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Prof. Dr. Verena Kuni  M. A.

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verena@kuni.org

 

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Performing Cyberfeminisms – Traversing Cyberspace

Panel
konzipiert & realisert von | curated by
Sivia Bauer & Verena Kuni
mit | with
Carrie Moyer, Faith Wilding, Marina Grzinic, Silvia Bauer & Verena Kuni
7th Performance Studies International (PSi7), Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, March 31, 2001 | 31.03.2001

The many uses of new technologies and new media are the major source of transformation for contempory societies. At the interface of gender politics and information technologies cyberfeminisms play a central role as performative strategies for analyzing, criticizing, changing and transgressing the status quo of the post-media era.

Cyberfeminist theorists, many of whom taking their cues from Donna Haraway, describe cyberfeminist positionings as partial, ironic, intimate, perverse, oppositional, deterritorial, aesthetic, transient, strategic, temporary, minoritarian, and political. Above all, cyberfeminisms are concerned with boundaries; cyberfeminists often are nomads, travelling across borders, redefining territory; fictional transportations, scientific transitions, aesthetic transgressions are their daily routines.
The boundaries of cyberspace go far beyond traditional binaries such as real/virtual, corporeal/digital, natural/cultural, body/mind. Cyberfeminist inquiries explore complex territories and map more ambiguous, yet manifold border landscapes. What constitutes (cyber-)feminist politics and strategies under the current imperatives of economic, cultural and political globalization and institutional transnationalization? Questions of identity and access, new modes of perception and cultural exchange, relations of power and relations of fantasy, operations of exclusion and inclusion, embodied knowledge and performative acts in cyberspace are some of the core topics at our roundtable.

Coming from a variety of personal and professional backgrounds and answering for different relationships with resp. attitudes towards cyberfeminism(s), together with the participants of the cyberfeminist panel we will explore translations, transitions, transformations – and transgressions as possible approaches, strategies and methods of cyberfeminist performances / performing cyberfeminisms.

Programme

The Panel will consist of two parts:

In the first part, Carrie Moyer will introduce the work of DAM! Dyke Action Machine, focussing on the brand new DAM! project "Gynadome", where a scrappy cult of female techno-resisters and Millennialists return to a post-digital Earth and find new uses for the technology they fought so hard to resist. Making use of the latest technologies and recognizing the internet as a prime site for special interests that are rapidly being homogenized anyway, "Gynadome" asks for a massive technological backlash to begin.

In the second part, after having introduced their personal and professional relation to and background in cyberfeminist theories and practices, the participants of the roundtable will discuss changing perspectives on feminist positions on digital culture, performative identity formations and body politics online and offline and address the implications arising at the crossroads of virtual and "real" praxis. Artists and academics concerned with feminist approaches and interdisciplinary working practices are invited to attend the roundtable and join the public discussion.
In conjunction with the roundtable, it is also planned to invite the participants to give further insight into past and present projects realized in different media: Together with her cyberfeminist performance collective subRosa, Faith Wilding will perform "Expo Emmagenics. An American Trade Show" at the Schauspielhaus/Städtische Bühnen Mainz (in collaboration with intermediale festival). Online works and websites by participants of the roundtable can be made available on an online-terminal provided by PSi7.

Carrie Moyer is a visual artist, a painter and graphic designer. She is one half of the New York based, public art project DAM! – Dyke Action Machine that was founded in 1991. DAM!s culture-jamming campaigns have dissected mainstream media and advertising by inserting lesbian images into recognizably commercial contexts. DAM!'s current project, "Gynadome" combines both, the latest trend in digital culture, namely techno-pessimism, the narrative structure of classic sci-fi films and at the same time revisits the feminist "back-to-the-land" movement of the 1970s.

Faith Wilding, born and brought up in South America by German refugees, emigrated to the US in 1962, active in the civil rights, the anti-war and the women's liberation movement, worked in Southern California with Judy Chicago, Lucy Lippard and others to found the Feminist Art Movement and the Feminist Art Program (based at CalArts, L.A.). As an artist, she worked with many media including traditional painting, drawing, mixed media, installation art, audio work and life performance, as well as digital technologies. Teaching at universities and colleges for almost 30 years, she is currently a visiting professor at Carnegie Mellon. Actively pioneering interdisciplinary courses about media and performance and women's relationship with technology and technosciences. Member of cyberfeminist Old Boys Network , founding member of the cyberfeminist performance collective subRosa. Finds cyberfeminism a promising new wave of (post)feminist thinking and practice.

Marina Grzinic received her Ph.D. in philosophy at the Faculty of Philosophy, Ljubljana University. Works as a researcher at ZRC SAZU (Scientfic and Research Center of the Slovenian Academy for Science and Art), and as a freelance critic, curator. Since 1982 collaborative video work with Aina Smid, with whom she also expanded into webbased projects, i.e. AXIS OF LIFE. Numerous articles and essays in the area of (feminist) art and media theory, including several contributions to cyberfeminist theory as well.

Silvia Bauer, gender, cultural and media theorist. She worked as lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich and at the English department at the Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich. For the last three years she has been working in corporate communications and public relations for a major European IT and telecom company. With her most recent project "KommIT" she is actively engaged in feminist politics for women in the information societies, including programs in media literacy and computing abilities as well as professional, cultural and critical programs for women in the IT industries and media arts.

Verena Kuni, art and media theorist. Currently works as researcher and lecturer at the Dept. of Fine Art, Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, and as a freelance curator and critic in the field of contemporary art and electronic culture. She is an active member of the Old Boys Network, founded in 1997 and suspected to be the first international cyberfeminist alliance, and runs several internet- and webbased projects.

The was conceived an organized by Silvia Bauer & Verena Kuni.

Hintergrundinformation | background information

tags: alltagstechnologien, art & media, art & public, art & society, artists' myths, communication, cultural history, cyberfeminism, cyberfeminismus, digital culture, digitale kultur, displays, electronic arts, elektronische kunst, everyday technologies, geek, gender studies, geschlechterforschung, hacks, kommunikation, kulturgeschichte, kunst & gesellschaft, kunst & medien, kunst & öffentlichkeit, künstlermythen, media, media cultures, media theory, medien, medienkultur, medientheorie, net culture, net cultures, netzkultur, netzkulturen, ort, orte & räume, perception, place, protest cultures, protestkulturen, raum, repräsentation, representation, space, spaces & places, technologie, technology, tools, visual culture, visuelle kultur, wahrnehmung, werkzeug

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