Revisiting Cyberfeminism
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Cyberfeminism : Encyclopedia of New Media
Cyberfeminism Cyberfeminism is a term coined in 1994 by Sadie Plant, director of the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit at the University of Warwick in Britain, to describe the work of feminists interested in theorizing, critiquing, and exploiting the Internet, cyberspace, and new-media technologies in general. The term and movement grew out of “third-wave” feminism, the contemporary feminist movement that follows the “second-wave” feminism of the 1970s, which focused on equal rights for women, and which itself followed the “first-wave” feminism of the early 20th century, which concentrated on woman suffrage. Cyberfeminism has tended to include mostly younger, technologically savvy women, and those from Western, white, middle-class backgrounds. The ranks of cyberfeminists are growing, however, and along with this increase is a growing divergence of ideas about what constitutes cyberfeminist thought and action. Prior to the advent of cyberfeminism, feminist study of technology tended to examine technological developments as socially and culturally constructed. One major argument was that technology has been positioned as part of masculine culture—something that men are interested in, good at, and therefore engage in more than women. Even though women throughout history have been active in developing new technologies, feminists have argued that technology has still been looked upon as a masculine creation. For example, although women had been involved in the creation and development of the computer, their contributions were largely marginalized, and their participation often ignored or written out of history. Therefore, feminists such as Judy Wacjman, a professor of sociology at the Australian National University in Canberra, and Cynthia Cockburn, an independent scholar and activist in London, argued that technology needed to be continually interrogated and re-conceptualized, and that women needed to become more active in technological areas as well. -
Dear Sister Artist: Activating Feminist Art Letters and Ephemera in the Archive
Article Dear Sister Artist: Activating Feminist Art Letters and Ephemera in the Archive Kathy Carbone ABSTRACT The 1970s Feminist Art movement continues to serve as fertile ground for contemporary feminist inquiry, knowledge sharing, and art practice. The CalArts Feminist Art Program (1971–1975) played an influential role in this movement and today, traces of the Feminist Art Program reside in the CalArts Institute Archives’ Feminist Art Materials Collection. Through a series of short interrelated archives stories, this paper explores some of the ways in which women responded to and engaged the Collection, especially a series of letters, for feminist projects at CalArts and the Women’s Art Library at Goldsmiths, University of London over the period of one year (2017–2018). The paper contemplates the archive as a conduit and locus for current day feminist identifications, meaning- making, exchange, and resistance and argues that activating and sharing—caring for—the archive’s feminist art histories is a crucial thing to be done: it is feminism-in-action that not only keeps this work on the table but it can also give strength and definition to being a feminist and an artist. Carbone, Kathy. “Dear Sister Artist,” in “Radical Empathy in Archival Practice,” eds. Elvia Arroyo- Ramirez, Jasmine Jones, Shannon O’Neill, and Holly Smith. Special issue, Journal of Critical Library and Information Studies 3. ISSN: 2572-1364 INTRODUCTION The 1970s Feminist Art movement continues to serve as fertile ground for contemporary feminist inquiry, knowledge sharing, and art practice. The California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) Feminist Art Program, which ran from 1971 through 1975, played an influential role in this movement and today, traces and remains of this pioneering program reside in the CalArts Institute Archives’ Feminist Art Materials Collection (henceforth the “Collection”). -
Revisiting the Future Cyberfeminism in the Twenty-First Century in The
