Cyberfeminism Index 1941753515, 9781941753514

Citation preview

Cyberfeminism Index

INVENTORY PRESS

Edited and gathered by Mindy Seu

Contents

p.6

Foreword Julianne Pierce

p.10

Introduction Mindy Seu

p.14

Instructions for Use

p.18

Collections p.19

Contributing to Indigenous Futurism Skawennati

p.20

Creative Impulses and Possible Feminisms Dr. Charlotte Webb

p.22

Cybernetics of Sex Melanie Hoff

p.24

Cyborgrrrls Constanza Pina and Melissa Aguilar

p.26

Ephemera Forever Cornelia Sollfrank

p.28

A Glitched Art History Legacy Russell

p.30

Hackfeminisms in/from Abya Vala: The Struggle for Dignified and Technodiverse Futures Paola Ricaurte Quijano

p.33

I Dream Therefore I Hack Mary Maggie

p.46

p.34

Post-Binary Blueprints Neema Githere

p.36

Post/ Cyber/ Feminisms: Towards, After, Beyond Helen Hester

p.38

Sonic Cyberfeminisms Annie Goh

p.40

Suck My Code! VNS Matrix

p.42

Transhackfeminist Cyborg Witches Klau Chinche (Klau Kinky)

p.44

Where Is Socialism in Cyberfeminism? On Eastern European Cyberfeminisms Irina Aristarkhova

Index p.48 p.52 p.53 p.58 p.62 p.72 p.92 p.112 p.123 p.138 p.145 p.158 p.171 p.179

1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004

p.189 p.193 p.200 p.205 p.213 p.219 p.224 p.230 p.242 p.252 p.272 p.294 p.320 p.352 p.381 p.409

2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

p.424 Index: Titles p.438 Index: People p.450 Index: Images p.596 Afterword: Cyberwork Now Legacy Russell p.604 Acknowledgments

Foreword Julianne Pierce of VNS Matrix

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Thirty years ago, four Australian artists wrote a rambling stream-of­ consciousness text with inspirations ranging from French feminist theory and the cyberpunk writings of William Gibson to Donna Haraway's "A Cyborg Manifesto." CD After several edits and with much of that first draft ending up on the cutting room floor, the group, VNS Matrix, released their A Cyberfeminist Manifesto for the 21st Century, @ an early declaration of the concept, idea, and rupture that was cyberfeminism, in 1991. This early utterance, generated during a hot South Australian summer, spread and grew gradually, coursing through the international networks via fax, print, and slow dial-up internet. In time, it reached the writer and academic Sadie Plant @ in the UK who, serendipitously, had also been naming cyberfeminism. What first emerged as a critique on two opposite sides of the world was soon to grow into a rhizomatic web of connections, conversations, and calls to action. A next wave of feminism, informed by the burgeoning techno-culture and female response, was being seeded in the matrix, a powerful and potent liminal feminine space. Cyberfeminism captured the imaginations of many who were already thinking about the impacts of technology and cyberculture. Like Haraway's cyborg, this rising cohort had been rallying against the military-industrial complex, wary of the emergent techno-patriarchy, and saw the intro­ duction of cyberfeminism as marking an opportunity to critique and undermine digital capitalism. It also, they noticed, made way for the infil­ tratation of cyberspace with poetic, feminized, and queer interventions. An energetic burst of activity in the cyberfeminism orbit then took shape, launching decades of disruption. In a matter of a few years from the early to mid-1990s, the German performance group -lnnen disrupted technol­ ogy conferences, Allucquere (Sandy) Rosanne Stone enchanted us with tactile electronic imaginings, ® the Old Boys Network C® presented the First Cyberfeminist International,@ and the FACES mailing list® was formed. Around the same time, other networks that focused on technical literacy emerged elsewhere around the globe. In 1994, Flame/Flamme: Sisters On-Line @formed as a network of African women online commit­ ted to strengthening the capacity of women through technology. In 2000, WOUGNET (Women of Uganda Network)@ was initiated as an NGO to

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ensure a society in which women are empowered through the use of ICTs for sustainable development. From these early beginnings, cyberfeminism has stretched its ten� drils far and wide. The significant achievement of cyberfeminism is that it brought diverse groups and individuals together to imagine what a cyberfeminist future might be. With these achievements, however, also came acknowledgments that cyberfeminism was a realm of privilege, with those from Europe, Australia, and the United States able to travel, move freely, and connect with one another, and some from elsewhere less able. Writers such as Marfa Fernandez@ and Radhika Gajjala @) have spoken about the ways in which cyberfeminism has failed to address or engage with postcolonial thinking on racism and cultural identity. Still, as evidenced by the astonishing Cyberfeminism Index, thirty years of cyberfeminism has seen the evolution of a shape-shifting entity, molded and refabricated by those who give their voice and energy to carry it on across time and space, and by those who voice and respond to such critiques. Over the years, it has moved beyond the conceptual and limited to become an ever-expanding network, giving artists, activists, hackers, and thinkers space to meet with each other, to debate, and to experiment with language, ideas, culture, and politics. Its strength and resilience lies in its ability to morph and change through the actions of those who iden­ tify as cyberfeminists, and also of those who challenge its purpose and validity. Cyberfeminism today has as its antecedents an art movement, a performance, a visual metaphor, and a creative network. It was never meant to be a campaign or a defining manifesto. It does not claim to be a political system with acolytes; rather it is a fluid, non-specific, hybrid changeling. It was born in the spirit of collaboration, defiance, and disrup­ tion. It is a hex and incantation that summons up the dissident spirit of chaos and the transformative powers of language, systems, webs, and performance. Like the first and second waves of feminism before it, cyberfeminism is part of a continuum of agitation, theory, and action that seeks emancipation from systems of power and control. Its lineage has extended far beyond a critique of techno culture, into forms such as Glitch Feminism @) and Xenofeminism, ®ID which rethink gender, identity, the

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body, and boundaries delineating or separating all three. What is celebrated in these ever-shifting and emergent feminisms is the power of the radical voice that brings alternative spaces and visions into being. This is not a monetized or fetishized disruption-this is disrup­ tion that at its core smashes, burns, and rebuilds. It is precisely this kind of force and imagination that the Cyberfeminism Index celebrates. Bringing together several years of research, correspondence, conver­ sations, and plain hard work, the resources gathered here by Mindy Seu are testament to a true cyberfeminism for the twenty-first century, and to a vast network of global provocateurs and change agents who offer their lived experiences and aspirations to invoke a space and to demand radical transformation. In identifying so many poetic, provocative, and powerful ideas, thoughts, and actions! this catalogue acknowledges the past and heralds the future. Julianne Pierce is an artist, producer, curator and writer working across performance, visual arts, and media arts. She has made significant contri­ butions to digital culture in Australia and internationally in various leader­ ship roles, including as Chair of Emerging and Experimental, Australia Council for the Arts and ·Chair of /SEA (International Symposium on Electronic Art). She is a founding member of the influential cyberfeminist artist group VNS Matrix, which formed in 1991 and continue to have their work included in significant exhibitions f1nd publications worldwide. Juli­ anne lives and works in Adelaide/Tarntanya on the traditional lands of the Kaurna people, South Australia.

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Introduction Mindy Seu

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Cyberfeminism is a mutating word with a nebulous history. Its evolution is less a single root system with multiple branches than a network of entan­ gled rhizomes, constantly and multidirectionally moving. Virginia Barrett of the Australian art collective VNS Matrix has described cyberfeminism as "anti-genealogical, anti-authorial, and a hostile mucus, never faithful to any origins."® Through its history, cyberfeminism has often been defined by what it is expressly not. ® Coined in the early 1990s by the British cultural theorist Sadie Plant @ and VNS Matrix, the word "cyberfeminism" takes on its prefix "cyber"-recast from Cybernetics, a 1948 book by Norbert Wiener, and "cyberspace," from William Gibson's 1984 novel Neuromancer--as a provocation. The word initially stood for a critique of the sci-fi landscapes of the 1980s, stocked with and characterized by cyberbabes and fembots. It denoted the ways various women and marginalized communities were imagining how a reoriented cyberspace could look. By now, three decades after its origination, cyberfeminism has shifted from a loose artistic movement exploring the emancipatory potential of cyberspace toward a collective drive to provide software, hardware, and wetware education and to get marginalized groups online. Today, with questions of technology more and more clearly "bound together with questions of ecology and the economy," @ the term is self-reflexive: technology is not only the subject of cyberfeminism, but its means of transmission. It's all about feedback. Rooted as it is by feminism, cyberfeminism is a complicated umbrella term. The history of feminism is dominated by Western attitudes, which makes it exclusionary. Still, the combination of cyber and feminism allows newcomers to quickly connote its meaning while including its relatives Cyberfeminism 2.0, @ Black cyberfeminism, @ Arab cyberfeminism, @ xenofeminism, CW post-cyber feminism, @ glitch feminism, ® Afrofuturism, ® hackfeministas, ®ID transhackfeminism, ® �n�I □ I [netfemi], and@ t�X:ZP5 [feminist voices],@ among others. Though several directories of cyberfeminism have already been published, none have gathered the quantity of work, history, breadth of media, or global reach of the index you hold in your hands. While cyber­ feminism will continue to shift and evolve, this index is an asymptotic attempt to take stock of how cyberfeminists have continued, over the past 11

three decades, to counter the hegemonic web, and to suggest how they might continue to do so. When I began building this index, I read seminal techno-critical texts to scrape their bibliographies and citations. This branched out to an overwhelming degree. Even after I felt confident that I had gathered a comprehensive list of theoretical texts, Judy Malloy (ill) recommended that I distinguish between YACK and HACK, or, respectively, theory and practice. YACK I collected by reading. HACK I collected through conver­ sations with generous people who told me their stories and referred me to others. With their invaluable help, I learned of hackerspaces, @ digital-rights activist groups,@ DIY (do it yourselD teledildonics manu­ als,@ DIWO (do it with others) organizations,@) bio-hacktivists,@ data dominatrixes, @ and open-source estrogen pioneers. @ Eventu­ ally, what first emerged as an open-source, open-access, crowd-sourced spreadsheet became an online database: cyberfeminismindex.com. The design of the website was guided by two primary questions: How do we visualize citations? How do websites age? Anchored by a glowing green "submit" button, the index received submissions from hundreds of people to whom I am deeply grateful. I have long been a gatherer. In Ursula K. Le Guin's Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction (1986), Le Guin posits the first technological tool as the basket, not the spear, thereby recasting the first protagonist as a gatherer, not a hunter. Not only did this address the deeply gendered roles of these two parts, it reframed our history of technology and changed the singular hero to the plural collective, from he to we. Gathering, for Le Guin, is not a masculine, techno-utopian process of disruption or of moving fast and breaking things, but the methodical, deep labor that comes from "looking around, rather than looking ahead," from gathering rather than hunting. When Laura Coombs, the designer of this book, pointed out the byline for the book Pleasure Activism (2019), "written and gathered by adrienne maree brown," I began to see myself in the term "gatherer" and its use. For this reason, the byline of this publication uses "gathered" as well. As a container, it is more than just the sum of its parts; the book is the site around which its public forms, and a place in which to gather that public. 12

This is not a book about women and technology. Nor was this book created for women. The works collected here are valuable and necessary additions to technology studies broadly. They cannot and should not be siloed into scholarship on gender. This publication is also intended to be accessible to a wide range of audiences, from experts to newcomers-to all who are curious about the early years of the internet. It aims to broaden this readership by organizing, connecting, and citing short excerpts from over 700 projects so that any and all interested people may develop their own associative links and collections with this toolkit. At publication, the Cyberfeminism Index traces three decades of global cyberfeminism. But, like cyberfeminism itself-permeable, mal­ leable, and anti-canonical-the index is still in progress. More than a historical overview, this publication was initiated by and is being released into a specific context, one in which platform oligopolies reign supreme, surveillance capitalism commodities us, and techno-dystopia looms. Its existence reflects that reality. The book is also imperfect: the version printed here is messy, with blindspots and selected truths. Despite my collaborators' and my attempted thoroughness in gathering the entries herein, many voices are left unaccounted for. Still, as ·a compilation of a wide sample of techno-critical works, the Cyberfeminism Index might reveal potential for actions we can take to reclaim cyberspace not as a utopia, but as a space for skepticism, growth, and entanglement. Here, multiple histories diverge, juxtaposing and complementing their varying ideologies and motivations, and they will continue to beyond these pages. This is not the index of cyberfeminism, but a document of-and another moment to-its mutation.

13

Instructions for Use

14

p.18

Collections Start here if you'd like a guide to this index. Fourteen scholars, artists, curators, activists, and/or collectives have each gathered a selection of entries that reflect their unique cyberfeminist practices.

p.46

Index This is an annotated, chronological index of 703 examples of cyberfeminism from between 1991 and 2020. Within each year, entries are organized alphabetically by title.

p.424 Index: Titles This is an alphabetical list of all entry titles. p.438 Index: People A list of people, organized by first name, is found here. It includes the authors of all excerpts, members of the many collectives named, contributors to publications, and artists whose work features in group exhibitions. p.450 Index: Images Available images for each entry appear here, captioned. Selected images are also included in the primary Index.

15

Structure of Index Entries Entries are divided into two parts: header and text block. Headers include bibliographic information. Text blocks each include a longer-form excerpt, and may include a translation of the work into English. 1. Entry Number 2. Title 3. Metadata Metadata block includes the year created, name(s) of people involved, entry source, additional metadata, website (if available), and/or referrals or submissions. 4. Websites Many websites referenced here have experienced link rot, and are no longer accessible. URLs followed by the indication (Wayback) can be viewed via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine or Rhizome's Conifer. 5. Referrals and Submissions In the early days of this project, I spoke with several people who referred me to relevant projects and contacts. These entries are marked with "referred by." Crowdsourced entries that were submit­ ted on cyberfeminismindex.com are indicated as "submitted by." Please note that there may be errors since some contributors submitted creators' names or pseudonyms rather than their own names. 6. Excerpts All excerpts have been written by others-either a creator of the project, member of the group, or reviewer of a work-and selected by me. The excerpt appears in its original language, followed by translation into English. Please note: Excerpts are reprinted verbatim, including errors and inconsistencies. 16

7. Cross-references One or more cross-references are included in each entry. These act as analog "hyperlinks" to other complementary or juxtaposi­ tional entries in the index, encouraging nonlinear and nonchrono­ logical reading. 8. Editor's note Some entries include annotations by me. These are italicized, begin with "Editor's note," and are signed "-MS." Sample Entry

Cyberfeminist Ways of Getting Organized

•

2015, Cornelia Sollfrank (lecture, Feminist Stories-Strategien der Wiederaneignung, Vierte Welt, Berlin, Germany, November 24, 2015); transcript from artwarez, http://art warez.org/195.0.html (Wayback); referred by Cornelia Sollfrank In rneinem Vortrag heute wird es urn ein Projekt gehen, an dern ich rnaBgeblich beteiligt war, das Old Boys Network, die erste cyberferninistische Al­ lianz. Dieses Netzwerk war van 1997 bis 2001 aktiv. My lecture today will be about a project in which I was significantly involved, the Old Boys Network, the first cyber-ferninist alliance. This network was active from 1997 to 2001 .

••

17

Editor's note: An updated version of this text, "The Art of Getting Organized: A Different Approach to Old Boys Network," was commissioned and first published in Computer Grrrls. -MS

Collections

18

Contributing to Indigenous Futurism Skawennati

Skawennati makes art that addresses history, the future, and change from her perspective as an urban Kanien'keha:ka woman and as a cyberpunk avatar. Her machinimas, textile work, and sculpture have been presented internationally. She co-directs Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace, a research-creation network based at Concordia University in Montreal. If cyberfeminism is a theorizing, critiquing, exploring, and remaking of the internet, then it is what I have been trying to do since the late 1990s, but with a particular focus on lndigenizing cyberspace-though "lndigeniz­ ing" was certainly not a term that I knew back then. Most of the entries I selected for this collection are either my own work or work that I have done in collaboration with individuals and collectives over the years. They are my community! There were very few of us Indigenous artists interested in digital art or the internet at the time, and we few ended up being invited to a lot of the same events, sharing food and drink, talking, thinking, and eventually making work together. In 1996, I was introduced to Speaking the Language of Spiders, @ led by Ahasiw Maskegon-lskwew, probably the first web-based Indigenous artwork. I had already been dreaming of CyberPowWow, which would launch the next year. Soon after, I met Archer Pechawis, who enthusiastically embarked on the CyberPowWow ® adventure with me. In 1999, I met Jason Lewis, who became my primary collaborator. As we built AbTeC (Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace) (ill) and then the Initiative for Indigenous Futures, @ our circle expanded. We made a concerted effort to be in conversation with Indigenous youth through our Skins Workshops in Indigenous Storytelling and Digital Media. More recently, we've been forging connections with Afrofuturists, some of whom are listed here. @

1996

® 19

1997

lsi-pikiskwewin-Ayapihkesisak [Speaking the Language of Spiders] by Cheryl L'Hirondelle, Ahasiw Maskegon­ lskwew, and Joseph Naytowhow CyberPowWow by Nation to Nation

@) @ID @ @ @)

1997 1999 2001 2001 2002

(ill) @) (ill)

2003 2004 2005

@) ®)

2005 2006

G@ @)

2008 2014

(ill) @

2014 2014

(ill) (ill)

2016 2016

@)

2017

(ill)

2017

@) (@ @)

2017 2017 2019

Prayer of Thanksgiving by Melanie Printup Hope CyberPowWow 2 by Nation to Nation CyberPowWow 2K by Nation to Nation Imagining Indians in the 25th Century by Skawennati Thanksgiving Address: Greetings to the Technological World by Jason Edward Lewis and Skawennati Terra Nullius, Terra Incognito by Jason Edward Lewis CyberPowWow 04 by Nation to Nation Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace (AbTeC) by Skawennati Tricia Fragnito and Jason Edward Lewis Cyborg Hybrids by KC Adams Grrls, Chicks, Sisters & Squaws: Les citoyennes du Cyberspace by Skawennati TimeTraveller ™ by Skawennati Art+Feminism by Sian Evans, Jacqueline Mabey, Michael Mandiberg, and Laurel Ptak Conversations with Bina48 by Stephanie Dinkins Initiative for Indigenous Futures by Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace (AbTeC) Afronautic Research Lab by Camille Turner A Brief (Media) History of the Indigenous Future by Jason Edward Lewis Onkweshon:'a: Words Before All Else Part 1 by Skawennati Owera:ke Non Aie:nahne: Filling in the Blank Spaces by Jason Edward Lewis and Skawennati She Falls for Ages by Skawennati The Peacemaker Returns by Skawennati Terra Nova by Maize Longboat

Creative Impulses and Possible Feminisms Dr. Charlotte Webb of Feminist Internet Dr. Charlotte Webb is co-founder of UK-based collective Feminist Internet and Senior Lecturer at the Creative Computing Institute. 20

