to hijack the toys from technocowboys and remap cyberculture with a feminist bent." -VNS Matrix founding myth 1

From "Feminist Worldbuilding in the Australian Cyberswamp" by Claire L. Evans2

VNS Matrix wrote their manifesto in 1991. two years people call th is Steam Engine Time: that moment in before there was a decent browser wi th which to history when a technology. or an idea, is so bound to surf the web. lt began as a printed A4 size fl yer. with happen that it's invented by several people at once. Like the short text mapped onto a sphere bordered by a the steam engine. cyberfeminism was inevitable. Many ! vagina motif. ''We went around the city and pasted of its early champions were femini st artists moving :::! it up. you know, with the flour paste," da Rimini on line. people like Faith Wilding and Lynn Hershman remembers. "Then we actua ll y had to repaste over Leeso n. In the late 1970s, consc iousness-rai sing

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them a couple of days later, because we had a spell happened in living rooms, with groups of women sharing ing mistake."3 experiences, but it had globa l ambitions. The internet They sent it by fax lo Kathy Acker and Sandy collapsed the difference. creating the globa l living room, Stone and Wired and Mondo and later circu lated it on where nurses and teachers could be hackers too. f LambdaMOO and IRC channels. They left pi les of Cyberfeminism took up the techno-utopian tone ~ posters at art galleries and created a billboard version, of early internet culture and turned it on its head. ll was ~ eighteen feet long, for exhibition. The text bulged from a tone inherited from Ted Nelson, Stewart Brand, and one spherical fragment of DNA, accompanied by images the West Coast cyberhippies who believed computer of a chimera unicorn in a shell. When the billboard mediated communication would create a "civilization was mounted on the side of the Tin Sheds gallery in of the mind ," as another computer manifesto, John Sydney, a student from Britain photographed, framed, Perry Barlow's 1996 "Declaration of the Independence and brought it back to her professor, the cultural theorist of Cyberspace," described it.$ But for VNS Matrix, Sadie Plant, who was working on a curriculum around cyberspace was never free of the body. "Lots of com the same themes. In her 1997 book Zeros +Ones, Plant puter technophiles," Starrs said in 1992, "jack into the draws the link between VNS Matrix and Donna machine and want to forget about the body, to reject the Haraway and explains that when they write "the clitoris meat of the body. [n our work we're not fini shed with is a direct line to the matri x." they mean both the the body, the body is an important site for femini sts."6 womb-matrix in Latin-and ''the abstract networks of Not a civilization of the mind a world of slime. communication ... increasingly assembling themse l ves.''-~ The world sketched out in the manifesto was Sadie Plant and VNS Matrix arc considered soon clamoring with voices. In 1997, a group orga co-authors of the word ·'cybcrfcminism." Science fiction nized by the Old Boys' Network assembled in Kassel wrthc t·u~t L yocr h:num~ 11 en H•nal, mg on documcnta X, to clurtly and discuss the intent of the mo\cmcnt. It seems they couldn't ngrcc; they wrote cybcrlcn11ni~m·s second rnamfesto, the /(JO Anu-The1es nj C)hl'rjemmmn. It hstcd e\crythrng c~bcrfcmini• m wns not. 'I his tncludcd not a mcd1a- hoax, not postrnodcrn. keme pra.ur, and "not about boring toys lor bonng boys." Cyberfcmmism v.as nothing 1fnot many d•f• fercnt, often contradictory, movements at once. "Cybcrfcm111ism only exr ts in the plurol," pronounced the Swiss art enuc Y-..onne Volkart at the econd International tv.o years later. It could nc\ cr be tru~ t cd to mean an> smgle, spcctflc approach to fermnic;rn at the da\\ n ol the mtemet. I he mtcmct tends to refute spccJficJty, fa\onng rnstcad the mult•plc, mukmg ..; t>lx:rfcmini m rn all us slipperiness if nothing else, rcprcscntntl\ c of the mcdrurn.