Revisiting the Future Cyberfeminism in the Twenty-First Century First published in across & beyond – A transmediale Reader on Post-digital Practices, Concepts and Institutions, eds. Ryan Bishop, Kristoffer Gansing, Jussi Parikka, Elvia Wilk. Berlin, 2016, Sternberg Press (pp. 228-247). “I want the readers to find an ‘elsewhere’ from which to envision a different and less hostile order of relationships among people, animals, technologies, and land […] I also want to set new terms for the traffic between what we have come to know historically as nature and culture.” - Donna Haraway1 In the 1990s cyberfeminists conceived a new feminism for the twenty-first century. Inspired by the as-yet-unexplored possibilities of digital networked technologies, enthusiasm spread that the new imaginary realm of zeroes and ones would make discrimination based on physical and material differences obsolete, thus offering new forms of resistance. Instead of embodying white male capitalism, technology was reconceptualized as an accomplice for emancipation. In this text I will revisit the various elaborations of cyberfeminism that were practiced in the 1990s. Underlying this trip into the past is a series of questions that might help to better understand the present: what were the impulses behind the techno-feminist upheaval?2 How did the different concepts vary? Can cyberfeminism play a role in the current situation in which the atmosphere of departure has evaporated, making space for a seemingly all-encompassing dystopia? Are there any techno-feminist approaches that respond to contemporary challenges? Techno-feminist Inspiration Despite feminist criticisms about the formation of a canon and historical periodization, it is not possible to revisit cyberfeminism without referencing its originary texts. -
First Cyberfeminist International
editorial In September 1997 the First Cyberfeminist International Who is OBN and what do they do? took place in the Hybrid Workspace at Documenta X, in The Old Boys Network was founded in Berlin in spring Kassel, Germany. 37 women from 12 countries partici- 1997 by Susanne Ackers, Julianne Pierce, Valentina pated. It was the first big meeting of cyberfeminists Djordjevic, Ellen Nonnenmacher and Cornelia Sollfrank. organized by the Old Boys Network (OBN), the first inter- OBN consists of a core-group of 3-5 women, who take national cyberfeminist organisation. responsibility for administrative and organisational tasks, and a worldwide network of associated members. OBN is dedicated to Cyberfeminism. Although cyber- feminism has not been clearly defined--or perhaps OBN’s concern is to build spaces in which we can because it hasn't--the concept has enormous potential. research, experiment, communicate and act. One Cyberfeminism offers many women--including those example is the infrastructure which is being built by weary of same-old feminism--a new vantage point from OBN. It consists of a cyberfeminist Server (currently which to formulate innovative theory and practice, and under construction), the OBN mailing list and the orga- at the same time, to reflect upon traditional feminist nisation of Real-Life meetings. All this activities have the theory and pratice. purpose to give a contextualized presence to different artistic and political formulations under the umbrella of The concept of Cyberfeminism immediately poses a lot Cyberfeminism. Furthermore we create and use different of questions. The most important ones are: 1. What is kinds of spaces, spaces which are more abstract. -
“My Personal Is Not Political?” a Dialogue on Art, Feminism and Pedagogy
Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies Vol. 5, No. 2, July 2009 “My Personal Is Not Political?” A Dialogue on Art, Feminism and Pedagogy Irina Aristarkhova and Faith Wilding This is a dialogue between two scholars who discuss art, feminism, and pedagogy. While Irina Aristarkhova proposes “active distancing” and “strategic withdrawal of personal politics” as two performative strategies to deal with various stereotypes of women's art among students, Faith Wilding responds with an overview of art school’s curricular within a wider context of Feminist Art Movement and the radical questioning of art and pedagogy that the movement represents Using a concrete situation of teaching a women’s art class within an art school environment, this dialogue between Faith Wilding and Irina Aristakhova analyzes the challenges that such teaching represents within a wider cultural and historical context of women, art, and feminist performance pedagogy. Faith Wilding has been a prominent figure in the feminist art movement from the early 1970s, as a member of the California Arts Institute’s Feminist Art Program, Womanhouse, and in the recent decade, a member of the SubRosa, a cyberfeminist art collective. Irina Aristarkhova, is coming from a different history to this conversation: generationally, politically and theoretically, she faces her position as being an outsider to these mostly North American and, to a lesser extent, Western European developments. The authors see their on-going dialogue of different experiences and ideas within feminism(s) as an opportunity to share strategies and knowledges towards a common goal of sustaining heterogeneity in a pedagogical setting. First, this conversation focuses on the performance of feminist pedagogy in relation to women’s art. -