This collection is made up of works that bring feminism, technology, and creative practices together to express new feminist imaginaries. The entries come in all forms-zines, @ open-source radio, @ VR experi­ ences, @ hypertext, @ science fiction stories, ® interactive archives, @ human-Al conversations, @ podcasts, @) and reimagined voice assistants-(® but they all entail speculations, visions, and the potential to bring about alternative realities. I've often thought the test of a great artwork comes in the form of two questions: First, does this work give you a sense of the artist(s)-can you sense their presence? Second, does this work make you want to make or do something yourself? I can answer "yes" for all of these projects! When our communities are facing what can seem like insurmountable challenges and injustice, the act of making can provide a nourishing space to engage differently. Creativity and feminism are natural allies because they both have the power to bring about new ways of seeing, being, and doing. I am so grateful to all of these practi­ tioners, who inspire the creative impulse and give me hope that there is no feminism-only possible feminisms-and no internet-only possible internets. @

® ® ®

(ill) 00) (ill) @ @)

1995 1996 1997 1999 2013 2014 2014 2015

2015 2017 2017 2018 2019 (® 2019 @) 2019 21 (ill) @ @) @ @

Cyberflesh Girlmonster by Linda Dement My Boyfriend Came Back from the War by Olia Lialina 100 Anti-Theses by Old Boys Network skinonskinonskin by Auriea Harvey and Michael Samyn VVVVVV by Faith Holland Conversations with Bina48 by Stephanie Dinkins Feminist Principles of the Internet Octavia's Brood by adrienne maree brown and Walidah lmarisha World White Web by Johanna Burai Feminist Internet NeuroSpeculative AfroFeminism (NSAF) by Hyphen Labs Wombs by Margherita Pevere Dream Babes 2.0 by Victoria Sin How to Make a Feminist Alexa by Feminist Internet Radio C6smica by Melissa Aguilar and Rosaura Rivera

@)

2019

@ @

2020 2020

Recoding Utopias: The Importance of Queer Spaces by Feminist Internet Black Trans Archive by Danielle Brathwaite Shirley Open Source Afro Hair Library by A.M. Darke

Cybernetics of Sex Melanie Hoff of School for Poetic Computation Melanie Hoff is an artist and educator examining the role · technology plays in social organization and reinforcing hegemonic structures. They are co-director of the School for Poetic Computation, the Cybernetics Library, and Soft Surplus. This collection addresses cyberfeminism through the lens of sexual labor. In my art and teaching practices, I frequently refer to the "Cybernetics of Sex." I define this as the way desirability politics exert a direct influence on who gets born. When certain communities are systematically deval­ ued in both intimate and public spheres, this has an impact on whose lives are considered worthy of reproduction. There is a reproductive flow of social and political ideas through the reproduction of people. This is the sexual reproduction of ideas. Sexual labor is a place where alternative models can be explored-sex workers give a powerful kind of permission to please and be pleased in our personal and collective private truths. C® @ @ @ ® @ Sexual labor exists at the intersection of patriarchy, sex, and capitalism. In a society that so often denies and shames, sexual labor creates spaces of possibility for radical connection across sexual preference, gender expression, and platforms of exchange. Sex workers are at the forefront of technological innovation, though rarely credited the way male-dominated fields, like the military, routinely are. The passage of Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers AcUFight Online Sex Trafficking Act (SESTA/FOSTA) in 2018 marks a continuation of a culture that shadow­ bans and deplatforms sex workers, pushing them out of the very digital spaces they innovated and into unsafe contexts for their work. The same culture that tends to view sex work as exclusively exploitative is always ready to find new ways to exploit. Access to supportive online spaces is a 22

way of refusing harmful societal standards. Accessible, digital spaces that do not censor or deplatform sex workers and that do not feed into models of shame and stigma are vital to the formation of resilient networks of solidarity and cybernetic intimacies. @

1995

@

1996

® 2000 2003 GID 2009 @ID 2013 @)

@ (ill)

2013 2015

@ @) (ill) @I) @ID @ID @)

2016 2016 2017 2017 2018 2018 2018

@) @ @

2018 2019 2019

@

2019

23

The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age by Allucquere Rosanne Stone Phone Sex is Cool, Chat-Lines as Superconductors by Marcus Boon Mistresses of Their Domain: How Female Entrepreneurs in Cyberporn are Initiating a Gender Power Shift by Kimberlianne Podlas girlswholikeporno by Agueda Baii6n and Marfa Llopis UKI by Shu Lea Cheang Elsewhere, After the Flood: Glitch Feminism and the Genesis of Glitch Body Politic by Legacy Russell VVVVVV by Faith Holland Sluts 'r' us: Intersections of Gender, Protocol and Agency in the Digital Age by Nishant Shah Buy Me Offline by Lindsay Dye Data Domination by Mistress Harley Exotic Trade by Tabita Rezaire Hackers of Resistance (HoRs) Code Societies by Melanie Hoff Red Umbrella by Melissa Mariposa Sex and African Feminisms-Utilising the Power of Digital Technologies by Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah Touchy-Feely Tech by Alice Stewart Daddy Residency by Nahee Kim Feminist Data Manifest-No by Marika Cifor, Patricia Garcia, TL Cowan, Jasmine Rault, Tonia Sutherland, Anita Say Chan, Jennifer Rode, Anna Lauren Hoffmann, Niloufar Salehi, and Lisa Nakamura Hacking//Hustling by Danielle Blunt and Melissa Gira Grant

� 2020

E-Viction by Veil Machine (Niko Flux, Sybil Fury, and Empress Wu)

Cyborg rrrls Constanza Pina and Melissa Aguilar

Melissa Aguilar is a graphic designer, visual artist, and researcher from Costa Rica based in Mexico City. She has a master's degree from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM-FAD) and is a member of /COM Costa Rica and the technofeininist collective Cyborgrrrls. Constanza Pina Pardo is an electronic artist and founder of Cyborgrr­ rls: TechnoFeminist Meeting. She is interested in hardware hacking, soft­ circuits, DIY antennas, handicraft synths, ancestral technologies, and elec­ tronic wizardry. Her work explores noise as a sound, political, and cultural phenomenon. Cyborg tentacles spread through the net of Cyborgrrrls, reaching out to a collection of projects selected in relation to affects and collaborations between 2017 and 2019. We have created this selection to highlight the research and offerings of a group of people from cyberfeminism and technofeminism ranging from net art and DIY gynecology to digital rights. Some of the authors in our collection have been part of the Cybor­ grrrls Technofeminist Meeting in previous years, such as Klau Chinche (Klau Kinky),® Laboratorio de lnterconectividades,@ Paula Pin,@ Hfbridas·y Quimeras, @ Tabita Rezaire, @ and Morehshin Allahyari. @ Other additions include authors with whom we will collaborate in the near future or who inspire our work. We also included two sub-projects of Cyborgrrrls: CyborgCinema @E and Cyborg Multiversity.@ The first is a video showcase event for short films, music videos, experimental film dealing with feminisms, cyborgs, technology, and gender. It is an itinerant screening that can travel inde­ pendent of the meeting and happen in different places. Cyborg Multiver­ sity is -a monthlong program of collective and open learning in various independent spaces throughout Mexico City. Womxn and non-binar� people teach workshops on a wide range of subjects, from open-source

24

coding and witchcraft to self-defense and more. Through the workshops, we not only spread significant knowledge but also provide useful tools for contemporary survival in one of the most violent cities in Latin America for womxn and for dissidents. @ (ill) (ill) @ @

2000 2005 2011 2013 2014

@)

2015

(ill) @) (ill)

2015 2017 2017

@ID

2018

@

2018

@) @

2019 2019

@ @)

2019 2019

@)

2019

25

I.K.U. by Shu Lea Cheang TIC-as by Sula Batsu Freakabolic by Paula Pin Anarcha, Lucy, Betsey by Klau Chinche (Klau Kinky) El Laboratorio de lnterconectividades [The Interconnectivity Lab] . Becoming Machine-Witch-Plant: Gynaecological Trans­ HackFeminism and Joyful Dystopia by Aniara Rodado Open Source Estrogen: A Manifesto by Mary Maggie Exotic Trade by Tabita Rezaire H1bridas y Quimeras [Hybrids and Chimeras] by Piaka Roela, Libertad Figueroa, Mabe Frati, Corazon de Robota, and ltzel Noyz Manifiesto por Algoritmias HackFeministas [Manifesto for HackFeminist Algorithms] by Liliana Zaragoza Cano, Natasha Felizi, and Ana Cristina Joaquim Tormenta: dialogos feministas para las libertades y auto­ cuidados digitales [Storm: Feminist Dialogues for Digital Liberties and Self-Care Strategies] by Alex Arguelles, Estrella Soria, Irene Soria Guzman, Juliana Guerra, Liliana Zaragoza Cano, and Samantha Camacho CyborgCinema by Cyborgrrrls Fuck the Soundcheck! by Dominique Pelletier, Constanza Pina, Gaia Leandra, Melissa Aguilar, and H1bridas y Quimeras Multiversidad Cyborg by Cyborgrrrls Physical Tactics for Digital Colonialism by Morehshin Allahyari Radio C6smica by Melissa Aguilar and Rosaura Rivera (Hackie)

Ephemera Forever Cornelia Sollfrank of Old Boys Network Cornelia Sol/frank is an artist, researcher, and educator living in Berlin. As a pioneer of internet art, Sol/frank built her reputation with two central projects: the net.art generator (a web-based art-producing "machine'? and Female Extension (her famous hack of the first competition for inter­ net art). Recent publications include The Beautiful Warriors: Technofem­ inist Practice in the 21st Century (minorcompositions.orq), Aesthetics of the Commons (diaphanes.net). and Fix My Code (with Winnie Soon) (eeclectic.de)-all open-access. This collection very much refers to works that are part of my own practice as an artist and researcher. Since my early involvement in Cyberfemi­ nism in the mid-1990s, I have had a special interest in the relationship between gender and technology. Inspired by Judy Wajcman's dictum that technology is never neutral and that it is a highly gendered field, ® I explored the technological underground-the hacker scene, where gender imbalance was and remains extreme. @ The frustrating findings of such ethnographic research led me to artistic interventions in the field, the aim of which was to manipulate the dynamics that allow for social hacks and the spread of false information, @@or to add complexity to black-and-white situations. @ @ @) Another strand of my work is the building of contexts for technofeminist collaboration and exchange. The founding of the Old Boys Network CD])®@®®@@ took place in the tradition of the early feminist artist collectives frauen-und-technik (women-and-technology, 1992-94) and -lnnen (1994-96) and eventu­ ally inspired the recent activities of the technofeminist research group #purplenoise, @ @ which is dedicated to social media interventions. @

® ® @

26

1991 1997 1997

Feminism Confronts Technology by Judy Wajcman 100 Anti-Theses by Old Boys Network The First Cyberfeminist International by Old Boys Network, Susanne Ackers, Babeth, Ulrike Bergermann,

CI® 1997 GID 1999

@

27

2001

Josephine Bosma, Shu Lea Cheang, Vali Djordjevic, Olga Egerova, Marina Grzinic, Sabine Helmers, Kathy Rae Huffman, Margarethe Jahrmann, Vesna Jankovic, Verena Kuni, Vesna Manojlovic, Nikolina Manojlovic, Diana McCarty, Alla Mitrofanova, Ingrid Molnar, Mathilde Mupe, Ellen Nonnenmacher, Helene von Oldenburg, Natalja Pershina, Daniela Alina Plewe, Corrine Petrus, Julianne Pierce, Claudia Reiche, Tamara Rouw, Rasa Smite, Cornelia Sollfrank, Debra Solomon, Josephine Starrs, Kerstin Weiberg, and Ina Wudtke Old Boys Network by Susanne Ackers, Cornelia Sollfrank, Ellen Nonnenmacher, Vali Djordjevic, and Julianne Pierce Next Cyberfeminist International by Old Boys Network, Alla Mitrofanova, Barbara Rechbach, Barbara Thoens, Caroline Bassett, Claudia Reiche, Cornelia Sollfrank, Corrine Petrus, Faith Wilding, Gudrun Teich, Helene von Oldenburg, Ingrid Hoofd, Irina Aristarkhova, Janine Sack, Josephine Bosma, Mare Tralla, Maren Hartmann, Maria Fernandez, Marieke van Santen, Nat Muller, Pam Skelton, Rachel Baker, Rasa Smite, Rena Tangens, Shu Lea Cheang, Stephanie Wehner, Sunchana Spirovan, Susanne Ackers, Ursula Biemann, Veronica Engler, Vesna Jankovic, and Yvonne Volkart Very Cyberfeminist International by Old Boys Network, Action Tank, Andrea Sick, Ania Corcilius, Anne Hilde Neset, Annette Schindler, Ariane Brenssell, Barbara Thoens, Bildwechsel, Britta Bonifacius, Christina Goestl, Cindy Gabriela Flores, Claude Draude, Claudia Reiche, Corinna Bath, Cornelia Sollfrank, Elisabeth Strowick, Faith Wilding, Feminist lndymedia Austria, Galerie Helga Broll, Genderchangers, Helene von Oldenburg, Irina Aristarkhova, Isabelle Massu, Janine Sack, Jill Scott, Jutta Weber, Lauren Cornell, Laurence Rassel, Les Penelopes, Lina Dzuverovic-Russell, Lola Castro,

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Margaret Tan, Maria Fernandez1 Nana Petzet, Nasya Bahfen, Natalie Bookchin, Nathalie Magnan, Noaltgirls (Lina Russell), Rachel Baker, RAWA, Rena Tangens, Rosanne Altstatt, Sara Platon, SubRosa, Susanna Paasonen, Synesthesie, TECHNO-TRICKSTER-TANK ™, Uli Peter, Ulrike Bergermann, Verena Kuni, Virtuella, VNS Matrix, and Waltraud Schwab Women Hackers by Cornelia Sollfrank Guide to Geek Girls by Old Boys Network Hacking Seductions as Art by Cornelia Sollfrank and Jenny Marketou Have Script, Will Destroy! by Cornelia Sollfrank and Clara G. Sopht Not Every Hacker Is a Woman by Cornelia Sollfrank Cyberfeminist Ways of Getting Organized by Cornelia Sollfrank Revisiting the Future by Cornelia Sollfrank A la recherche de !'information perdue [In Search of Lost Information] by Cornelia Sollfrank Purple Noise by Charlotte Bonjour, Christina Grammtikopoulou, Janine Sack, Isabel de Sena, Cornelia Sollfrank, Johanna Thompson, Andreea Carnu, and Andrea Kelemen Beautiful Warriors: Technofeminist Practice in the 21st Century by Cornelia Sollfrank Taking Sides: Theories, Practices, and Cultures of Participation in Dissent by Elke Bippus, Anne Ganzert, and Isabell Otto

A Glitched Art History Legacy Russell Legacy Russell is the Executive Director and Chief Curator of The Kitchen in New York City. Her academic, curatorial, and creative work focuses on gender, performance, digital selfdom, internet idolatry, and new media

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ritual. Her first book is Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto (2020). Her second book, BLACK MEME, is forthcoming.

This collection is brought together to provide a glimpse into an abbrevi­ ated history of groundbreaking artists and creative technologists seeking to subvert, challenge, and turn on their ears the art histories of cyber­ feminism, expanding the necessary work of the digital world today as it continues to transform. Those artists listed here bring to the fore questions of bodily autonomy, strategic redaction and opacity, representation, and cyber-performativity across lines of race, class, and gender, instructing new modes of movement that embrace illegibility-"the glitch" @-as a way of being/becoming and a ready tool of dismantlement. Highlighting contributions that reach across two decades, the projects celebrated here engage the internet as a conceptual and critical material, considering both the metaphor of the algorithm and the archive as an architecture to decolonize and reworld while simultaneously creating dynamic interven­ tions that disrupt the status quo and hold a black mirror of now up to the electric mirrors1 that line the dawning halls of time-based media. Lynn Hershman Leeson, "Reflections on the Electric Mirror," in New Artists Video: A Critical Anthology, ed. Gregory Battock (New York: Dutton, 1978).

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Afrofuturism listserv by Alondra Nelson, Digital Dualism and the Glitch Feminism Manifesto by Legacy Russell Mundane Afrofuturist Manifesto by Martine Syms Afro Cyber Resistance by Tabita Rezaire Conversations with Bina48 by Stephanie Dinkins Chicana/a Cyberpunk after el Movimiento by Lysa Rivera There Are Certain Facts That Cannot Be Disputed by Juliana Huxtable Sandy Speaks: A Chatbot That Talks Prison Statistics & The Failure of Surveillance by American Artist 4 Survival 4 Pleasure by Emily Mulenga a:active, a:hover { or position: unavoidable; by SHAWNE MICHELAIN HOLLOWAY

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A Cyborg Manifesto of Black People in Theory by Jade E. Davis New Black Portraitures by Aria Dean Under Her Eye: Digital Drag as Obfuscation and Countersurveillance by Harris Kornstein Black Trans Archive by Danielle Brathwaite Shirley The Digital Lives of Black Women in Britain by Francesca Sobande

Hackfeminisms in/from Abya Yala: The Struggle for Dignified and Technodiverse Futures Paola Ricaurte Quijano

Paola Ricaurte Quijano is Associate Professor at Tecno/6gico de Monter­ rey, Mexico, Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, and co-founder (with Nick Gou/dry and Ulises Mejias) of the Tierra Com{m network. From the diverse contexts that characterize the territories of Abya Yala, hackfeminist networks expressions multiple ways of inhabiting technol­ ogies. What are the stakes, perspectives, and contributions of feminist praxis in the territories of Abya Yala? On the one hand, they propose building violence-free spaces for women in the Internet territory. On the other hand, they create injtiatives that question the hegemonic produc­ tion and use of technology, their effects on racialized bodies of women, and the environment. Another set of initiatives promotes, builds, and sustains feminist infrastructures. Finally, some projects explore what alternative technologies we can desire, imagine, and create from a deco­ lonial, feminist, non-extractive, and co-responsible perspective with our bodies-territories. This collection gathers some examples of these four dimensions: 1. 2. 30

violence on the internet the critique of the hegemonic technological development model

3. 4.

feminist infrastructures the construction of imaginaries aimed at building dignified and technodiverse futures.