And such shpperancss is human, which VNS Matnx's A C}herfenumst Mcmifesto for the 2/51 Centu') establrshcs cle.~rly. This rntght be the mamfesto 's most lastmg note. It rs a bodtly text m se-..entecn lines, It covers cunts, the chton • tongues, slimes, orgasm. and a vrrus Domg so, tt articulates femrmsm on the Inter net a VJsceral related to u cera hme, wetware, and btrth It st1ll feels that \Vay mes y, howling but liery much ahve

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cI .....Cc I ,... Is .Sallll."nll - -: n 24 art, whtcb explores tlie in emct as ma!cna an • be Ltnkoln & Jimpunk /lidu '\\l?b I Alcksandra ~. involves an astonishmgly dtYCrse set of Domano\'iC I Alexei Shulgin I Amalia Ulrnan I Angela practices that now stretch back decades. incorporatmg Washko I Ann Hirsch I Anne-Marie SchJciner, Joan aay number of disciplines· painting. pertonnance, I candre. & Brody (\,q<.Jon I Artie Vierkant · Ben Fry & poeary. creative code. This book considers this hetero C'usey Reas I Bogoc; ~ekhukhuni I Brian Mackem geneous field of practice t>y bnnging together'i.OO Burl.!au of Inverse Technoloh'Y I Cao Fci Comtant e"-emplary works of net art, from 1980s an imations Dullaart / Comclia ~o il frank I Corpos lntiJrnlaticos ' for the Brazilian Videotex to net\\ ork to artist-made Col) Arcangel ' Cecile B. Evan~ I DIS I damali ayo 1 vtrtual worlds of the 2010s. Although the \Vorks vary Devin Kenny I Dragan Fspenschicd & Olia Lialina, widely, looking at them together and in context offers Eduardo Kac J Electronic Disturbance Theater / Electronic a deep understanding of internet culture through time. Disturbance Theater 2.0 b.a.n.g. lah I Entropy 8Zuper! I and yields new insight into our networked present. Eva & Franco Mattes cxonemo I Filip Olstewskt & Bunny Rogers Gene McHugh I Group Z ' Gutlme Rhtzome, an organization that has championed born Lonergan Harm \'an den Dorpcl / Heath Bunting . digttal art and culture since its founding in 1996. I feriberto Yepez; I I/OiD I JOOI Ja)son Musson .selected these works for the online exhibition Net Art Jennifer & Kevin McCoy / Jon Ratinan I Jonas Lund Anthology and its gallery-based spinotT, ·The Art Kari Altmann K-HOLE & Box I824/ Mobile Image Happens Here," which opened in January 2019 at the (Kil Galloway & Shenie Rabinmv itz) I Kristin Lw.:a:-.. New Museum ofContt!mporary Art in New York. Laurn Brothers 1 LIA I Liz Mputu & 'inb4! I Lynn llershman Leeson I MTAA (Michael Sarff & Trm Edited by Michael Connor \\ ith Aria Dean and Whidden) I Mariam Ghani & Chitra Ganesh 1 Dragan Espenschied Maricla Yeregui I Marisa Olson I Mark Trihc. Alex ~ Gallnway. & Martin Wattenberg I l\1artine ~eddam I (Mouchctte) I Martine Syms l Mendi +Keith Obadike Mcz flrceze I Miao Yiug I Mongrel 1 Morchshin Published by An affiliate organization of Allahyari I Mumadas I Nasty Nets 11\.'een I Netochka RHIZOME Nez\ a nova I Olia Lialina / Oli\·cr Laric I Paper Rad Pellro Velez I Petra Cortright I Popc.L Porpentine Charity Heartscape ' Rafael Rozcndaal' Rafia Santana Robert Adrian ' Ryan Trecartin I S~-:.111 Price 1 Shu Net Art Anthology was l ea Cheang I Siebren Versteeg I Spirit Surters Taryn made possible by the Simon with Aaron Swartz / The Thing ' The Yes Men generous support of tsunamii.net I Tyler Coburn I UBERMORGE:-.1 VNS thoma ~1 atrix Victoria Vesna I Vuk Cosic I Wafaa Bilal ' FOUNDAnON Wolfgang Staehle I Yad Kanarek I YoHa (Graham Hnn\ood & ;vtatsuko Yokokoji) I Young-hac Chang !Ieavy Industries I Zach Bias

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