WOMANHOUSE Intimacy, Identity and Domesticity
WOMANHOUSE Intimacy, Identity and Domesticity Susana Solís-Zara1 University of Sevilha 1. Introduction This text examines the issue of art and intimacy, and its strong connection with the concept of identity: and especially representations of female identity in the collaborative feminist art installation, perfor- mance space, exhibition and pedagogical project Womanhouse (Janu- art exhibition, coinciding with the foundation of feminist art criticism at the beginning of the seventies in the United States . The Project Womanhouse was a collaborative project that deals with women’s gender experiences within the context of a real house 1. Susana Solís-Zara https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9932-9452 Universidad de Sevilla Departamento de Educación Artística, Facultad de Ciencias de la Educación Calle Pirotecnia s/n. CP. 41013 (Sevilla), Spain. [email protected] 298 Susana Solís-Zara setting in an urban neighbourhood in Los Angeles (http://www.wom- anhouse.net/). It presented and exhibited feminist artistic proposals concerning subjective identity, gender and intimacy like the ones found in domestic spaces. It includes perspectives such as the home as a space for both intimacy and identity, the body-house-home relationship, as- pects of maternity and the dichotomy between the private and the pub- lic, all of which continue to be narratives in contemporary women’s art. The main object of this essay is therefore to analyse the Woman- house project, as well as to examine some of its most prominent art- works and how intimacy was used as a means of expression, bringing - tion. It is precisely women who developed the notion of intimacy, as their role in history has been one of marginality and invisibility, being - WOMANHOUSE: Intimacy, Identity and Domesticity 299 2. -
Mother/Art: a Journey Into Selfhood, Motherhood and Art Education Through Personal Works
Mother/Art: A Journey into Selfhood, Motherhood and Art Education through Personal Works A Thesis in The Department of Art Education Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Master of Arts (Art Education) Concordia University Montréal, Québec, Canada April 2014 © Rosanna Ciciola-Izzo, 2014 CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY School of Graduate Studies This is to certify that the thesis prepared By: Rosanna Ciciola-Izzo Entitled: Mother/Art: A journey into Selfhood, Motherhood and Art Education through Personal Works and submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master Of Arts (Art Education) complies with the regulations of the University and meets the accepted standards with respect to originality and quality. Signed by the final examining committee: _____________________________________ Chair ______________________________________ Examiner Dr.Lorrie Blair ______________________________________ Examiner Dr.Kathleen Vaughan ______________________________________ Supervisor Dr.Linda Szabad-Smyth Approved by ________________________________________________ Chair of Department or Graduate Program Director ________________________________________________ Dean of Faculty Date _____________________________________2014__________ ii ABSTRACT Mother /Art: A Journey into Selfhood, Motherhood and Art Education Through Personal Works Rosanna Ciciola-Izzo This study begins with a look at creative blocks in the lives of creative women, and how these contribute to contemporary feminist discourses on maternal art. These discourses consider how real mothers deal with the ambivalence and contradictions of lived motherhood. Consequently, I considered from a feminist perspective, how women have traditionally been and are still predisposed to care for others, and how this responsibility both feeds and obstructs one’s creative self. Personal issues of identity and social roles within the context of marriage, motherhood and “daughterhood” were explored through studio-based research in the form of personal visual memoirs. -