The collection accounts for a diversity of approaches, for the multiple facets of feminist technopolitical action, and for the possibilities of critical thinking. The projects here emerge from the embodied and everyday life experiences of women with technologies. They also show the relevance of the aesthetic dimension of political praxis. Through this selection, it is possible to trace a line of continuity that reflects a relational perspective of technologies, putting affections and care at the center and challenging the ontological and epistemic separation between technology, society, and nature. 1. - Against violence in the territory of the internet ® 2006 @ 2012 @ 2016 (ill) 2018 @ 2018

iDominemos la Tecnologfa! [Take Back The Tech!] Luchadoras [Fighters] by Lulu V. Barrera Ciberseguras Ciberfeministas GT Pornografia no consentida [Non-consensual Pornography] by Paz Pena, Francisco Vera, Veronica Ferrari, Constanza Figueroa, Steffania Costa di Albanez e Miguel Soares, and Marrna Souza Tormenta: dialogos feministas para las libertades y autocuidados digitales [Storm: Feminist Dialogues for Digital Liberties and Self-Care Strategies] by Alex Arguelles, Estrella Soria, Irene Soria Guzman, Juliana Guerra, Liliana Zaragoza Cano, and Samantha Camacho

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A critique of the hegemonic model of technological development

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Coding Rights: Translating Human Rights into Codes by Joana Varon Cyborgrrrls by Constanza Pina (Corazon de Robota),

Melissa Aguilar, Vero lreta, and Sofia Main Tecnicas Rudas [Rough Techniques] by Tacol Pena Tecnoafecciones: Por una polftica de la co-responsibilidad [Techno-Affections: For a Policy of Co-responsibility] by Nadia Cortes, la jes, and Paola Ricaurte

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Feminist infrastructures

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Imaginaries for dignified and technodiverse futures

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Marialab Vedetas [Stars] Cl4ndestina

Transfeminist Technologies by Joana Varon, Clara Juliano, and Sasha Costanza-Chock Manifiesto por Algoritmias HackFeministas [Manifesto for HackFeminist Algorithms] by Liliana Zaragoza Cano, Natasha Felizi, and Ana Cristina joaquim Tecnologra ancestral, conocimiento resguardado por la sabidurra de las mujeres [Ancestral Technology, Knowledge Protected by the Wisdom of Women] by lxchel Aguirre l Territorio internet? Espacios, afectividades y comu­ nidades [Internet Territory? Spaces, Affections and Communities] by la jes Nos permitimos imaginar [We Allow Ourselves to Imagine] by Paola Ricaurte Quijano, Nadia Cortes, Irene Soria Guzman, Amaranta Cornejo Flernandez, Vero Araiza, ValeVale, Anamhoo, Firuzeh Shokoo-Valle, Elyaneth, San Gayou, Stefania Acevedo, Alma Martinez/ Rosaura Zapata, Guiomar Rovira, Paulette Flernandez, March Bermudez, Monica Nepote, lajes, Mariel Zasso, Fera Briones/Chavela Goldman, and Lili Ayuujk

I Dream Therefore I Hack Mary Maggie Mary Maggie is a non-binary artist working at the intersection of cultural discourse, body and gender politics, and ecological alienations. Using biohacking and public amateurism as ,a critical practice of care, Maggie investigates the micro-performativity of hormones and works collabora­ tively to demystify their molecular colonization. The ethos of hacker culture has always reacted against unequal relation­ ships of power-especially because whoever gets to produce knowledge also gets to define and enforce realities. Science and technology hold certain relationships of power that are grounded in the authoritative and hegemonic creation of social and ideological constructs, or what I like to call "fictions." So there is a huge need for spaces and communities where the process of "fictioning" can be played out in subversive and co­ generative ways, where science and technology mutate with us in a "co­ fictioning" process of defining subjectivities. I wanted to create a collection of practices, gatherings, and labs that centered around the communal sharing of knowledge in a way that challenges the institutional status quo. From DIV gynecology@) to DIV pleasure, @ from human bodies @ to plant bodies, @D the concept of public amateurism is performed in a way that is combinatorial, like remixing of backgrounds and disciplines, blend­ ing of expert and layperson, success and failure, that creates spacious room for radical openness and radical knowingness. Hacking moves beyond the mere technical and into the speculative sociocultural, literally hacking for that which does not yet exist. If there is a word that embodies both hacking and dreaming, then surely these practices demonstrate its combinatorial power.

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/ETC (Eclectic Tech Carnival) by GenderChangers Academy A Hacker Manifesto by McKenzie Wark Hackerspaces and DIVbio in Asia: Connecting Science and Community with Open Data, Kits and Protocols by

2014 CW 2014 @ 2015 @ 2015 @

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Denisa Kera Hyphen Labs by Carmen Aguilar y Wedge and Ece Tankal Open Source Abortion by Channel TWo (CH2) Abortion Drone by Women on Web Becoming Machine-Witch-Plant: Gynaecological TransHackFeminism and Joyful Dystopia by Aniara Rodado GynePunks: Reimagining Women's Health by Kari Oakes Cyborg-Brujas: BioHacking y Laboratories caseros [Cyborg-Women: BioHacking and Home Labs] by Pandemia Lab ESTROFEM LAB by Mary Maggie Hack The Earth: simBIOtica by Calafou Kefir Prototyp_ome #AncestralTech by Color Coded and Agua Dulce buttplug.io by Nonpolynomial Labs Another Science Is Possible: A Manifesto for Slow Science by Isabelle Stengers Radical Feminist Storytelling and Speculative Fiction: Creating New Worlds by Re-imagining Hacking by Sophie Toupin and Spideralex (Alex Hache) Touchy-Feely Tech by Alice Stewart Slime Tech Lab by Ashley Jane Lewis and Ayodamola Tanimowo Okunseinde Rock Repo: Trans*feminist Scanning Practices for Geocomputation by Helen Pritchard, Jara Rocha, and Femke Snelling

Post-Binary Blueprints Neema Githere of Data Healing

Neema Githere (they/she) is a guerrilla theorist whose work explores love and lndigeneity in a time of algorithmic debris. 34

Beyond the grayscale of ones and zeroes exists a spectral landscape in which each choice sculpts part of an ever expansive fractal tree of possibility. This collection invites its explorers to journey through this emergent terrain punctuated by pleasure, diaspora, and plant intelligence. In this world, there is neither time nor data-merely ancient memory and experience. The references selected to be a part of this collection echo the themes central to my own experimental practice of Data Healing. Drawing connections between technology, nature, and spirituality, Data Healing serves as an incantation insistent on centering indigeneity amid what Harmony Holiday terms "algorithmic debris." What unites these selec­ tions is a resistance to tech-hegemony, which erases the contributions and multifaceted wisdom of queer, ® Black diasporic, @ and First Nations people, ® whose very existence is a futurist testimony. Post­ Binary Blueprints invokes the trance of this testimony as it blooms here, in our Present, to form an irresistible pathway towards tech-transcendence. ® 1996 Gill 2009 ® 2012

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Aboriginal Narratives in Cyberspace by Loretta Todd Digital Diaspora:A Race for Cyberspace byAnna Everett The Transreal: PoliticalAesthetics of Crossing Realities by micha cardenas, Elle Mehrmand, Amy Sara Carroll, Ricardo Dominguez, Brain Holmes, James Morgan, Allucquere Rosanne Stone, and Stelarc Afro Cyber Resistance by Tabita Rezaire Black Quantum Futurism by Rasheedah Phillips and CamaeAyewa BUFU by Jazmin Jones, Jiun Kwon, Tsige Tafesse, Katherine Tom, and Suhyun Choi NT U by Tabita Rezaire, Bogosi Sekhukhuni, and Nolan Oswald Dennis Slime Intelligence by Elvia Wilk and Jenna Sutela Wild Seed in the Machine by Jessica Marie Johnson and MarkAnthony Neal Daddy Residency by Nahee Kim Slime Tech Lab byAshley Jane Lewis andAyodamola

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Tanimowo Okunseinde WYFY: Exorcizing Technology Manifesto by BUFU

Post/ Cyber/ Feminisms: Towards, After, Beyond Helen Hester of Laboria Cuboniks Helen Hester is Professor of Gender, Technology, and Cultural Politics at the University of West London. Her research interests include technology, social reproduction, and the future of work, and she is a member of the international feminist working group Laboria Cuboniks. Her books include Beyond Explicit: Pornography and the Displacement of Sex (SUNY Press, 2014), Xenofeminism (Polity, 2018), and After Work: The Politics of Free Time (Verso, forthcoming, with Nick Srnicek).

It was a real privilege to be invited to curate a collection for the Cyber­ feminism Index-a project which, through the process of assembling and making space, builds on some of the most interesting and helpful elements of a cyberfeminist tradition. I organized these entries loosely around the idea of post-cyber feminism, drawing together a ragtag assortment of important intellectual forerunners, subsequent developments, and works that go well beyond what the idea of post-cyber feminism would seem to contain. I see myself, however, less as a curator and more as a fan. The resources gathered in this collection are not organized according to any overarching logic or schema, but reflect the work that I myself' have been influenced by or have found personally meaningful. In some cases, the authors are people I've met, worked with, spoken alongside, who have­ through their ideas and voices-encouraged me to think about feminism and technology anew. Several were involved in some capacity with The Post-Cyber Feminist International @ at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, which I co-programmed with Rosalie Doubal in 2017. Others are here because their work spans some of the various "worlds" across and within which I work-porn studies, GID xenofeminism, @­ digital activism, @ and antiwork politics. @

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Perhaps the most important entry of all is missing here, however. In my original response to Mindy Seu, I asked that the Cyberfeminism Index as a whole be included within my collection-that it become an entry within itself. T his sort of "universal index" was ultimately left unrealized, which is a pity. The project, after all, is an incredible achievement of post-cyber feminist practice-one built on a foundation of intellectual generosity, on tending to ephemera, on xenohospitality, on technologically facilitated acts of noticing. It deserves a place in its own record. @

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A Cyberfeminist Manifesto for the 21st Century by VNS Matrix Feminism Confronts Technology by Judy Wajcman Race In/For Cyberspace: Identity Tourism and Racial Passing on the Internet by Lisa Nakamura On the Matrix: Cyberfeminist Simulations by Sadie Plant FACES by Diana McCarty, Kathy Rae Huffman, Ushi Reiter, and Valie Djordjevic Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium.FemaleMan©_ Meets_OncoMouse: Feminism and Technoscience rM by Donna Haraway Where Is the Feminism in Cyberfeminism? by Faith Wilding I.K.U. by Shu Lea Cheang Re: maria fernandez/suhail malik on cyberfeminism by Maria Fernandez and Suhail Malik TechniColorRace: Technology, and Everyday Life by Alondra Nelson, T huy Linh N. Tu, and Alicia Headlam Hines Domain Errors! Cyberfeminist Practices by Maria Fernandez, Faith Wilding, and Michelle M. Wright Cyberfeminism and Artificial Life by Sarah Kember A Hacker Manifesto by McKenzie Wark Digitizing Race: Visual Cultures of the Internet by Lisa Nakamura Rethinking Cyberfeminism(s): Race, Gender, and

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Embodiment by Jessie Daniels Revisiting Cyberfeminism by Susanna Paasonen Testa Junkie: Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic Era by Paul B. Preciado GynePunk by Klau Chinche (Klau Kinky) New Topics in Social Computing: Emotional Labor and Affective Computing panel by Joanne McNeil, Sarah Jaffe, Lauren McCarthy, and Sabrina Majeed Manifesto for Cyborgs Thirty Years On: Gender, Technology and Feminist-Technoscience in the Twenty­ First Century by Thao Phan Open Source Gendercodes by Rian Ciela Hammond Teknolust by Lynn Hershman Leeson New Brazilian Feminisms and Online Networks: Cyberfeminism, Protest and the Female "Arab Spring" by Carolina Matos On #GLITCHFEMINISM and The Glitch Feminism Manifesto by Legacy Russell Open Source Estrogen: From Biomolecules to Biopolitics ... Hormones with Institutional Biopower! by Mary Tsang (Mary Maggie) Post-Cyber Feminist International by Helen Hester Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation by Laboria Cuboniks Hacking//Hustling by Danielle Blunt and Melissa Gira Grant

Sonic Cyberfeminisms Annie Goh Annie Goh is an artist and researcher working primarily with sound, space, electronic media, and generative processes within their social and cultural contexts. She co-curated the discourse program of CTM Festival Berlin 2013-16 and, since 2015, is co-founder of the Sonic Cyberfeminisms project with Dr. Marie Thompson.

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Sonic Cyberfeminisms @ is an ongoing multimodal project that Marie Thompson and I have been running since 2015. It is both a conceptual tool and an organizing rubric that interrogates the relationship between gender, feminist praxis, sound, and technology. Through the project, we have formed a loose collective of acquaintances,· colleagues, and comrades accompanying us for various events, residencies, and online/ offline publications. From the collective's beginnings, we have focused on the often difficult work of being what one might term "cyberfeminist killjoys," informed by Sara N. Ahmed's crucial formulation. The opposi­ tional character of a cyberfeminist killjoy that inquires and acts in the face of the multifaceted ways in which white supremacy, cisheteropatriarchy, ableism, and capitalism co-constitute one another-including within feminism itself-has been central to our endeavor. The Sonic Cyberfem­ inisms collection for the Cyberfeminism Index reflects some of the core intersectional ideas that guide the SCF project, especially its race-critical killjoy tendencies. Sonic Cyberfeminisms has always sought to practice responsive critique, remaining grounded in material and technical reali­ ties yet being inspired by feminist speculation to aid new imaginations of the present and future. The auditory is often missing or invisibilized within contemporary arts and culture; therefore this collection aims to plug the importance of sound and listening, and the specific parts of sociality it draws our attention towards, into a larger cyberfeminist discourse. ®

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New Sciences: Cyborg Feminism and the Methodology of the Oppressed by Chela Sandoval Race In/For Cyberspace: Identity Tourism and Racial Passing on the Internet by Lisa Nakamura Buy One Get One by Shu Lea Cheang FACES by Diana McCarty, Kathy Rae Huffman, Ushi Reiter, and Valie Djordjevic Praise Songs & Installations by Mendi + Keith Obadike TechniColorRace, Technology, and Everyday Life by Alondra Nelson, Thuy Linh N. Tu, and Alicia Headlam Hines A Rant About "Technology" by Ursula K. Le Guin

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Radio Zapatista Pink Noises by Tara Rodgers Sonic Cyberfeminisms and its Discontents by Annie Goh Black Quantum Futurism by Rasheedah Phillips and CamaeAyewa Octavia's Brood by adrienne maree brown and Walidah lmarisha An Individual Note of Music, Sound and Electronics by Daphne Oram Failure and Mark-Up Language: Remembering Sandra Bland by American Artist Appropriating the Alien: A Critique of Xenofeminism by Annie Goh

Suck My Code! VNS Matrix

VNS Matrix was a cyberfeminist media art collective formed in Adelaide (South Australia) in 1991 by Virginia Barratt, Francesca da Rimini, Juli­ anne Pierce, and Josephine Starrs. The VNS Matrix collection represents the collaborators, the sisters, the radical thinkers, the disruptors, and the cyborg witches who have inspired, motivated, and blessed us with their thoughts, ideas, and actions. They are individuals, collectives, networks, and ciphers who bring the new world disorder into being through their poetry, ® interventions, @ and incantations. @) As VNS Matrix, we are fortunate to enter the orbit of many thinkers, activists, and hacktivists who challenge the dominant systems to imagine and create alternative spaces and places for multiple identities to emerge. The collection gathered for the Cyberfeminism Index are friends, kindred spirits, and partners in crime who bring us the gift of their words and the force of their energy to evolve a collective, hybridized, intersectional, feminist emancipation. G)

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1991

(1985) A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and

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Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century Will the Real Body Please Stand Up? Boundary Stories About Virtual Cultures by Allucquere (Sandy) Rosanne Stone Geekgirl by Rosie Cross Cyberflesh Girlmonster by Linda Dement Cyberpositive by 0(rphan)d(rift>) Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet by Sherry Turkle Electronic Civil Disobedience and Other Unpopular Ideas by Critical Art Ensemble Bad Code by VNS Matrix Brandon by Shu Lea Cheang Faceless by Manu Luksch FACES by Diana McCarty, Kathy Rae Huffman, Ushi Reiter, and Valie Djordjevic Zeros and Ones: Women and the New Technoculture by Sadie Plant Slimy Metaphors for Technology: "The Clitoris Is a Direct Line to the Matrix" by Jyanni Steffensen Genderchangers Academy by Tali, brbr, and Sara Genetic Response System 3.0 by Diane Ludin Race in Cyberspace by Beth Kolko, Lisa Nakamura, and Gilbert Rodman Cyberfeminism, Racism, Embodiment by Maria Fernandez Cyberquake: Haraway's Manifesto by Zoe Sofoulis Tenacity: Cultural Practices in the Age of Information and Biotechnology by Yvonne Volkart Violencia Sin Cuerpos by Remedios Zafra Miss Despoinas by Nancy Mauro-Flude Cyberfeminism 2.0 by Radhika Gajjala and Yeon Ju Oh Testo Junkie: Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic Era by Paul B. Preciado Black Quantum Futurism by Rasheedah Phillips and

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CW 2016 2016 ® 2018 @ 2018 @ 2018 @

CamaeAyewa The Cyborg, Its Manifesto and Their Relevance Today: Some reflections by Zoe Sofoulis GynePunk, the Cyborg Witches of DIY Gynecology by Ewen Chardronnet Refresh Collective by SalomeAsega, Heather Dewey-Hagborg, Kathy High, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Maandeeq Mohamed, Tiare Ribeaux, Dr Camilla M0rk Rostvik, Dorothy R. Santos, andAddie Wagenknecht A Tender Hex for theAnthropocene by VNS Matrix @go #91010 by Melinda Rackham A Tender Hex by Melinda Rackham Xenofeminism: A Politics forAlienation by Laboria Cuboniks

Transhackfeminist Cyborg Witches Klau Chinche (Klau Kinky)

Klau Kinky agitates histories and practices with the co-creation of PECHBLENDA Lab (2012-17), AnarchaG/and (since 2014), Gynepunk (since 2015), and gender-free software technologies called Generatech (2007-10). She lived in the ecoindustrial community Ca/afou for seven years. This selection is composed of personal ongoing projects, others that I've been involved in, and others still that no longer exist. It also holds key inspirations and collaborations. All of these projects are the fruit of an incarnated genealogy of desire, a becoming, a practical drift of concepts and actions situated in diverse positionalities from technopolitical and biopolitical dissidence beyond bodily binarisms. This is a memory spell, a recipe that combines biohacking practices, @ medical performativities, @ glam hardlabs, @ cyborg covens, ® critical anatomies,@ visceral decolonization, @]) sexual dissidence, @ and other organs that from my point of view walk the thin line between "queer feminist hacktivism," "transfeminist hacktivism," and "transhack-

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feminism." But how do we understand Transhackfeminism? THF! ® is not a closed definition; it's an approach, a perspective, a way of doing things, DIV, DIWO, DIT, transborder, transgender, transformative, transi­ tional, transdisciplinary, transgressive, critical subjectivities that inhabit our daily lives, visions and practices. This is a little glimpse that doesn't have a genealogical pretension, but it is still important to acknowledge that THF! should not deny their own herstory; it would not exist without collective processes that are rooted and memories that need to be celebrated.

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Akelarre Cyborg by Quimera Rosa Generatech by Anarchaserver Pechblenda by Klau Chinche (Klau Kinky), Magnett, and Paula Pin Anarcha, Lucy, Betsey by Klau Chinche (Klau Kinky) GynePunk by Klau Chinche (Klau Kinky) Tecnologias, software libre, maquinas y redes transfemi­ nistas by Klau Chinche (Klau Kinky) TransHackFeminist Meet-Up (THF!) by Pechblenda, GynePunk, and Calafou Abortion Drone by Women on Web Becoming Machine-Witch-Plant: Gynaecological Trans­ HackFeminism and Joyful Dystopia by Aniara Rodado GynePunk, the Cyborg Witches of DIV Gynecology by Ewen Chardronnet GynePunks: Reimagining Women's Health by Kari Oakes Meet the GynePunks Pushing the Boundaries of DIV Gynecology by Doug Bierend Open Source Estrogen: A Manifesto by Mary Maggie Open Source Gendercodes by Rian Ciela Hammond Cyborg-Brujas: BioHacking y Laboratories caseros [Cyborg-Women: BioHacking and Home Labs] by Pandemia Lab Estrofem Lab by Mary Maggie Prototyp_ome

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2019 2019

Trans*Plant by Quimera Rosa Cyborgrrrls by Constanza Pina (Corazon de Robota), Melissa Aguilar, Vero lreta, and Sofia Main Transfeminist Technologies by Joana Varon, Clara Juliano, and Sasha Costanza-Chock Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation by Laboria Cuboniks Cyberwitches Manifesto by Lucile Olympe Haute Descuartizadora [Ripper]

Where is Socialism in Cyberfeminism? On Eastern European Cyberfeminisms Irina Aristarkhova Irina Aristarkhova is Professor in the Penny W Stamps School of Art & Design and the Digital Studies Institute at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor: She is the author of monographs Hospitality of the Matrix: Philosophy, Biomedicine, and Culture and Arrested Welcome: Hospitality in Contemporary Art, available on a digital platform at https:l/manifold. umn. edu/proiectslarrested-welcome. Donna Haraway's "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist­ Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century" CD was published in the US in 1985, the year when Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the USSR. Within a few short years, "socialism" in the former Eastern European Socialist Bloc would end. Or so it seemed then, thirty years ago. From all the generative impetus of the Cyborg Manifesto as the founding text of cyberfeminism and cyborg studies, "the socialist" in the title is still to be explored further. "Socialist" and "socialism" have remained ghosts, haunting words in cyberfeminism. My collection brings together socialist cyberfeminists by lived experience rather than a shared ideology, present­ ing cyberfeminist alternatives and futures in new media art, libidinal and ludic economies of the internet and digital media, and theoretical and performative experiments in embodiment. These projects, spanning twenty-five years, are not only remnants of socialist motherlands that

44

disappeared and reappeared (for better and for worse) in new forms and configurations but also testimony to a commitment to international soli­ darity. I envision an intersectional, socialist cyberfeminism that is not only attentive to the production and ownership of material resources such as software, hardware, platforms, and infrastructures, but one that continues to demand free expression and education, housing, healthcare, childcare, basic universal income, and reproductive and sexual self-determination. G)

1991

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1996

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1996 1996 1999

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1999

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1999

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1999 1999 1999 2002

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2004

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2006

® 2012 2015 ® 2019

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45

(1985) A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century Cyber Femin Club by Alla Mitrofanova and Irina Aktuganova Cyberfeminism with a Difference by Rosi Braidotti My Boyfriend Came Back from the War by Olia Lialina Cyberbodies 2-or More Stories about the Political of the Cyberspace by Marina Grzinic Cyber-Jouissance: A Sketch for a Politics of Pleasure by Irina Aristarkhova Cybertides of Feminisms by Mare Tralla and lliyana Nedkova How to Become a Cyberfeminist by Alla Mitrofanova Next Cyberfeminist International by Old Boys Network Virtual Chara by Irina Aristarkhova Undercurrents: a Dialogue by Marfa Fernandez, Irina Aristarkhova and Coco Fusco ULTRAFUTURO by Boryana Rossa; Oleg Mavromatti, Katia Damianova, and Anton Terziev GenderlT.org by Namita Aavriti, Kateruna Fialova, and Dafne Sabanes Plou Hackerspaces and DIYbio in Asia: Connecting Science and Community with Open Data, Kits and Protocols by Denisa Kera Abortion Drone by Women on. Web Intimate Connections Research Center (INCO) by Yozhi Stolet and Lika Kareva

In order to highlight the multiplicity of voices and range of sources in this publication, there are a variety of grammatical inconsistencies.

Index

II

,1

1991 G)

A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century Donna J. Haraway, in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (J) (New York: Routledge, 1991), pp. 149-81; excerpt p.181

Cyborg imagery can help express two crucial ar­ guments in this essay: first, the production of universal, totalizing theory is a major mistake that misses most of reality, probably always, but certainly now; and second, taking responsibility for the social relations of science and technol­ ogy means [ ... ] embracing the skilful task of reconstructing the boundaries of daily life, in partial connection with others, in communica­ tion with all of our parts. [...] Cyborg imagery can suggest a way out of the maze of dualisms @ in which we have explained our bodies and our tools to ourselves. This is a dream not of a common language, but of a powerful infidel heteroglossia. It is an imagination of a femi­ nist speaking in tongues to strike fear into the circuits of the supersavers of the new right. It means both building and destroying machines, identities, categories, relationships, space sto­ ries. Though both are bound in the spiral dance, I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess. Editor's note: This essay was originally pub­ lished as "A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s," Socialist Review 80 (1985): pp. 65-108. I've chosen to include an excerpt from the 1991 version because it was published the same

48

year the word "cyberfeminism" was coined by VNS Matrix and Sadie Plant. Critiques of "A Cy­ borg Manifesto" are wide-ranging: critics argue that the text assumes the reader is familiar with North American cultural capital; that it does not include critical engagement with disability; and that it creates a false binary between the cyborg and goddess, among other issues. As Haraway notes, the essay took on a life of its own, reach­ ing a virality in its own time that continues today, and still remains a fruitful entry into a form of cy­ berfeminism. -MS

Automating Gender: Postmodern Feminisms in the Age of the Intelligent Machine Jack Halberstam, Feminist Studies 17, no. 3 (1991): pp. 439-60; excerpt p.439

The prospect of thinking machines, or cyborgs, inspired at first religious indignation; intellectual disbelief; and large-scale suspicion of the so­ cial, economic, and military implications of an autonomous technology. In general terms, we can identify two major causes for concern pro­ duced by cybernetics. The first concern relates to the idea that computers may be taught to sim­ ulate human thought, and the second relates to the possibility that automated robots may be wired to replace humans in the workplace. [ ...] Artificial intelligence, @ of course, threat­ ens to reproduce the thinking subject, while the robot could conceivably be mass produced to form an automated workforce@ (robot in Czech means "worker"). However, if the former challenges the traditional intellectual prestige of a class of experts, the latter promises to dis­ place the social privilege dependent upon stable categories of gender.

1991

we are the virus @ of the new world disorder rupturing the symbolic from within saboteurs of big daddy mainframe Computers as Theatre the clitoris is a direct line to the matrix the VNS MATRIX Brenda Laurel (Menlo Park, CA: Addison­ terminators of the moral codes Wesley Publishing Co., 1991); excerpt p.115 mercenaries of slime@ go down on the altar of abjection Free speech and censorship have been abid­ probing the visceral temple we speak in ing issues. Whether getting "toaded" on a MUD tongues or mediated into silence on Usenet, people had infiltrating disrupting disseminating things they wanted to talk about that didn't fit corrupting the discourse into "polite societies." Pornography Gill was the we are the future cunt leading topic (and probably still is), but all sorts of marginalized voices-from Furries to faer­ ies-wanted to participate in these new forms :,,,. the virus of the new wortd d� ,rupturing the eymbollc from with\, of communication and community where their llbohurl of big daddy mainframe llo clllorls Is a direct line to the 111trbJ own voices can be heard. The alt.* hierarchy VNS MATRIX terminators of Iha moral code was created by John Gilmore and Brian Reid in temple •• ,p,,t 1987 in response to a reorganization of Usenet that would eventuate in greater censorship ® of topics. "Alt" referred to topics that were @ VNS Matrix, A Cyberfeminist Manifesto for the 21st Century, 1991.@®@®® "alternative"; that is, not part of mainstream popular culture. Although sexual interests made up a fairly large percentage of alt.* topics, many were (and are) also devoted to activism, human rights, and free speech issues.

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mercenarlea of slim• own on the altar of abJ• dleruptlng d

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®

Cyberpoetry: Pelo

A Cyberfeminist Manifesto for the 21st Century

Ainize Txopitea, http://www.cyberpoetry.net/ (Wayback)

we are the modern cunt positive anti reason unbounded unleashed unforgiving we see art with our cunt we make art with our cunt we believe in jouissance madness holiness and poetry

LOS RECUERDOS DE Ml NINEZ. TITERES QUE DORMITAN EN ATAUDES MOJADOS POR LA CANDIDA LLUVIA DE LA INOCEN­ CIA. ZAPATOS EMBARRADOS QUE PISAN UN DESTINO INQUESTIONABLE, TAN EV­ IDENTE COMO LEJANO. ARREBATOS DE GARGANTAS PROFUNDAS. COLUMPIOS QUE ENTRETIENEN AL TIEMPO YA LA LUNA Y A LAS ESTACIONES DE POLEN. SIEM­ PRE MEANDO DE PIE Y EL RELOJ SIEMPRE MARCA TERNURA. LA TURBIA LUZ DE ESE FLEXO QUE ILUMINA EL ESTAMPADO DE LA PARED, DEL SOTANO DEL PARAISO.

49

1991

VNS Matrix, ® https://vnsmatrix.net/ projects/the-cyberfeminist-manifesto-for­ the-21st-century

NO ES MIEDO ES ANSIA POR CONTINUAR products. It is the result of conflicts and compro­ EL COMIENZO DEL FIN. EL MUNECO ESTA mises, the outcomes of which depend primarily CALVO, SU PELO NARANJA ME PERTENECE, on the distribution of power and resources be­ AL IGUAL QUE LAS BARRIGUITAS; MANGAS, tween different groups in society. [ ...] COJAS, DESNUDAS, DEGOLLADAS. FANTA­ SIA. MUJERES EMBARAZADAS Y CABANAS The sociology of technology can only be DE INDIOS. LOS RECUERDOS DE Ml NINEZ. strengthened by a feminist critique. This means looking at how the production and use of tech­ THE MEMORIES OF MY CHILDHOOD. PUP­ nology are shaped by male power and interests. PETS THAT SLEEP IN CASKS WET BY THE It also means broadening the definition of CANDID RAIN OF INNOCENCE. GID CLOSED technology, and tracing the origins @ID and de­ SHOES THAT STEP ON AN UNQUESTION­ velopment of "women's sphere" technology that ABLE DESTINATION, AS EVIDENT AS FAR. have often been considered beneath notice. DEEP THROAT SNATCHES. SWINGS THAT ENTERTAIN TIME AND THE MOON AND POL­ LEN STATIONS. ALWAYS PISSING ON THE FOOT AND THE CLOCK ALWAYS MARKS TENDENCY THE MUDDY LIGHT OF THAT Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The FLEXUS THAT ILLUMINATES THE PRINT ON Reinvention of Nature THE WALL, THE BASEMENT OF PARADISE. IT IS NOT FEAR IT IS ANXIETY TO CONTIN­ Donna J. Haraway (New York: Routledge, UE THE BEGINNING OF THE END. THE DOLL 1991); excerpt p. 1 @ IS BALD, HIS ORANGE HAIR BELONGS TO ME, LIKE THE BELLIES; SPOTS, LAUNCH­ ES, NAKED, SLIMMED. FANTASY. PREGNANT WOMEN AND COTTAGES OF INDIANS. MEM­ ORIES OF MY CHILDHOOD.

(J)

® Feminism Confronts Technology Judy Wajcman (Cambridge: Polity, 1991); excerpt p. 162

®

Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (London: Routledge, 1991). Front cover.

Drawing on perspectives from radical science to feminism, I have argued that the use/abuse model that represents technology itself as neutral, and asserts that it is the human application of technology that determines whether it has beneficial or destructive effects, does not go far enough. By contrast, the social shaping approach insists that technology is always a form of social knowledge, @ practices and

This book should be read as a cautionary tale about the evolution of bodies, politics, and stories. Above all, it is a book about the invention and reinvention of nature-perhaps the most central arena of hope, oppression, and contes­ tation for inhabitants of the planet earth in our times. Once upon a time, in the 1970s, [ ... ] she belonged to those odd categories [US socialist-

50

1991

feminist, white, female, hominid biologist], invis­ ible to themselves, which are called "unmarked" and which are dependent upon unequal power for their maintenance. But by the last essays, she has turned into a multiply marked cyborg feminist, ® who tried to keep her politic, as well as her other critical functions, alive in the unpromising times of the last quarter of the twentieth century. [ ...] Then, adopting an illegit­ imate and frightening sign, the book's tale turns to the possibilities of a "cyborg" feminism that is perhaps more able to remain attuned to specific historical and political positionings and perma­ nent partialities without abandoning the search for potent connections. Editor's note: Simians, Cyborgs, and Women contains ten essays written between 1978 and 1989, including ''A Cyborg Manifesto." -MS

®

There are also stories about a slime conscious­ ness operating via spiralspace, GID across the gyne-matrix, and that cyberfeminism had multi­ ple simultaneous spontaneous points of origin. Sadie Plant was a node, working from Warwick University, as was Nancy Paterson who in 1992 wrote an article entitled "Cyberfeminism" for the Echo Gopher server. All of these stories are true and not true. What is clear is that lineage was anathema to VNS Matrix, and that co-relations across spiralspace were spawned, and proliferated.

@

VNS Matrix, Infiltrate, 1994. https://vnsmatrix. neUprojects/infiltrate. @ ®

®

VNS Matrix https://vnsmatrix.net/; excerpt from "The Artists," VNS Matrix, https://vnsmatrix.net/ the-artists

Will the Real Body Please Stand Up? Boundary Stories about Virtual Cultures

The most consistent VNS Matrix genesis story is that VNS Matrix crawled out of the cyber­ swamp in the particularly hot summer of 1991 and via an aesthetics of slime initially generated as porn@ (by women for women). VNS Matrix forged an unholy alliance with technology and its machines, and spewed forth a blasphemous text which was the birth of cyberfeminism. VNS Matrix was on a mission to hijack the toys from technocowboys and remap cyberculture with a feminist bent. This is one story.

Smoothness implies a seductive tactile quali­ ty that expresses one of the characteristics of cyborg envy: In the case of the computer, a de­ sire literally to enter into such a discourse, to penetrate the smooth and relatively affectless surface of the electronic screen and enter the deep, complex, and tactile (individual) cybernet­ ic space or (consensual) cyberspace within and beyond. Penetrating the screen @ involves a state change from the physical, biological space of the embodied viewer to the symbol­ ic, metaphorical "consensual hallucination" of

51

1991

Allucquere Rosanne Stone, in Cyberspace: VNS Matrix (articulated as V.N.S. a fauxcronym) First Steps, ed. Michael Benedikt was a cyberfeminist media art collective formed (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,1991), pp.81118; excerpt pp.117-18 in Adelaide (South Australia) in 1991.

cyberspace; a space that is a locus of intense desire for refigured embodiment.[ ...] Programming itself involves constant creation, interpretation, and reinterpretation of languag­ es.[...] Penetration translates into envelopment. In other words, to enter cyberspace is to physi­ cally put on cyberspace. To become the cyborg, to put on the seductive and dangerous cy­ bernetic space like a garment, is to put on the female. Thus cyberspace both disembodies, in Sobchack's terms, but also reembodies in the polychrome, hypersurfaced cyborg character of the console cowboy. @ As the charged, multi­ gendered, hallucinatory space collapses onto the personal physicality of the console cowboy, the intense tactility associated with such a re­ conceived and refigured body constitutes the seductive quality of what one might call the cy­ bernetic act.

1992

All New Gen VNS Matrix, ® https://vnsmatrix.net/projects/ all-new-gen

In this game you become a component of the matrix, joining ANG in her quest to sabotage the databanks of Big Daddy Mainframe ... All battles take place in the Contested Zone, a terrain of propaganda, subversion and trans­ gression. Your guides through the Contested Zone are renegade DNA Sluts, abdicators from the oppressive superhero regime, @who have joined ANG in her fight for data liberation ... The path of infiltration is treacherous and you

52

will encounter many obstacles. The most wick­ ed is Circuit Boy-a dangerous techno-bimbo ... You will be fuelled by G-Slime. Please monitor your levels. Bonding with the DNA Sluts GID will replenish your supplies ... Be prepared to ques­ tion your gendered construction ... Be aware there is no moral code in the Zone.

CTw

VNS Matrix, "DNA Sluts battle Circuit Boy,"

All New Gen, 1992. Digital image on CD-ROM.·

Image courtesy of the artists. @@@ @@

® Correspondence Sue Thomas (London: The Women's Press, 1992); excerpt from "Book Reviews," lnterzone 59, May 1992; submitted by Sue Thomas

While Sue Thomas's Correspondence also concerns computers, they are just a means to a metaphor, and the tech speak is limited to a single line of Basic. Correspondence is a short but complex and confident first novel, warmly human, proudly flaunting its influences, briskly unsentimental and cheerfully subversive-even if for the most part it only subverts itself. It is woven from four elements. The first [...] is the story of a computer programmer [...] who is turning herself into an android. illD Then there is a series of unashamed infodumps {Thomas's own term) which mix digressive commentaries or quotations into the text, and the chipper ex­ hortations of a guide to a computer-generated role-playing game. And finally there is the story

1991-1992

of the deepening friendship of Shirley and Rosa, which it slowly becomes clear is the role-playing game, a system of emotion therapy@ written by the would-be android that slowly but surely takes over the book. The human ghost escapes into the machine, changing it just as machines would change us. Recommended.

@ Inherent Rights, Vision Rights Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun; excerpt from "Inherent Rights, Vision Rights," Archive of Digital Art, https://www.digitalartarchive. at/database/general/work/inherent-rights­ vision-rights.html In the virtual-reality "Inherent Rights, Vision Rights" the participant explores a sacred cere­ mony in a traditional West Coast Native Cana­ dian longhouse. The longhouse is occupied by music, fire and spirits, which the participant can interact with. Totem COO poles and native land­ scape surround the house, producing a space for meditation with virtual nature and culture. In Yuxweluptun's virtual environment project there is no helmet, no way to seemingly escape the space you occupy. Instead a kiosk ® with a viewer, like an old-fashioned stereoscope, al­ lows entry into the work. Once inside, the viewer experiences time. The time of walking from the outside to the inside. The time of listening to a dog. The time of hearing the roar of the fire as the wood burns. Time passes. And there is space. There is a door to enter, to define the out­ side of the longhouse from the inside. There are four walls and a roof. The smoke rises upward to exit out of the smokehole.