SUZANNE LACY, FEMINISM and QUILTING by JACQUELINE
EVER PRESENT, NEVER PRESENTED: SUZANNE LACY, FEMINISM AND QUILTING by JACQUELINE WITKOWSKI B.A. (Hons), DePaul University, 2010 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (Art History) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) September 2014 © Jacqueline Witkowski, 2014 Abstract Seated at tables of four, over four hundred women aged 55-95 years old unfold tablecloths of yellow, red, and black. With their choreographed and synchronized gesturing hands, they mimic traditional Euro-American quilt patterns. This performance, titled The Crystal Quilt, was produced by Los Angeles-based artist Suzanne Lacy in 1987 as the culminating work to the two- year long, statewide initiative Whisper Minnesota (1985-1987). There is a continued resonance of the quilt in Lacy’s oeuvre, as The Crystal Quilt was the third project to reference quilts and quilt making. The first project, Evalina and I: Crimes, Quilts, Art (1975-78), and a smaller commemorative project (1980), employed tactile quilting projects instead of the conceptual quilt arrangement that Lacy would incorporate in 1987. The formal and historical attributes of this textile practice have been largely ignored in contemporary scholarship on the artist, thus raising the question of how this very specific medium encouraged her artistic and activist agenda. The primary focus of this thesis is an exploration of how Lacy mediates these two approaches, one of feminism and the other inspired by conceptual artist Allan Kaprow, through the medium of the quilt. Neither Lacy’s quilt works nor the use of craft during the second wave feminist movement has been sufficiently analyzed within craft scholarship. -
Paula Modersohn-Becker and the Discourse of Motherhood in Turn-Of-The-Century Germany Susan Kloman
Paula Modersohn-Becker and the Discourse of Motherhood in Turn-of-the-Century Germany Susan Kloman Contemporary feminist art historians have had difficulty [sic], [and] bound to the earth,” created when the artist her- reconciling what they view as the paradoxical nature of Paula self was “looking forward to motherhood.”5 Indeed, she was Modersohn-Becker’s artistic production. Modersohn-Becker pregnant in 1907, but her personal ambivalence about actual was a “modern” woman in that she sought autonomy and inde- motherhood is well documented. pendence as a professional artist, in spite of societal conven- These too-easy dismissals of Modersohn-Becker’s work tions in turn-of-the-century Germany. However, feminist art based upon retrospective views colored by contemporary po- historians such as Linda Nochlin, Wendy Slatkin, Griselda Pol- litical concerns obscure the fact that representations of mother- lock, and Rozsika Parker have aligned her pejoratively with hood are symbols with multivalent interpretations. As such, they essentialist ideologies which theorize women as bound to na- may be used as weapons in interclass and intraclass conflict to ture and their natures by their biological ability to reproduce. effect social changes. Further, these feminist dismissals ignore Essentialism, in the words of Diana Fuss, “appeal[s] to a pure the historicity of feminist discourse. Early twentieth century or original femininity, a female essence, outside the boundaries European women’s movements may appear conservative to us, of the social and thereby untainted by a patriarchal order.”1 but this judging of the past, by the standards of the present, Slatkin compares Modersohn-Becker’s work to that of male diminishes the real power of this movement within its cultural artists such as Gauguin and Maurice Denis who employ the context. -
Oral History Interview with Suzanne Lacy, 1990 Mar. 16-Sept. 27
Oral history interview with Suzanne Lacy, 1990 Mar. 16-Sept. 27 Funding for the digital preservation of this interview was provided by a grant from the Save America's Treasures Program of the National Park Service. Contact Information Reference Department Archives of American Art Smithsonian Institution Washington. D.C. 20560 www.aaa.si.edu/askus Transcript Preface The following oral history transcript is the result of a tape-recorded interview with Suzanne Lacy on March 16, 1990. The interview took place in Berkeley, California, and was conducted by Moira Roth for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. This interview has been extensively edited for clarification by the artist, resulting in a document that departs significantly from the tape recording, but that results