53

1993 @

Colnodo: Uso estrategico de Internet para el desarrollo [Colnodo: Strategic Use of the Internet for Development] Julian Casasbuenas G., Ariel Barbosa, and Olga P. Paz Martinez, https://www.colnodo. apc.org/ Facilitamos el intercambio de informaci6n en pro del desarrollo y mejoramiento de la calidad de vida de los colombianos y colombianas para transformar la cultura del manejo de la infor­ maci6n, la comunicaci6n con el mundo y generar nuevas herramientas y espacios para todas las personas. Colnodo orienta su labor a partir de sus programas estrategicos y ejes transversales priorizando temas como las derechos humanos, el mejoramiento de la condici6n de las mujeres, la gobernabilidad, democracia y participaci6n ciudadana, el desarrollo sostenible, la democ­ ratizaci6n del conocimiento, la inclusion digital, entre otros aspectos dentro del uso estrategico de tecnologfas de informaci6n y comunicaci6n (TIC)@ para el desarrollo. We facilitate the exchange of information in favor of the development and improvement of the quality of life of Colombians @ to trans­ form the culture of information management, communicate with the world, and generate new tools and spaces for all people. Colnodo guides its work based on its strategic programs and transversal axes prioritizing issues such as human rights, the improvement of the status of women, governance, democracy and citizen participation, sustainable development, the de­ mocratization of knowledge, digital inclusion,

1992-1993

3mong other aspects within the strategic use )f information and communication technologies [ICT) for development.

® Contested Zone GashGirl, https://www.sysx.org/gashgirl/arc/ czone.html (Wayback) A long wintered night in the Contested Zone. Her biological membrane shivered as she multiplied through a posse of Virtual Activists, protesting the latest scam by some Euro Data Deviants. She was late. She was always late. If she survived to be a Cortex Crone she'd still have trouble shifting from dormant to active modes. She sensed some quivering data nearby and scanned a tribe of DNA sluts, her sisters in slime. CW A rapid alpha exchange and she was back on the lookout for Circuit Boy, a fetishized replicant of the perfect HuMan HeMan, a dangerous technobimbo.

GashGirl Francesca da Rimini, https://www.sysx.org/ gashgirl/ (Wayback); excerpt from Randy Adams, "Francesca da Rimini," trAce Online Writing Centre, August 22, 2002, http://trace. ntu.ac.uk/showcase/index .cfm?article=13 (Wayback) Da Rimini's web work echoes Montaigne (153392) who said, "the journey is everything." We are given a view of the world as if traveling with a gypsy/flaneur who collects objects along some long dark road-photographs, video and audio clips, artifacts. The ride is a descent into ter­ ritories long considered taboo. One reviewer has likened da Rimini's work to "confrontation­ al rants," ® but there are also manifestations of a deep romanticism-"come dress your­ self in love, let the journey begin," she cajoles, "search for beauty without features, something deeper than any signs." And once lulled, almost unsuspecting, you arrive at an image of naked figures kneeling before ominous black-suited men-full-screen, apocalyptic. Da Rimini is un­ compromising and condemns without distinc­ tion-"all history is pornography," "wars are made by men who fuck their daughters."

She self-replicated towards the banks of the Heavy Medal Boys-the Mbs. Minders of her arch enemy, Big Daddy Mainframe. Her aim: to corrupt Big Daddy's data®) His mainframe. His Hard On. Oh, suck me off. Get rendered. Get real. Get fucked.

54

®

1993

Francesca de Rimini, GashGirl [doll yoko], 1993-2001. https://web.archive.org/web/20031 2162 33356/http://www.csun.edu/~hfspc002/ gash/index3.html. @@CW®

I slide through one hundred reality checks, break one thousand locks, enter ten thousand hearts, whisper my poisonous ideas to an in­ finite number of minds.

Geekgirl Rosie Cross (RosieX), https://geekgirl.com. au/blog/biol geekgirl // (say 'geekgerl') noun Colloquial a fe­ male computer geek, especially on the internet [coined by Rosie Cross, born 1958, British in­ ternet publisher in Australia, as the title of her online magazine] 1993. @ [ ... ] Geekgirl Zine is an online Australian magazine about women and technology. [...] Australia's longest and con­ tinuously running online publication! @ [ ... ] Proud to boot, and a digital repository for inter­ esting bits of infotainment Slogans "put down that pony and pick up a computer!" & "Grrls Need Modems."

@

Rosie Cross and Rob Joyner Jr., Geekgirl, 1993-2015. https://web.archive.org/web/1998 0701094726fw /http://www.youth.nsw.gov.au/ rob.upload/friendly/title.html. @@®

® I Am My Own Freak Show GashGirl, @ http://www.sysx.org/gashgirl/ arc/freak.html (Wayback) My devoted puppets do my bidding.

Mothers and Daughters of Invention: Notes for a Revised History of Technology Autumn Stanley (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1993); excerpt pp. xlvi-xlvii If I could give this section its own epigraph, I would invert Dante's famous sign over the gates of hell: Let all who enter here take hope-and abandon their deepest stereotypes. [ ...]As with revisions in the history of technology, @) the attempt must be made. The central target is ob­ viously the stereotype that women do not invent, but this is only one of the many heads of the Hydra, and all of its many interlocking and sup­ porting stereotypes and myths must also be chopped off, or it will simply grow back again, strong as ever. One of the most important of its heads is the myth of the Man/male the Hunter/ Provider. Not to spend an undue amount of time here [...] I will simply state the opposite, posi­ tive form of the most important stereotypes that need to be abandoned for a fair assessment of · (a) this book and (b) women's contributions to technology: Women hunt. Women provide. Women invent. Women rule. Women heal. @ID

I am sublime thought replicating across spiral­ space, (ill) net vampyre preying on virgin code from every culture I can sink my fangs into.

55

1993

Tho gh both are spiral dance, I wo cyborg than a go

CD

56

Donna J. Haraway, "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century," 1991

bound in the uld rather be a ddess.

57

1994 Black to the Future: Interviews with Samuel R. Delany, Greg Tate, and Tricia Rose Mark Dery, in Flame Wars: The Discourse of Cyl;,erculture, ed. Mark Dery (Durham: Duke University Press, 1994), pp.179-222; excerpt pp.179-80 The interviews that follow began with a conun­ drum: Why do so few African Americans write science fiction, a genre whose close encounters with the Other-the stranger in a strange land­ would seem uniquely suited to the concerns of African-American novelists? Yet, to my knowl­ edge, only Samuel R. Delany, Octavia Butler, Gm Steve Barnes, and Charles Saunders have chosen to write within the genre conventions of science fiction. This is especially perplex­ ing in light of the fact that African Americans, in a very real sense, are the descendants of alien abductees; they inhabit a sci-fl nightmare in which unseen but no less impassable force fields of intolerance frustrate their movements; official histories undo what has been done; and technology is too often brought to bear on black bodies @ (branding, forced sterilization, the Tuskegee experiment, and tasers come readily to mind).[ ...]

gives rise to a troubling antinomy: Can a com­ munity whose past has been deliberately rubbed out, and whose energies have subsequently been consumed by the search for legible trac­ es of its history, imagine possible futures? @ Furthermore, isn't the unreal estate of the future already owned by the technocrats, futurologists, streamliners, and set designers [...] who have engineered our collective fantasies?

Cyber Rag Jaime Levy; excerpt from Claire L. Evans, Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet@ (New York: Penguin, 2018), pp. 182-83

@

Jaime Levy, Cyber Rag, 1994. @

Speculative fiction that treats African-American themes and addresses African-American con­ cerns in the context of twentieth-century technoculture-and, more generally, African­ American signification that appropriates images of technology and a prosthetically enhanced fu­ ture-might, for want of a better term, be called "Afrofuturism." @ The notion of Afrofuturism

Jaime spent her years at NYU experimenting with interactive media. For her master's the­ sis, she combined the do-it-yourself ethos of punk with the emerging possibilities of desktop publishing, producing an electronic magazine, Cyber Rag, on floppy disk. ® With color-print­ ed labels Krazy Glued onto each "issue," Cyber Rag looked the part of a punk-rock fan­ zine. Loaded onto a consumer Mac, its stories came to life with images pilfered from the Vil­ lage Voice, the Whole Earth Review, Mondo 2000, and Newsweek, collaged together on­ screen as though they'd been xeroxed by hand. Cyber Rag was the first publication of its kind, built with Apple HyperCard and MacPaint. Along with her animations, Jaime added edgy interac­ tive games (in one, you chase Manuel Noriega around Panama), hacker how-tos, and catty

58

1994

musings about hippies, sneaking into computer fronts the reality of online life as it affects Native artists.[...] trade shows, and cyberspace.

Cybernetic Hookers Sadie Plant,Newsletter I Australian Network for Art and Technology, April/May 1994,p.5 Cyberpunk and chaos culture are peppered with wild women and bad girls, transgressions of or­ ganization, the freaks and mutants who find their own languages, the non-members, the no­ mads, the sex that are not one; Gill leftovers from history; those who have slipped past its fil­ ters too soon and accessed the future before its time, hybrid @ assemblages of what were once called human and machine on the run from their confinement to the world of man and things. Cyborgs are aliens, addicts and trippers burn past security and through the ice of a cul­ ture devoted to spectacle, hacking the screens, and exceeding the familiar. Avatars of the ma­ trix; downloading from cyberspace. They are no longer human. Perhaps they never were.

The digital scene in Indian country at the mo­ ment is a microcosm of the way it is most everywhere else, with people at various stag­ es of expertise and enthusiasm going through the big shift. Issues of sovereignty are often the first to come up among Native intellectuals, and the specter of digital colonialism frightens some and challenges others.[ ... ] The reality of the sit­ uation is that we're not all dead and stuffed in some museum with the dinosaurs: we are here in this digital age. @ We have led the pack in a couple of areas (digital music and online art). Although our potential at the moment exceeds the extensiveness of our community computer usage, our projects are already bearing fruit, we expect to prosper and to contribute, and we will defend our data.

@

@@@

Cyberskins: Live and Interactive Buffy Sainte-Marie,http://www.creative­ native.com/cybersk.htm (Wayback)

Buffy Sainte-Marie, Cyberskins, 1994. https:// web.archive.orq/web/20090721112235/ http://www.creative-native.com/cybersk.htm.

Drumbeats to Drumbytes

On an airplane, my Powerbook is singing to me in Lakota, while the words to the song appear on Loretta Todd,Marjorie Beaucage,and screen in both Lakota and English. Sara Diamond,organizers (gathering,Banff Centre for Arts,Banff,AB,March 12-15, In the Canadian Rockies, Indians carrying por­ 1994); excerpt from "Drumbeats to table computers trudge through a herd of elk Drumbytes Origins-1994," Drumbytes.org, and into the Banff Centre for the Arts where the http://drumbytes.org/ "Drum Beats to Drum Bytes" @ think tank con-

59

1994

The gathering brought together sixteen Ab­ punctuation, emphatic capitals, and the l}, http://www.orphandrift archive.com/becoming-cyberpositive/cyber positive/; referred by Virginia Barratt and Francesca da Rimini (VNS Matrix) change for the machines, that's all we -e ever □one. -e ve changed enough now that the ma­ chines will be making all the changes from now on to download you through machines :W that began as e c.o s (electro encephalo­ grams) and found their zenith as e.-.d's (-electro encephalo-drains) language breaks down over the abysmal waters flash waiting epileptic in all dimensions TIME STOPS

Cyborg: Engineering the Body Electric Diane Greco, Eastgate Systems, http://www. eastgate.com/catalog/Cyborg.html Part human and part machine, the cyborg is a familiar figure in cyberpunk science fiction. But this figure looms ever larger-as metaphor and as reality-in all our lives. Today, cyborgs are real; in cyberspace, we are all cyborgs.@ Diane Greco explores the significance of the cy­ borg in twentieth-century writing from Thomas Pynchon and William Gibson to Haraway and Derrida. The cyborg is more than just an inter­ esting fiction; Cyborg: Engineering The Body Electric explores cyborg's impact on political ac­ tion and personal identity. After reading Cyborg, you'll never again look at your body (or some­ one else's) quite the same way. If cyborgs know

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about anything, they know about parts. Spare parts, parts and wholes, prostheses, replace­ ments, enhancements. How do you make sense of all these pieces? After the disaster, when things fall apart, cyborgs know how to stitch themselves back together. Editor's note: In the American Book Review, N. Katherine Hayles describes the floppy disk pub­ lication as one that "makes use of hypertext technology to create a cyborg text." -MS

EROS INterACTive JoAnn Gillerman and Rob Terry; excerpt from JoAnn Gillerman, "The Sun Drops Its Torch; EROS INterACTive; AnArchy Partycam," Leonardo On-Line: Words on Works, https://www.leonardo.info/isast/wow/ gill-wow294.html EROS INterACTive is an interactive multime­ dia register that I produced with Rob Terry. @ Soft whisperings and seductive images en­ tice the viewer-in real time-to record their comments and listen to others' comments on eroticism and interactivity. EROS INterACTive is an interactive real-time register/bulletin board designed to solicit ten-second comments in re­ al-time ("Record"), let participants listen to their own comments and the comments of the pre­ vious thirty-five people ("Playback"), as well as view/listen to pre-selected portrait-segments on the EROS Screen. The highly resolute Sili­ con Graphics monitor with sensuous imagery whispers @ID constantly and seductively to encourage interactions. As one strokes an on­ screen body, it may whisper, "Hello, come talk to me, tell me what you are thinking. I'll tell you what I'm thinking ... "

1995

@

JoAnn Gillerman and Rob Terry, EROS /NterACTive, 1995. https://www.vipervertex. com/Exhibits/exhibit travel-eros.htm. ®®

to flesh. @ the body is torn apart by its own momentum, pain unrecognizable as a morphia of pleasure, hyper stimulated by the smell, the sight of warm sticky blood, the splitting surface, the swoon of ecstasy. adrenal exhaustion. death will turn them into lovers, burdened by the fester­ ing demands of romance. hot glued at the cunt, they retire to lick their wounds, quietly hibernat­ ing, seamlessly mutating, rationally evolving, straining for connection ...

fight

Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet

Melinda Rackham, https://subtle.net/wwwo/ fight.html

Sherry Turkle (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995); excerpt pp. 9-10

... she who lurks beneath; the libertine, the whore, the hysteric, the ugly, the diseased, the monstrous, the villainess, the murderess, the mutilator, the evil twin. she is there; feeding, nurturing, supporting, encouraging the beauti­ ful one, the successful one, the good one, the loved one, the surface dweller. they can not breathe in each others domain, @ both would suffocate, atrophy, diminish, shrivel, die. they were joined through the mirror, but its shatter­ ing shards severed the binding membrane. now they circle the other, enemies, dancing boxers, predators calculating the attack, hypnotized by sparkling beads of sweat, the soft thud of flesh

We come to see ourselves differently as we catch sight of our images in the mirror of the machine. A decade ago, when I first called the computer a second self, these identity-trans­ forming relationships were almost always one­ to-one, a person alone with a machine. This is no longer the case.[ ...]® We are able to step through the looking glass. We are learning to live in virtual worlds. We may find ourselves alone as we navigate virtual oceans, unravel virtual mysteries, and engineer virtual skyscrapers. But increasingly, when we step through the looking glass, other people are there as well. [ ...] It is on the Internet that our confrontations with technology as it collides with our sense of human identity are fresh, even raw. In the real­ time communities of cyberspace, we are dwell­ ers on the threshold between the real and virtual, unsure of our footing, inventing our­ selves as we go along.

®

65

Melinda Rackham, fight, 1995. https://subtle. neUwwwo/fiqht.html.@

1995

On a mission to from technocow cyberculture with

@

66

VNS Matrix, 1991

hijack the toys boys and remap. a feminist bent.

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Nattering on the Net: Women, Power and Cyberspace Dale Spender (Melbourne: Spinifex Press, 1995); excerpt pp. 249-51 Cyberspace might be a virtual creation, but it is a reality that is here to stay. And my attitude to­ wards it is pragmatic. Given that I have to learn to live with the cyberworld, I want the best pos­ sible outcome that can be realized. This means that I want to be involved-along with count­ less others-in the decision-making process of shaping the information infrastructure. [...] Despite the ideal potential of the new technol­ ogies to create a global, egalitarian community, a virtual world without barriers or divisions, the scene down on the ground is strikingly different. [...]The real people in the real world are being divided up into information-rich and poor: @ID the "master minds" and those who are "kept in the dark."[...) What social policies now need is a cyber-dimension.

New Sciences: Cyborg Feminism and the Methodology of the Oppressed Chela Sandoval, in The Cyborg Handbook, ed. Chris Hables Gray (New York: Routledge, 1995), pp. 407-21; excerpt pp. 408-09; submitted by Lidia Zuin I propose another vision, [...] namely that cyborg consciousness can be understood as the technological embodiment or a particular and specific form of oppositional consciousness that I have elsewhere describes as "US third world feminism." CID And indeed, if cyborg consciousness is to be considered as anything other than

68

that which replicates the now dominant glob­ al world order, then cyborg consciousness must be developed out of a set of technologies that together comprise the methodology of the op­ pressed, a methodology that can provide the guides for survival and resistance under first world transnational cultural conditions. This oppositional "cyborg" consciousness has also been identified by terms such as "mestiza" consciousness, "situated subjectivities," "wom­ anism," and "differential consciousness." ® In the interests of [...]translation, [...]from "cy­ borgology" to "feminism," from "US third world feminism" to "cultural" and to "subaltern" theory, I trace the routes traveled by the methodology of the oppressed as encoded by [Donna] Har­ away in "Cyborg Feminism."

On the Shores of Cyberspace Essex Hemphill (text produced for Black Nations / Queer Nations? conference, New York, NY, March 9-11, 1995) I was counting T-cells on the shores of cyber­ space and feeling some despair ... I stand at the threshold of cyberspace and wonder, is it pos­ sible that I am unwelcome here, too? Will I be allowed to construct a virtual reality that em­ powers me? Can invisible men see their own reflections? I'm carrying trauma into cyber­ space-violent gestures, a fractured soul, short fuses, dreams of revenge ... @ All this con­ fusion is accompanying me into cyberspace; every indignity and humiliation, every anger and suspicion.

® Pretty Baby

1995

Melinda Rackham, https://subtle.net/wwwo/ melinda.html pretty baby doesn't make a sound this animation was my first foray into digital image manipulation.. it's 1.5meg.. so in the interests of bandwidth and delivery i have decided to remove the link to it. basically the core engulfs while the jewels spin and sparkle .... it's pretty. across times and cultures women have used such diverse practices as intricately tattooing genitals, ritual scarification, piercing, depilation, nipple extension, breast stretching, foot binding, infibulation, and surgical implants to attain *beauty*@ the core of this image is lifted from a televised liposuction operation.

Players who choose to perform this type of ra­ cial play are almost always white, and their appropriation of stereotyped male Asiatic sa­ murai figures allows them to indulge in a dream of crossing over racial boundaries temporarily and recreationally. [...] @ Thus, the Orient is brought into the discourse, but only as a token or "type." The idea of a non-stereotyped Asian male identity is so seldom enacted in Lambda­ MOO that its absence can only be read as a symptom of suppression. Tourism is a particularly apt metaphor to de­ scribe the activity of racial identity appropriation, or "passing" in cyberspace. The activity of "surf­ ing," (an activity already associated with tourism in the mind of most Americans) the Internet not only reinforces the idea that cyberspace is not only a place where travel and mobility are fea­ tured attractions, but also figures it as a form of travel which is inherently recreational, exot­ ic, and exciting, like surfing. @ The choice to enact oneself as a samurai warrior in Lamb­ daMOO constitutes a form of identity tourism which allows a player to appropriate an Asian racial identity without any of the risks associat­ ed with being a racial minority in real life.

The Future Looms:Weaving Women and Cybernetics @

Melinda Rackham, pretty baby, 1995. https:// subtle.net/wwwo/melinda.html. (lli)@

Sadie Plant, Body & Society 1, nos. 3-4 (1995):pp.45-64;excerpt p.46 \

Race In/For Cyberspace: Identity Tourism and Racial Passing on the Internet Lisa Nakamura, Works and Days 13, nos. 1-2 (1995): pp. 181-93; excerpt p. 181

69

The computer emerges out of the history of weaving, the process so often said to be the quintessence of women's work. The loom is the vanguard site of software development. Indeed, it is from the loom, or rather the process of weaving, that this paper takes another cue. Per­ haps it is an instance of this process as well, for tales and texts are woven as surely as threads

1995

and fabrics. This paper is a yarn in both senses. It is about weaving women and cybernetics, @ID and is also weaving women and cybernetics to­ gether. It concerns the looms of the past, and also the future which looms over the patriarchal present and threatens the end of human his­ tory. [ ...] Today, both woman and the computer screen the matrix, which also makes its appear­ ance as the veils ®ID and screens on which its operations are displayed. This is the virtual real­ ity which is also the absence of the penis and its _power, but already more than the void.

The color video camera in the left eye records exactly what is in front of the doll. By looking at the world through the eyes of Tillie, viewers be­ come not only voyeurs but also virtual cyborgs, because they use her eyes as a vehicle for their own remote and extended vision. Tillie's record­ ed mirror images the face and becomes a mask for multiple expressions of identity capable only through global connectivity.

Editor's note: Many of the themes addressed in "The Future Looms" were expanded upon in Plant's second book, Zeros and Ones: Digital

Women and the New Technoculture. @ -MS

Lynn Hershman Leeson, Tillie and CyberRoberta, 1995-98. Installation with doll, video camera, web cam, internet connection, and custom software, variable dimensions. (ill)@

Tillie and CyberRoberta Lynn Hershman Leeson; excerpt from Lynn Hershman Leeson, "Tillie and Cyber­ Roberta," https://www.lynnhershman.com/ tillie-and-cyberroberta/

The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age

CyberRoberta was conceived simultaneous­ ly with "Tillie, the Telerobotic Doll." When they are exhibited together, each is programmed to pirate the others' information, blurring their identities. "Tillie, the Telerobotic Doll" and "Cy­ berRoberta" are constructed so that cameras replace the dolls' eyes: a video camera in the left eye, a webcam in the right eye. ® By clicking on the "eye con" on the right of each doll's in­ ternet image, users can telerobotically turn that doll's head 180 degrees, allowing visitors to her web site to survey the room she is in. Viewers in the physical space of the gallery can see them­ selves captured on the small monitor in Tillie's environment via a mirror placed in front of her. They also have the capability to send images back through the internet to the web page. ®

The second time[...) I stood on tiptoe, my nose just clearing the top of the console [... ] Knobs and switches from hell, all the way to the hori­ zon ... there was something about that vast

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1995

Allucquere Rosanne Stone (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995); excerpt pp. 3-4

I have bad history: I am a person who fell in· love with her own prostheses. Not once, but twice. Then I fell in love with somebody else's prosthe­ sis. [...] We were looking for one of the hot spots [...) Hooked on technology. I could take a couple of coils of wire and a hunk of galena and send a whole part of myself out into the ether. @ An extension of my will, my instrumentality ... That's a prosthesis, all right.

forest of controls that suggested the same breath of exotic worlds[ ...] I was hooked again. Hook on even bigger technology, on another ex­ tension of my instrumentality. I[ ...] could at last begin on my life's path of learning how to make people laugh, cry, and throw up in dark rooms. And I hadn't even heard it turned on.

Webgrrls International Cybergrrl, http://www.webgrrls.com/ (Wayback)

FOR A WOMAN IN YOUR LIFE click lo buy

@

Cybergrrl, Webgrrls International, 1998. Screenshot, retrieved 2020 by Firefox v76.0.1 on Mac OS 10.13.3; https://web.archive.org/ web/19981206183024/http://www. webgrrls. com/gather.html. @@

® Womenznet Spider Redgold, http://www.womenz.net.au/ (Wayback)

Womenznet on Pegasus Networks provides ac­ cess to activists using computer networks for information sharing, broadcast and collabo­ ration. � Women are encouraged to share their ideas, access information and promote their own work and interests. Who can benefit: women's groups and networks, women's health centers, girls schools, professional and busi­ ness women, country women providing home education, women in technology.[ ... ] Women's conferences accessible on Pegasus Networks including some APC's conferences. Pegasus Networks will set up public womenZnet con­ ferences free of charge, and encourages the setting up of conferences for specific purposes and discussions.

Webgrrls is a real-world, face-to-face net­ working group for women in and interested in new media. Chapters are forming in cities all around the world to provide a forum for women to exchange information, give job and business leads, learn about new technologies, mentor, in­ tern, train and more![... ] We also hold events to show girls how to use the Internet and the World Wide Web. We reach out to community groups @ that work with girls and bring them to a computer cafe called "Cyberfields." Each girl is teamed up with a Webgrrl so they learn about the Internet from a woman who loves comput­ ers. Not only do they gain confidence from being exposed to technology in a friendly way, they have a woman mentor, someone to look up to and someone who shows them that computers aren't just for the boys.

71

Spider Redgold, Womenznet, 1995. https:// web.archive.org/web/19980208101325/ http://www.womenz.net.au:80/. @(ill) @@

1995

1996 Aboriginal Narratives in Cyberspace Loretta Todd, in Immersed in Technology, eds. Mary Anne Moser and Douglas Macleod (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,1996), pp.179-94;excerpt pp.179-80 What then does the new territory called cyber­ space mean to aboriginal people? If it is really a place, albeit under construction (and which at the same time will not really be there when it is there), what can we name it? Can we name cyberspace the way we name other technol­ ogies, from sewing machines to chain saws? Can it, like television, be called "a talking box of space"? Will we name cyberspace a talking web of clouds? 00) A land of mists where shadows chase shadows or a dream world with no memo­ ries or traces of before? '

Can our narratives, histories, languages, and knowledge find meaning in cyberspace? And above all, can cyberspace help keep Ka-Kanata a clean land? For instance, will the need for fossil fuel for endless commuting be reduced as Corporate Virtual Workplaces are created in cyberspaces? Or will CVW alienate humanity even more from the land, allowing as yet unheard of ecological abuse?@ Will cyberspace enable people to communicate in ways that rupture the power relations of the colonizer and the colonized? Or is cyberspace a clever guise for neocolonialism, where tyranny will find further domain?

72

Ada X (Studio XX) Kim Sawchuck, Patricia Kearns, Kathy Kennedy, and Sheryl Hamilton, https://www. ada-x.org/; excerpt from "Mandate," Ada X, https://www.ada-x.org/en/about/mandate­ history/

@

Kim Sawchuck, Patricia Kearns, Kathy Kennedy, et al., Ada X (fka Studio XX), 1996. Screenshot, retrieved 2020 by Firefox v76.0.1 on Mac OS 10.13.3; https://web.archive.org/ web/20040902031540/http://www.studioxx. org:80/.

Ada X was founded under the name Studio XX in 1996 by Kim Sawchuck (Ph.D. and professor), Patricia Kearns (filmmaker), Kathy Kennedy (sound artist) and Sheryl Hamilton (cybernetic). They imagined a bilingual feminist media arts centre that would be an alternative to traditional institutions and would encourage more women to take part in emerging forms of creative ex­ pression offered by the rapid development of the Internet and digital tools. In a context where only a few women used new technologies, Ada ® X's founders wanted to establish a support system for feminist engagement in the burgeon­ ing world of "cyberspace" and in the emerging field of media arts. Ada X encouraged women to become "creators" rather than "spectators" by supporting active participation in the production of art and knowledge.

1996

Asian Pacific Women's Information Network Center (APWINC) Sookmyung Women's University, http:/1 www.women.or.kr (Wayback) APWINC was established on November 1996 at Sookmyung Women!s University, and aims at promoting women's informatization and wom­ en-related communication technologies in the Asia Pacific region, focusing on South Korea and North Korea. @ For this purpose, AP­ WINC provides the web-based women an ICT (Information and Communication Technology). It promotes ICT educational training at three levels: dissemination, specialization and global­ ization. Dissemination is the promotion of basic computer skills; Specialization is the develop­ ment of expertise in ICT skills; and Globalization is the international and regional networking through training workshops.

A and B have always been those with some­ thing to say or write. In the modern world, this has tended to be men. Women have functioned as the messengers, and even as the messages themselves. [ ... ) Patriarchy is not a construction, an order, or a structure. These are all representations of .an economy, a system in which woman functions as currency, and commodity; medium, means, and material base. She exists "only as the possibility of mediation, transaction, transition, transfer­ ence-between man and his fellow-creatures, indeed between man and himself." Woman is the go�between, @ the in-between man, the one who takes his messages, decrypts his codes, counts his numbers, bears his children and passes on his genetic code. She is the me­ dium, the tool, the first commodity of a specular economy whose circuits are the definition of patriarchy.

Bitch Mutant Manifesto

@

Asia Pacific Women's Information Network Center (APWINC), 1996. https://web.archive. org/web/20030530112244/http://www.sook myung.ac.kr/. �@@

Binary Sexes, Binary Codes Sadie Plant, Zero News Datapool, http:/1 www.tO.or.at/sadie/binary.htm Communication once proceeded between clear nodal points. Messages were taken from A to 8, first by their messengers, and then by means of the telegraph, the telephone and the radio.

73

VNS Matrix, https:1/vnsmatrix.net/projects/ bitch-mutant-manifesto We are the malignant accident which fell into your system while you were sleeping. And when you wake we will terminate your digital delusions, hijacking @ your impeccable software. Your fingers probe my neural network. The tingling sensation in the tips of your fingers are my synapses responding to your touch. It's not chemistry, it's electric. Stop fingering me. Don't ever stop fingering my suppurating holes, extending my boundary but in cipherspace there are no bounds BUT IN SPIRALSPACE THERE IS NO THEY®

1996

@

Lukas Engelhardt, still from Bitch Mutant Manifesto, 1996. Standard definition video (color, sound), 4:47 min. (ill)®

there is only us Trying to flee the binary I enter the chromozone which is not one

XXYXXYXXYXXYXXYXXYXXYXXYXXYXXYX XYXXYXXYXX

genderfuck me baby resistance is futile entice me splice me map my ABANDONED genome as your project artificially involve me i wanna live forever upload me in yr shiny shiny PVC future SUCK MY CODE

Bodies INCorporated Victoria Vesna; excerpt from "Project Description," Bodies INCorporated, http:// www.bodiesinc.ucla.edu/frames1 .html

@

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Victoria Vesna, Bodies Incorporated, 1996. http://www.bodiesinc.ucla.edu/frames1.html. @ @®@®

Bodies INCorporated is a project that actively in­ corporates the idea of avatars, with the intention of shifting the discourse of the body from the usual idea of flesh and identity. It is planned to have a number of artificial intelligence programs integrated into the environment over which there wouldn't be too much control. An avatar ® IS, but a member is made, and frequently the force, energy, purpose or will of a corporate Entity will utilize the vehicles of a member in order to con­ tact the physical planes. Every member's Body represented is the locus of the contradictions of functioning in the hi-tech environment, while being in the Meta-Body, the Entity in the busi­ ness of service.

Brutal Myths Sonya Rapoport and Marie-Jose Sat, http:// users.lmi.net/sonyarap/brutal/; excerpt from "Brutal Myths, 1996," Sonya Rap.oport Legacy Trust, http://www.sonyarapoport. org/portfolio/brutal-myths-1996/ This was to be the first of many Web Art works with a feminist perspective. Brutal Myths ad­ dresses the sadistic male fantasies about women found in the Malleus Maleficarum (the Hammer of Witches), an infamously misog­ ynistic treatise on witch-hunting published in the fifteenth century. Because women were traditionally the lay healers of their societies and used herbs in their medicinal practices, Rapoport used representations of herbs @ as the primary metaphor of this work (this in­ terest in herbal symbolism can be traced back to her 1979 drawing Geothe's Urpflanz). Begin­ ning with the biblical story of Eve, Brutal Myths describes the "evil" herbs that contaminated the minds of men and made them believe in the die­ turns laid forth in the Malleus Maleficarum. Then the participant "plants" a "blissful" garden of

1996

"blessed" @ herbs to destroy prejudicial myths about women.

�

Sonya Rapoport and Marie-Jose Sat, Brutal Myths, 1996. http:f/users.lmi.net/sonyarap/ brutal/index.html. @@�@.v @@.ii)

Canadian Women's Internet Association http://www.herplace.org (Wayback)

The Canadian Women's Internet Association was founded to give all women both a voice and a place of their own in Cyberspace. We are here to ensure that women feel welcome and com­ fortable on the Internet. This Web site serves as a resource center and meeting place for Canadian women.® Our In­ formation Resource Centre contains hundreds of links to sites relevant to women, with a spe­ cial focus on Canadian content. Our interactive guestbook allows you to meet other women or speak your mind on the Web.

Hot Links to a Digital Culture," in Hershman Leeson, Clicking In, pp. vii-ix

The Digital Age exploded into existence not with a whimper but a bang. The globe still shakes from its entry. The journey was long, but the impact is immediate. Now, for instance, the breath of an unborn baby can be captured and rendered visible, the Dead Sea Scrolls have been bathed in enhanced color, and Mona Li­ sa's smile is safely preserved in a GIF file. ® Throughout the world, many homes are lit by the dim reflection of computer monitors. Illuminated manuscripts and images coax people to recom­ pose reality simply by clicking in. A mutation is taking place before our charged and filtered eyes. It is a dynamic re-vision that has altered every aspect of life as we knew it. This phenom­ enon is not a fad or a trend, but an evolution.[...) The RAMifications of the Digital Age are enor­ mous. Presumptions about communities, identi­ ty, property, physicality, art, science, and values are being digitally rewritten. A symbiotic rela­ tionship to technology exists. It defines culture as culture defines it. I have heard of an exotic plant that is able to thrive only in the ashes of extinguished foliage. Gill Perhaps the smoke of our burning past will enable us to access our self-selected illusions and click in to the blos­ soming potentials of the Digital Age.

® Collected Visions

Clicking In: Hot Links to a Digital Culture

Lorie Novak, Clilly Castiglia, Betsey Kershaw, and Kerry O'Neill, http://www. collectedvisions.net/; submitted by Lorie Novak

Lynn Hershman Leeson, ed. (Seattle: Bay Press, 1996); excerpt from Lynn Hershman Leeson, "Clicking In and Clicking On:

The most significant aspect of Collected Visions is the ability to submit imag�s to a growing ar­ chive @v of family photographs and create

75

1996

The history of te probably know is machines, garag alpha nerds and

@ID

76

Claire L. Evans, Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet, 2018

chno logy you one of men and es and riches, brogrammers.

77

photo stories. You can search and view imag­ es from the on-line database of more than 1,200 images and then create and submit live photo­ graphic essays exploring the power of family snapshots. [ ...]

Identity is constructed on colony borders. On the border, objects and persons acquire names, dif­ ferences are constructed. Only a fraction of the world's people have a presence in cyberspace: the rest are outsiders. Will the outsiders even­ tually participate? Will borders and differences persist in cyberspace?

The concept for Collected Visions grew out of the photographs and installations Lorie Novak has been creating since the early 1980s. She uses family snapshots and images from the media to explore the relationships be­ tween personal and collective memory. Lorie The Contested Zone: Cybernetics, Feminism Novak curates the exhibitions in the CV Gal­ and Representation lery and maintains the CV Museum. Because the concept of "truth" is a complicated one, the Kay Schaffer, Journal of Australian Studies ownership of the snapshots is not identified be­ 20,nos.50-51 (1996):pp.157-64;excerpt p. yond what is written in the essays. The majority 157; quotation from Linda Dement, "Artist's of submitted stories are posted-the goal of the Statement about Typhoid Mary," in Working with New Imaging Technologies (Melbourne: site is to be a place of diverse voices. National Gallery of Victoria, 1995),p. 30

Colonial Ventures in Cyberspace Paul Hertz, Leonardo 30,no. 4 (1997): pp. 249-59;excerpt p.249

In the spring of 1996, as part of a residency in the Departments of Sculpture and Painting at the Universidad Politecnica de Valencia in Va­ lencia, Spain, I curated an on-line exhibition of work by seven artists and critics entitled "The Homestead" (translated as "La Finca" in Castil­ ian Spanish). Created on the World Wide Web as a "colony" in cyberspace, @the Homestead (http://omnibus-eye.rtvf.nwu.edu/Homestead/) explores the effects of historical colonization on the technological present and the coloniz­ ing effects of technology. "Colonization" ® is deliberately used here as a provocative term, in opposition to "technotopia"-the idealized vision of technology offered by centers of economic and political power. Colonization implies bor­ ders, an "us" and a "them," a degree of violence.

78

Contemporary science fiction is replete with cy­ borgs-technological organisms which are both and neither human and machine. Traditional­ ly the world of technology has been identified as a man's world, one in which he exercises his fantasies of control over cultural (re)produc­ tion. More recently, however, there has been a renewed feminist interest, inspired by the work of Donna Haraway, Sadie Plant, Sandy Stone, Linda Dement and Zoe Sofoulis. Linda Dement @ comments that: "the computer is the prized toy of our essentially male culture. To use tech­ nologies which are really intended for a clean slick commercial boy's world, to make person­ al, bodily, feminine work, and to re-inscribe this work into mainstream culture, into art discourse and into society, is a political act."

1996

Cyber Femin Club

Cyberfeminism

Alla Mitrofanova and Irina Aktuganova; excerpt from Irina Aktuganova, quoted in Maria Udovydchenko, "Do It Yourself: A Practical Independence Course for Women in St. Petersburg," Russian Art Archive Network, April 13, 2020, https://russianart archive.net/en/research/ciberfemin; referred by Marina Grzinic and Boryana Rossa

Nancy Paterson, Fireweed 54 (Summer 1996): pp. 48-55; excerpt p. 48; referred by Judy Malloy

In fall 2002 Olga Levina came to me (when all the grants ran out she had to go and work as a system administrator in some company) and told me that they taught them to crimp cables on the sysadmin courses and women were pro­ testing that it's not women's work. She thought it would be good to organize a course on tech­ nological literacy. I liked the sound of "crimping cables" and came up with the name Do It Your­ self, a course in practical independence for women.® And then Olga and I decided that it would not be limited to cables but would include all hardware issues (disassembling and reas­ sembling computers like they do with machine guns in the army), car maintenance, fixing home appliances, and renovation work. All the teach­ ers were women.

@i)

79

Irina Aristarkhova, Virtual Chora, 2001. Server, computer, Photoshop, HTML, and C++.