in a far more usable document than the original transcript. —Ed. Interview [ Tape 1, side A (30-minute tape sides)] MOIRA ROTH: March 16, 1990, Suzanne Lacy, interviewed by Moira Roth, Berkeley, California, for the Archives of American Art. Could we begin with your birth in Fresno? SUZANNE LACY: We could, except I wasn’t born in Fresno. [laughs] I was born in Wasco, California. Wasco is a farming community near Bakersfield in the San Joaquin Valley. There were about six thousand people in town. I was born in 1945 at the close of the war. My father [Larry Lacy—SL], who was in the military, came home about nine months after I was born. My brother was born two years after, and then fifteen years later I had a sister— one of those “accidental” midlife births. -
Partial Artist List: Nancy Angelo Jerri Allyn Leslie Belt Rita Mae Brown Kathleen Burg Elizabeth Canelake Velene Campbell Carol Chen Judy Chicago Clsuf Michelle T
Doin’ It in Public: Feminism and Art at the Woman’s Building October 1, 2011 – January 28, 2012 Ben Maltz Gallery, Otis College of Art and Design This exhibition presents artwork, graphic design, ephemera, and documentation of work by the artist collectives and individual artists/designers who participated in collaborative projects at the Woman’s Building in Los Angeles between 1973-1991. Artist Collectives/Projects: Ariadne: A Social Network, Feminist Art Workers, Incest Awareness Project, Lesbian Art Project, Mother Art, Natalie Barney Collective, Sisters of Survival, The Waitresses, Chrysalis: A magazine of Women’s Culture, and more. Partial artist list: Nancy Angelo Jerri Allyn Leslie Belt Rita Mae Brown Kathleen Burg Elizabeth Canelake Velene Campbell Carol Chen Judy Chicago Clsuf Michelle T. Clinton Hyunsook Cho Yreina Cervantez Candace Compton Jan Cook Juanita Cynthia Sheila Levrant de Bretteville Johanna Demetrakas Nelvatha Dunbar Mary Beth Edelson Marguerite Elliot Donna Farnsworth Anne Finger Audrey Flack As of 9-27-11 Amani Fliers Nancy Fried Patricia Gaines Josephina Gallardo Diane Gamboa Cristina Gannon Anne Gauldin Cheri Gaulke Anita Green Vanalyne Green Mary Bruns Gonenthal Kirsten Grimstad Chutney Gunderson Berry Brook Hallock Hella Hammid Harmony Hammond Gloria Hajduk Eloise Klein Healy Mary Linn Hughes Annette Hunt Sharon Immergluck Ruth E. Iskin Cyndi Kahn Maria Karras Susan E. King Laurel Klick Deborah Krall Christie Kruse Sheila Levrant de Bretteville Suzanne Lacy Leslie Labowitz-Starus Lili Lakich Linda Lopez Bia -
THE BEAUTIFUL WARRIORS Technofeminist Praxis in the Twenty-First Century
Minor Compositions Open Access Statement – Please Read This book is open access. This work is not simply an electronic book; it is the open access version of a work that exists in a number of forms, the traditional printed form being one of them. All Minor Compositions publications are placed for free, in their entirety, on the web. This is because the free and autonomous sharing of knowledges and experiences is important, especially at a time when the restructuring and increased centralization of book distribution makes it difficult (and expensive) to distribute radical texts effectively. The free posting of these texts does not mean that the necessary energy and labor to produce them is no longer there. One can think of buying physical copies not as the purchase of commodities, but as a form of support or solidarity for an approach to knowledge production and engaged research (particularly when purchasing directly from the publisher). The open access nature of this publication means that you can: • read and store this document free of charge • distribute it for personal use free of charge • print sections of the work for personal use • read or perform parts of the work in a context where no financial transactions take place However, it is against the purposes of Minor Compositions open access approach to: • gain financially from the work • sell the work or seek monies in relation to the distribution of the work • use the work in any commercial activity of any kind • profit a third party indirectly via use or distribution of the work • distribute in or through a commercial body (with the exception of academic usage within educational institutions) The intent of Minor Compositions as a project is that any surpluses generated from the use of collectively produced literature are intended to return to further the development and production of further publications and writing: that which comes from the commons will be used to keep cultivating those commons.