Linking the erotic representation of women with the often terrible cultural impact of new elec­ tronic technologies is not a new concept. [... ] Sex, danger, women and machines: the plot of

@

KYO, cover image, Nancy Paterson, "Cyberfeminism," Fireweed 54 (Summer 1996). p.49.@

virtually every futuristic, sci-fl movie in which women play any role at all. @ Cyberfemmes are everywhere, but cyberfeminists are few and far between. [... ] Cyberfeminism as a phi­ losophy has the potential to create a poetic, passionate, political identity and unity without relying on a logic and language of exclusion or appropriation. [...] New electronic technologies are currently utilized to manipulate and define our experiences. Cyberfeminism does not ac­ cept as inevitable current applications of new technologies which impose and maintain spe­ cific cultural, political and sexual stereotypes. Empowerment of women in the field of new electronic media can only result from the demy­ stification of technology, and the appropriation of access to these tools. Cyberfeminism is es­ sentially subversive.

1996

Cyberfeminism with a Difference Rosi Braidotti, New Formations, no. 29 (1996): pp. 9-25; excerpt p. 24 We rather need more complexity, multiplicity, si­ multaneity and we need to rethink gender, class and race in the pursuit of these multiple, com­ plex differences. [ ...] As the Manifesto of the Bad Girls reads: "Through laughter our anger be­ comes a tool of liberation." In the hope that our collectively negotiated Dionysian laughter will indeed bury it once and for all, cyber-feminism needs to cultivate a culture of joy and affirma­ tion. Feminist women have a long history of dancing through a variety of potentially lethal mine-fields in their pursuit of socio-symbolic justice. Nowadays, women have to undertake the dance through cyberspace, if only to make sure that the joy-sticks of the cyberspace cow­ boys will not reproduce univocal phallicity under the mask of multiplicity, and also to make sure that the riot girls, in their anger@ and their vi­ sionary passion, will not recreate law and order under the cover of a triumphant feminine.

@) Electronic Civil Disobedience and Other Unpopular Ideas Critical Art Ensemble, http://www.critical­ art.net (Wayback)

to locate. In fact, the conspicuous appearance of the halls of power was used by regimes to maintain their hegemony. Castles, palaces, gov­ ernment bureaucracies, corporate home offices, and other architectural structures stood looming in city centers, daring malcontents and under­ ground forces to challenge their fortifications. These structures, bespeaking an impregnable and everlasting solidity, could stop or demoralize contestational movements before they started. [ ...] If the fortifications were breached, the re­ gime would most likely collapse. Within this broad historical context emerged the general strategy for civil disobedience. @

Editor's note: When I announced the first ver­ sion of the Cyberfeminism Index in March 2019, I received a message from someone, who I will leave unnamed, regarding the sexual assault perpetrated by Steve Kurtz of Critical Art En­ semble against two SUNY Buffalo graduate students. Kurtz quietly resigned from the univer­ sity in 2015. Rather than erasing GAE from this history, we believe it is best to offer this unfor­ tunate context here to honor the victims and to surface the complicated history of GAE and its members. -MS

Eve's Apple, or Women's Narrative Bytes Sue-Ellen Case, in "Technocriticism and Hypernarrative," ed. N. Katherine Hayles, special issue, MFS Modern Fiction Studies 43, no. 3 (Fall 1997): pp. 631-50; excerpt pp.634-35

One essential characteristic that sets late cap­ italism apart from other political and economic forms is its mode of representing power: What was once a sedentary concrete mass has now become a nomadic electronic flow. Before com­ puterized information management, the heart of institutional command and control was easy

As the subject begins to emerge as an effect of the Net, so does the sense of narrative. The linear process of story is both emulated and simulated by the mode of collective production on the Net:

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1996

second screen My story is as true as any story that telnets from csl.org to csn.org to well.sf.ca.us to tmn.com to uclink.berkeley.edu to .... . there are undoubtedly other nodes where I can take my mind that I have forgotten my body is in a place they call rehabilitation I call it hell. Instead of a narrative line,@ this screen of­ fers a genealogy of sites on the Net. The story seems to travel and to accrete itself through this travel. Accretion replaces plot line as the signa­ ture of fiction-writing on the Net.

3. 4. 5.

an ISP (Internet Service Provider) to get connected, money to pay the phone bill & extras, like video and sound cards, tenacity ...the grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr as in grrrl.

@

Rosie, Friendly Grrrls Guide to the Internet, 1993-2015. https://web.archive.org/web/ 19980701094726fw /http://www.youth.nsw.gov. au/rob.upload/friendly/title.html.@®

Friendly Grrrls Guide to the Internet Geekgirl, http://www.youth.nsw.qov.au/rob. upload/friendly/ (Wayback) Hi, I'm geekgirl, ® your guide to getting on-line. I've been "on-line" using BBS (Bulletin Board Services) and the Internet for about six years; I think it's so kewl-and you will, too, with some practice and patience. The key to getting on the Internet, enjoying it and making the most out of it is perseverance. [ ...] If any of you grrrls hadn't (like me) or haven't done computers at school or had no "geeks" around to teach you some fancy on-line tricks and tips, watch out-you may feel like some huge wave at Bondi Beach has swallowed you up and spat you out! The Internet is wild and wicked-and can be a very bumpy ride-but in a dizzy, digital age, a grrrl just has to equip herself with the fashion accessories of the '90s: 1. 2. r

81

a computer with telecommunications software, a modem,®

GenderFuckMeBaby's Palace of Unparalleled Cynicism GashGirl, http://www.altx.com/dd/gashgirl. html (Wayback) IN SPIRALSPACE THERE IS NO THEY there is only *us*@ a bunch of dumb agents forever crawling over the de sadian co-ordinates prosaic swarmware on the dole masquerading as a rogue codes seeking a good time :Madame.de.Clairwil exclaims, "Beg for it, my divine slut!" as she positions her magnificent ass over B_'s gaping mouth: trying to flee the binary@!) i enter the gender which is not one

1996

XXYXXYXXYXXYXXXYXXYXXYXYYXXXYYY YXXXXYXYXXYXXYXXYXXXYCCC neva thought i was the type to fuck a testosterone-enhanced spivak ... but luscious cunt exuded musk, i couldn't resist the day they put the stench into sighberspace remains my favorite

® An Interview with Sadie Plant and Linda Dement Sadie Plant and Linda Dement, interview by Miss. M, Virtual Futures 96 Datableed, Winchester University, Coventry, UK, May 3-5, 1996, transcript, Zero News Datapool, http://www.tO.or.at/sadie/inter vw.htm Linda Dement: One of the things I have been looking at recently is female murderers, female serial killers.[...) There have always been wom­ en murderers, but in the past they would do it at ·home and now they are tending to go out and kill men on the streets. So there is this perception that women are more dangerous now, but actu­ ally we are more out in the world. We are more visible. We are more public.

(ill)

82

Sadie Plant, An Interview with Sadie Plant and Linda Dement, 1996. http://www.tO.or.aUsadie/ intervw.htm.@

Sadie Plant: I would ever so much agree with that. In my book@the message is a little more subtle [...] One of the approaches I am taking is to re-write the history of computing. I actually started off to do as a sort of draw-out of the in­ fluence women have had on computing, thinking that it was quite small and minimal when I start­ ed, but in fact the more work I've done on this, I have become really convinced that in fact that computing has been built almost lot sack and barrel by women. All of the machinery that feeds into it, for example the typewriter, telephone, cal­ culating machines, everything has always been operated by women. [...] That's why it's such an overwhelming threat, that really pulls the rug from under the feet of the existing set-up.

lsi-pikiskwewin-Ayapihkesisak [Speaking the Language of Spiders] Cheryl L'Hirondelle, Ahasiw Maskegon­ lskwew, and Joseph Naytowhow, https:// lovingthespider.net/; excerpt from Cheryl L'Hirondelle, "Codetalkers Recounting Signals of Survival,"® in Coded Territories: Tracing Indigenous Pathways in New Media Art, eds. Steve Loft and Kerry Swanson (Calgary: University of Calgary Press,2014),pp. 149-50 In 1996, Joseph and I once again joined Ahasiw and a group of other artists he had assembled at the Banff Centre@ to collaborate and create the seminal website lsi-pikiskwewin-Ayapihkesi­ sak (Speaking the Language of Spiders). This all coincided with the burgeoning of the World Wide Web: the public distribution of web browser software such as Netscape, early search en­ gines such lnktomi and the Canadian govern­ ment's awareness to create opportunities in remote and rural communities via their Community Access Program (cap). By 1998, I

1996

was ready to take the challenge and run with these new ways to publish our stories using this new delivery platform with its own many layers of codes.

classroom; and to highlight African-centered ed­ ucation and independent Black schools.

Museum of Menstruation and Women's Health Harry Finley, http:l/www.mum.org/ @

Ahasiw Maskegon-lskwew, Lynn Acoose, Elvina Piapot, et al., lsi-pikiskwewin­ Ayapihkesisak [Speaking the Language of Spiders], 1996. Screenshot, retrieved 2020 by Firefox v76.0.1 on Mac OS 10.13.3; https:// web.archive.org/web/20020323214647/http:// neutralground.sk.ca/artistprojects/spider language/index.html. @@@@@v @D@h)@)

@) Melanet: Watoto World William Jordan and Rodney Jordan; excerpt from New Perspective Technologies, "Internet Website for African Heritage Children, Parents, and Educators Opens!" press release, January 16, 1996, http:l/www. melanet.com/watoto/ (Wayback) New Perspective Technologies, the creators of the MELANET Communication and Information Network, today announced the establishment of the Watoto World Website on the Internet. Wa­ toto World [watoto is Kiswahili for children] was created to bring the creativity of African heritage � children to the Internet; provide informa­ tion and instruction for African American parents to meet the challenges of parenting now and in the twenty-first century; encourage educators and school systems to provide and utilize In­ ternet access and computer technology in the

83

The main interest of the museum is to per­ manently display to the public-the important word is "public"-items showing the history of women's health and of the culture of menstru­ ation. Scholars will be able to see material not on display. It is not designed for people in the "professional" menstruation community, such as activists, but for the average person, male and female, people whose strongest feeling about menstruation is usually negative. [...] It will not be a "feel-good" museum, but one show­ ing the facts, pleasant and unpleasant. [ ...] The menstruation ® section of the Museum of Menstruation and Women's Health is intend­ ed to be the world's repository for information about, and "showcase" for, menstruation, includ­ ing as many cultures as possible.

@

Harry Finley, Museum of Menstruation and Women's Health, 1996-2018. https://web. archive.org/web/19970125142925/http://www. mum.org/. @@CW

® My Boyfriend Came Back from the War Olia Lialina, Last Real Net Art Museum, http://myboyfriendcamebackfromth.ewar.ru/

1996

My boyfriend came back from the war: After dinner they left us alone. Where are you? I can't see you. FORGET IT. you don't trust me, i see But... it was only once ... Last summer... And if you think ... Why I should explain? ... @ Don't you see? So, last time we met when ... And you promised. Me too. Do you like my new dress? We'll start a new life May be (sic) you look at me? Who asks you? nobody here can love or understand me

On the Matrix: Cyberfeminist Simulations Sadie Plant, in The Cybercultures Reader, eds. David Bell and Barbara M. Kennedy (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 325-26; excerpt p. 325 There is no authentic or essential woman up ahead, no self to be reclaimed from some long lost past, nor even a potential subjectivity to be constructed in the present day. Nor is there only an absence or lack. Instead there is a virtual re­ ality, CW an emergent process for which identity is not the goal but the enemy, precisely what has kept at bay the matrix of potentialities from which women have always downloaded their roles.

·84

After the second comes the next waves, ®) the next sexes, asking for nothing, just taking their time. Inflicted on authority, the wounds prolifer­ ate. The replicunts write programs, paint viral images, fabricate weapons systems, infiltrate the arts and the industry. They are hackers, per­ verting the codes, corrupting the transmissions, multiplying zeros, and teasing open new holes in the world. They are the edge of the new edge, unashamedly opportunist, entirely irresponsi­ ble, and committed only to the infiltration and corruption of a world which already rues the day they left home.

Open Women Line http://www.owl.ru (Wayback) nporpaMMa "Open Women Line" (OWL) Ha­ npaaneHa Ha co3AaHv1e B Poccv1v1 C0L\vlaflbH0npocaernrenbcKoro v1HrepHer-pecypca Afl� )KeHIJ.\vlH C l.\eflblO C0Ae�CTB0BaTb pacwv1pe­ Hvll0 CB06oAH0ro A0CTyna Afl� )KeHIJ.\vlH K H0BblM vlCTOLJHvlKaM vlHQ)OpMal.\vlvl v1 pa3Bv1Tvll0 vlHQ)OpMal.\vlOHH0ro o6MeHa Me)KAY )KeHCKvlMvl opraHv13al.\L1�Mv1 KaK BHyrpv1 Poccv1v1, TaK v1 Ha Me)KAYHap0AH0M yp0BHe.

@

1996

Open Woman Line, 1996-2000. https://web. archive.org/web/20011129130634/http://www. owl.rut.@

Program Open Women Line (OWL) in Russia @ is aimed at creating a social-information Internet-resource for women to easily access new information resources and development of information exchanges between women's organizations in Russia, as well as on an inter­ national level.

® Performing the Digital Body-A Ghost Story Theresa M. Senft, Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory 9, no.1 (1996): pp. 9-33;excerpt, p. 9

For me, it's about ghosts. My motives take the shape of a slim blue wrist, an IV drip, a ste­ roid-induced mustache. If I stop typing on my keyboard, and listen, I can still hear her. Now, she's negotiating an uneasy truce with an air tube-the one living in her throat since her third brain surgery. I see the panic on her face. I try to keep the panic out of my voice. Work with the machine, I tell her. It's saving your life. @ It's strange; even after my mother was strong enough to forego her ventilator, that sound took up space in my memory. My mother died two years ago, which is not coincidentally when I be­ came obsessed with writing about the Internet, the performances of the digital bodies therein, the ghost stories told by those bodies.[...]

(lli)

Tina LaPorta, Cyberfemme, 1993. Digital Rendering.

There is a saying that goes, ''A feminist always a�ks, Who tells the story and what precisely is

85

told?" Indeed, it is possible to summarize most of contemporary feminism as an extended perfor­ mance of story-telling, ® a continual struggle with those codes in narrative which have said about women, "it was ever thus."

Phone Sex is Cool: Chat-Lines as Superconductors Marcus Boon, Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory 9, no.1 (1996): pp. 161-77;excerpt p.161

The telephone is a prosthetic phenomenon, and when phone (or other forms of cyber) sex are critiqued, the arguments for and against them invariably revolve around the problem of prosthesis. @ID For example, "real sex" (one argument runs) is organic, because it requires direct physical contact. On the other hand, phone or cyber sex is prosthetic, and reflects a technological compensation for an organic lack, be it moral or physiological. Following this logic, phone sex is either "bad" (because it's lazy, less than real, impoverished, greedy, self-indulgent, excessive) or else, phone sex is "good" (pro­ viding, as it can, "substitute activity" for those who cannot manage "real sex" due to illness). By passing this false dichotomy entirely, I would like to move my inquiry away from judging mo­ tivations of the human body at the end of a technology, and inquire instead into the sexual preference.

Private Domain Rejane Spitz, https://www.leonardo.info/ gallery/gallery294/spitz.html

1996

To become the c the seductive an cybernetic space to put on the fem

®

86

Allucquere Rosanne Stone, "Will the Real Body Please Stand Up? Boundary Stories about Virtual Cultures," 1991

yborg, to put on d dangerous like a garment, is ale.

87

This work is about those empty hands that are on the fringe of the Web. ® It is about those words that cannot be translated, about those emotions that cannot be shared and those meanings that cannot be understood by peo­ ple from other cultures. It is about the richness of human beings living in their different realities, with their own systems of ideas, concepts, rules and meanings.

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Rejane Spitz, Private Domain, 1996. https:// www.leonardo.info/qallery/gallery294/spitz. html.®®@

Who are you? You possibly do not speak my language, do not share my beliefs, do not look like me. But you may come in if you respect my feelings, my logic and my rules. If not, please keep off! This is a private domain. Information is never public or neutral.

® Sex, Lies and Avatars: Sherry Turkle Knows What Role-Playing in Cyberspace Really Means. A Profile Pamela McCorduck, Wired, April 1, 1996, https://www.wired.com/1996/04/turkle/ Mainframes were modernist, but computing slipped into postmodernism when people got personal computers. Thus, any attempt to write about cyberfeminism as if it were a monolith inevitably results in a narrative that is inaccurately totalizing. Howev­ er, what provides common ground among these variants of cyberfeminism(s) is the sustained focus on gender and digital technologies and on cyberfeminist practices.

UKI (316a)

Stefanie Wuschitz, Rodgarkia-Dara, Patricia J. Reis, et al., Mz* Baltazar's Lab, 2009. http:// www.mzbaltazarslaboratory.org/.

Rethinking Cyberfeminism(s): Race, Gender, and Embodiment

218

Shu Lea Cheang, http://u-k-i.co/; excerpt from Shu Lea Cheang, interview by Victoria Sin, "Shu Lea Cheang in conversation with Victoria Sin," @Auto Italia South East, http://autoitaliasoutheast.org/news/ shu-lea-cheang-in-conversation-with­ victoria-sin/# ftnref1

2009

2010

UK/ is conceived as a sequel to my scifi cyber­ punk film I.K.U. @ which tells the story of IKU (orgasm in Japanese) coders, dispatched by the internet porn enterprise GENOM Corp., and made into sex machines to collect human orgasm data. These programmed humanoids' accumulated hard drive data are ultimately downloaded by IKU runners (a la Blade Run­ ner) and made into color-coded orgasm chips AkiraChix for mobile phone plug in and consumption. In post-netcrash UKI, the data deprived IKU coders Linda Kamau and Marie Githinji, https:// are dumped as pieces of e-trash amidst the dis­ akirachix.com/ carded electronic parts and bits while GENOM Corp. takes human body hostage to initiate Bio­ AkiraChix was founded in 2010 by a group of Net, a network made up of micro-computing women who were passionate about changing red blood cells (erythrocytes). Inhabiting on the the landscape of the technology field and cre­ electronic trash-scape with the last remaining ating a community that supports, connects and coders, hackers, and netters who work to patch inspires women in the tech space. @ These self-sustainable networks, IKU coders unpack young women challenged the status quo by en­ their body parts, rewrite the codes to reboot couraging and facilitating more women to take themselves. Trading sex for codes, code sexes up careers in technology-related fields. Its vision code,@ the defunct IKU coders infected with has continued to be led by Linda Kamau and body/software virus emerge amidst noise blast Marie Githinji, who have committed to champi­ to declare themselves UKI the virus. Meanwhile, on the diversity and inclusion of women in the GENOM Corp.'s BioNet aims to re-program hu­ technical workforce, changing the economic ca­ man orgasm into "self-sustained pleasure," a pabilities of young women as well as shifting profitable bio-scheme conspired without any societal norms. AkiraChix has come a long way precaution for damaging the biosphere. UKI the from its beginnings, where we trained young virus-propagated-transmits, infects and mo­ women from Nairobi in a bus fitted with comput­ bilizes the citizens to enter the occupied human ers, to a fully-fledged residential campus with body-to infiltrate BioNet, to sabotage the OR­ a goal of serving young women from all over GANISMO production and finally to reclaim lost Kenya and other African Countries. orgasm data.

@ID

Cultural Appropriations of Technical Capital: Black Women, Weblogs, and the Digital Divide (318b)

219

Shu Lea Cheang, UK/, 2018. Three channel installation, Gwanju Biennale. 10:39 min. https:/ /www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEo5hAVK6G4. (318a) (318c) (318d) (318e) Gill)� (318h)

Andre Brock, Lynette Kvasny, and Kayla Hales, Information, Communication & Society 13, no. 7 (October 2010): pp. 104059; excerpt pp. 1040-41

2009-2010

Research on the social implications of informa­ tion and communication technology (ICT) use by underserved populations is typically framed as a "digital divide." Conversations about bridg­ ing this said divide consistently link underserved groups with deficit models of attainment. ® Either minority groups lack material access, lack mastery of digital practices and literacies, or lack value systems promoting the educational achievement necessary to acquire base profi­ ciency in digital systems. These three premises illustrate the rhetorical power of Western ideologies of technology use and race. Technology becomes the hallmark of civilization, the arbiter of logic and reason, and the civilized are considered to have a "natural af­ finity" for technology. Those on the margins are demeaned for their lack of technology engage­ ment on material, cognitive, and ideological, or even moral grounds.Thus, instrumental ra­ tionality becomes inextricably intertwined with technical capital and cultural capital, and the un­ derserved are considered "irrational."

Feminist Technology

The term "feminist technology" did not catch on though, and explanation for this might be found in the linked history of the term "feminist," which has had a spotty presence in what is commonly, and tellingly, known as "gender and technology studies."[ ...] Once we agreed to make "feminist technolgies" a goal, we started with a series of definitional questions: Do any exist? @ If so, what makes a technology feminist? What crite­ ria must a feminist technology fulfill?

Contributors include Jennifer Aengst, Maia Bo­ swe/1-Penc, Kate Boyer, Frances Bronet, Shirley Gorenstein, Anita Hardon, Deborah G. Johnson, Linda L. Layne, Deana McDonagh, and Sharra L. Vostral.

From Cybernation to Feminization: Firestone and Cyberfeminism Susanna Paasonen, in Further Adventures of The Dialectic of Sex: Critical Essays on Shulamith Firestone, eds. Mandy Merck and Stella Sandford (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp. 61-83; excerpt p. 69

"Feminist technology"-what a power and pro­ vocative concept; both immediately compre­ hensible and puzzling, simple on the face of it, yet complex. [...] The earliest use of "femi­ nist technology" I have found is in a 1983 essay by Corlann Gee Bush. She does not define the term, which appears in her final sentence, but simply asserts that "A feminist technology should, indeed, be something else again." [...]

[Shulamith] Firestone saw technology as pro­ gressive and liberating unless improperly used, yet misleading inasmuch as hers was certainly a claim for feminist agency, social change, and political struggle. Her faith in the transforma­ tive potential of technology was conditional and based on women's ability to gain control over it. In contrast, Sadie Plant has argued for the impossibility of female agency and seen the process of feminization as both automatic and spontaneous. Plant's theory of feminization as­ sumes an intimate affinity between women and increasingly complex technology, both of which have been instruments and tools for (male­ dominated) culture. However, women and ma­ chines are growing out of control: "tools mutate

220

2010

Linda L. Layne, Sharra L. Vostral, and Kate Boyer (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2010); excerpt from Linda L. Layne, introduction to Layne et al., Feminist Technology, p. 1

into complex machines which began to learn and act for themselves [...]As media, tools and goods mutate, so the women begin to change, escaping their isolation and becoming increas­ ingly interlinked." For Plant, feminization is a process parallel to the history of women's lib­ eration, but one foreclosing intentional agency: "Cybernetics is feminisation. @ When intelli­ gent space emerges alongside the history of women's liberation, no one is responsible. That's the point, the fold in the map, where architects get lost in the pattern. Self-guiding syst�ms were not in the plan."

Geek Girls LatAm Joanna Prieto and Diana Salazar, http://geek girlslatam.org/ Las mujeres Geek Girls LatAm, somos hacedo­ ras de cambios sociales, culturales, econ6micos y aportamos al desarrollo de latinoamerica con ciencia y tecnologfa. Es un honor para nosotras ser parte de este movimiento que promueve la diversidad, inclusion y equidad en la Economia Digital, Aportamos nuestro tiempo, talento y posibilidades para hacer que este sea un mundo mejor. Tenemos el coraz6n lleno de alegria par compartir, la mente curiosa de conocimiento en areas STEAM, de ciencia y tecnologfa, y el alma dispuesta a ser transformada a traves de una vida puesta al servicio de los demas. Geek Girls LatAm women are the makers of so­ cial, cultural, and economic changes and we contribute to the development of Latin America @ with science and technology. It is an honor for us to be part of this movement that pro­ motes diversity, inclusion and equity in the Digital Economy. We contribute our time, talent and possibilities to make this a better world. We have a heart full of joy to share, a mind curious

221

about knowledge in STEAM areas,. science and technology, and a soul ready to be transformed through a life put at the service of others.

Glitch Studies Manifesto Rosa Menkman, https://amodern.net/wp-con tent/uploads/2016/05/2010 Original Rosa­ Menkman-Glitch-Studies-Manifesto.pdf Use the glitch as an exoskeleton of progress. The glitch is a wonderful experience of an in­ terruption that shifts an object away from its ordinary form and discourse. (ill) For a moment I am shocked, lost and in awe, asking myself what this other utterance is, how was it created. Is it perhaps ... a glitch? But once I named it, the momentum-the glitch-is no more ... [ ...] The glitch has no solid form or state through time; it is often perceived as an unexpected and abnormal mode of operandi, a break from (one ofj the many flows (of expectations) within a technological system. But as the understand­ ing of a glitch changes when it is being named, so does the equilibrium of the (former) glitch it­ self: the original experience of a rupture moved passed its momentum and vanished into a realm of new conditions. The glitch is a new and ephemeral, personal experience.

(324a)

2010

Rosa Menkman, Glitch Studies Manifesto (Amsterdam, 2010). Front cover.

Hypertext and the Female Imaginary Jaishree K. Odin (Minneapolis, MN: Uni­ versity of Minnesota Press, 201 O); excerpt from the University of Minnesota Press In Hypertext and the Female Imaginary, Jaishree K. Odin reveals how media that use hyper­ textual strategies of narrative fragmentation provocatively engage questions of gender or cultural difference. Odin addresses hypertext on two levels: as an artistic technique in electronic or film narratives and as a metaphor for describ­ ing the complexity of postmodernism in which different cultures, discourses, and media are in continual interaction with one another. Investigating the work of Trinh T. Minh-ha, Judy Malloy, @ Shelley Jackson, @ Stephanie Strickland, and M. D. Caverly, Odin demon­ strates how these writers apply hypertextual strategies to subversively convey difference. Through her readings of various transformative hypertext narratives by women writers/artists, she pursues the question of what constitutes empowering descriptions of the world in a tech­ nology-mediated culture where the dominant discourse is turning everything into the same.

Is the Internet Colorblind? Courtney Marshall, The University Dialogue 60 (2010), https://scholars.unh.edu/dis covery ud/60 When we're online, we don't see color, gender, sexuality, or other identities. The Internet is the ultimate colorblind society. Why then, should Essex Hemphill be worried about not being ac-

222

cepted? ® Why does he worry that his invisi­ bility in American culture will be extended into cyberculture? These questions speak to the problem of theorizing cyberspace as a raceless, genderless utopia. Critical race and feminist theorists have argued that the desire for a colorblind society, one in which we don't see color, is racialized. [ ... ]A de­ sire to escape race by taking refuge online, then, is a misguided endeavor. Having a space where you can represent yourself as not dark, female, or Catholic does not make these categories less real. In fact, having the desire to leave these behind shows the power that they have in our culture. We can't not see them; we can't see be­ yond them. In reality, we do not leave our bodies behind when we engage in discussions of race online, and we should question our desire to label our identity categories as problems.

Pink Noises Tara Rodgers (Analog Tara}, https://www. analogtara.net/wp/projects/pink-noises/; submitted by Annie Goh Pink Noises is a feminist media project that pro­ motes work by women who are DJs, electronic musicians and sound artists, makes information on music production more accessible, @]) and encourages critical consciousness through cre­ ative and exploratory uses of sound and audio technologies. The title embraces "pink" for its gendered connotations, "noise" as a metaphor for disturbance, and "pink noise" as an audio­ technical term describing equal distributions of power across the frequency spectrum. The website Pinknoises.com was founded in 2000 by musician and writer Tara Rodgers (Analog Tara), and was one of the first online

2010

communities devoted to women who make and perform electronic music. The site was formed out of a do-it-yourself ethos: inspired by the leg­ acy of Riot 'Grrrl, which catalyzed feminist art making and activism in the early '90s, and by the utopic spirit at that time for creating online communities that could transcend geographic boundaries. Pinknoises.com was widely praised in the press for making technical information about audio production more accessible.

Singing at the Digital Well: Biogs as Cyberfeminist Sites of Resistance Tess Pierce, in "Women in the Middle East," eds. Nawal Ammar, Aylin Akpmar, and Salam Hamdan, special issue, Feminist Formations 22, no.3 (Fall 2010): pp. 196-209; excerpt pp.196-97 Physical barriers, political upheaval, and gen­ dered discriminatory practices all contribute to shaky foundations for collective identity. This article focuses on one Iraqi woman's life with­ in value systems that privilege males, and discusses how she subverts, resists, and sup� ports the male value systems while negotiating the influences of war, Western culture, and her life in a tightly controlled Islamic environment. I argue that "Riverbend" (a pseudonym), in her blog, Baghdad Burning, is singing songs of re­ sistance at a digital well using a virtual veil in order to subvert the rigid laws of sexual se­ clusion that the current war generates. In this digital environment, Riverbend relies on her fa­ miliar cultural traditions (influenced by Islam) to create new strategies of resistance and to connect with other women as a cyberconduit. Relying on [Rosi] Braidotti's (1994) concept@ of the nomadic subject and rhizome theory, I discuss the ways Riverbend uses her blog as the new meeting place, or well, using the soul-

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ful musical poetry of the Iraqi sihr halal-"lawful magic"-in themes that center around her pri­ vate life, addressed to a public audience, with women guarding the information, passing on culture, and creating a new version of the mag­ ical words.

Trans Desire/Affective Cyborgs Micha Cardenas and Barbara Fornssler (New York: Atropos, 2010); excerpt from Barbara Fornssler, "Conclusions, From the Individual Body to an Erotics of the Social," in Cardenas and Fornssler, Trans Desire, pp.74-75 There is a need for a re-invention of feminist blasphemy that can be achieved by "going­ through" the cyborg body and by suspending some of the tenets that have classically been part of the constitution of feminist thought. No­ tably, what I termed the "breakdown-of-binary project" ® in order to explo1re the dialectic of the cyborg figure. [ ... ] Although the cyborg fig­ ure is deemed to be a hybrid, the term "cyborg" dangerously relocates this figure into an iden­ tity of "singularity." [ ...] The relational process of technology, inherently libratory and oppres­ sive, is discussed via concepts of origin and the idea of "embodied choices." [...] Switch is the becoming cyborg dependent on the contextual conditions of emergence. [...] This emergence of switch is a process-state only readable in re­ flection. Switch holds at the core of coming-to­ be an agency that is enacted via the "how" or put differently, our approach to technology, to our becoming as cyborgs. In this mode of be­ coming our agency is switch. We are switch.

2010

Unmasking the Theatre of Technoscience: The Cyberfeminist Performances of subRosa Federica Timeto, Kumarini Silva, Kaitlynn Mendes, Kate Mondloch, Jenny Gunnarsson Payne, Alessandra Marino, and Federica Timeto, "Commentary and Criticism," Feminist Media Studies 10, no. 2 (2010): pp. 229-48;excerpt p.245 Performativity is of the utmost importance in recent cyberfeminist practices that "embody feminist content, practices, and agency within the electronic technologies, virtual systems, and Real Life spaces, which we inhabit in our work and lives." subRosa GID is a cyberfeminist col­ lective based in the United States whose activity dates back to the late 1990s-it is no coinci­ dence that it initially emerged as a study group around Wilding, one of the founders of the first Feminist Art Program at CalArts and a leading artist of the Womanhouse (1972) @ project. The collective creates performative environ­ ments that enhance participants' understanding of the politics and effects of new technologies on our lives, while at the same time providing them with tactical means of resistance. sub­ Rosa's "site-u-ational" approach-which finds analogies in the modes and scope of the "re­ combinant theater'' of the Critical Art Ensemble @-aims at involving the audience in a pub­ lic debate on such themes so as to counter the "private theater" of technoscience: in subRosa's works, knowledge is a common experience, not private property; it cannot be bought or possessed, but can only be acquired and dis­ seminated through a practice of sharing.

2011 Black Girls Code Kimberly Bryant, http://www.blackgirlscode. com/ When I was first introduced to computer pro­ gramming, as a freshman in Electrical Engineer­ ing, Fortran and Pascal were the popular lan­ guages for newbies in computing and the Apple Macintosh was the new kid on the block. I re­ member being excited by the prospects, and looked forward to embarking on a rich and re­ warding career after college. But I also recall, as I pursued my studies, feeling culturally iso­ lated: few of my classmates looked like me. While we shared similar aspirations and many good times, there's much to be said for making any challenging journey with people of the same cultural background. Much has changed since my college days, but there's still a dearth of African-American women in science, technology, engineering and math professions, an absence that cannot be ex­ plained by, say, a lack of interest in these fields. Lack of access and lack of exposure to STEM topics are the likelier culprits. [ ...] That, really, is the Black Girls Code mission: to introduce pro­ gramming and technology to a new generation of coders, G® coders who will become build­ ers of technological innovation and of their own futures.

Freakabolic

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2010-2011

Paula Pin, https://freakabolic.hotglue.me/; excerpt from "mwbiopunk," Freakabolic, https://freakabolic.hotglue.me/?mwbiopunk de la cultura hacker vs natura hacker $%%

%

si en parte re-conocemos nuestra cultura gen­ erada a partir de la natura, c6mo es que ambas agencias permanecen en ocasiones todavia enfrentadas? coma si fuesen cuasi opuestas, diferentes; porque esa separaci6n del cono­ cimiento intrinseco de las cosas, de la vida, de los cuerpos y seres que metabolizan, c6mo acercamos a un conocimiento mas pro­ fundo del entorno, de nosotros mismos, liberan­ do nuestros cuerpos a traves de practicas abi­ ertas, naturaleza libre, cultura libre, placer libre en el fluir constante de la vida; ondas, frecuencias espectros de emoci6n a cada instante, revelando nuestra natura, ia ma­ teria que nos deforma, nos hibridamos en nue­ vos seres, metacuerpos y metaentes, maya elastica que deviene entorno !! ! !! ! hacker culture vs nature hacker@ $ %% $% $% $% $% $% $ If in part we re-know our culture generated from nature, how is it that the two agencies some­ times still face each other? as if they were almost opposite, different; why this separation of the intrinsic knowledge of things, of life, of bodies and beings that metabolize,

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Paula Pin, Freakabolic, 2011-14. https://freak abolic.hotglue.me/?mwbiopunk. (332a) (332b)

how do we approach a deeper knowledge of the environment, of ourselves, releasing our bodies through open practices, free nature, free culture, free pleasure in the constant flow of life; waves, spectral frequencies of emotion at every moment, revealing our nature, the matter that deforms us, we hybridize into new beings, meta­ bodies and metaentes, elastic maya that be­ comes environment !! ! !!!

Liberating Ourselves Locally (LOL) https://oaklandmakerspace.wordpress.com/ about/; excerpt from "We're Getting Ready to Launchl"Liberating Ourselves Locally, https://oaklandmakerspace.wordpress.com/ 2012/01/31/were-getting-ready-to-launch/ Hi there! So happy to see you! We're a new peo­ ple of color-led, gender-balanced maker space that's about to open up in East Oakland. The maker movement is amazing. @ID People are making more things from scratch, learning new and lost arts, and having fun. Some are even finding their way to financial lib­ erty through their passions. This is so great and wonderful! Unfortunately, the movement isn't as diverse as it could be. Which is why we've worked so hard to open up this new space! We really want to take on the challenge of in­ creasing participation of our communities head on. We envision a vibrant space where you can expect to see people of color, immigrants, poor folks, women, youth, transfolks, and queers teaching, learning, and making all kinds of cool things. We also hope to be a force in increas­ ing participation of our communities in STEM fields and startups (of all kinds-micro, macro, non-profit, for-profit, etc.).

2011

The present wo "the subaltern." It privilege of bein to write.

(ill)

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Radhika Gajjala, Cyber Selves: Feminist Ethnographies of South Asian Women, 2004

k is not about is about the able to speak,

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Netzfeminismus http://www.netzfeminismus.org (Wayback) Der ,,neue Feminismus im Netz" ist unuberseh­ bar. Weltweit entstehen namhafte feministische Biogs. Auf der re:publica 2011 trafen sich die ,,neuen" und die ,,alten" Netzfeminstinnen und sprachen Ober ihre Erfahrungen, Ziele und die gemeinsame Zukunft. Dabei entdecken Frauen aller Alter viele Gemeinsamkeiten, auch jen­ seits der Geschlechterfrage. Der Austausch und die Vernetzung sind das oberste Anliegen des NetzfeminismLis. Mitmachen kann jedeR. The "new feminism on the Internet" is unmistak­ able. Well-known feminist biogs@ are created worldwide. At the re:publica 2011 the "new" and the "old" network women met and talked about their experiences, goals and the common future. Women of all ages discover many things in com­ mon, even beyond the gender issue. Exchange and networking are the 'top priorities of network feminism. Everyone can participate.

Safety fosters the sharing of voice and responsibility Shared responsibility is necessary for democracy Democracy protects vulnerability. Vulnerability forecloses visibility Visibility demands a safe space Safe spaces need rules and hierarchies. Rules and hierarchies require transparency and process Process is built upon equal voices All voices want a body. A body needs to be visible Visibility allows for warranting Warranting insures civility and positionality. Positionality fosters political community® Political communities demand spaces, both virtual and real Spaces demand access "Mantrafesto" suggested by Thomas Burkda/1.

Revisiting Cyberfeminism One Feminist Online Media Mantrafesto Alexandra Juhasz, http://www.feminist onlinespaces.com/ Access begs literacy Literacy initiates production Mass production fosters popularity. Popularity produces virality Virality forecloses context, shared interests and vocabulary, and local community Community is built upon safety.

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Susanna Paasonen, in "Revisiting Media Technologies," eds. Caroline Bassett, Maren Hartmann, and Kate O'Riordan, special issue, Communications 36, no. 3 (2011): pp. 335-52; excerpt from abstract In the early 1990s, cyberfeminism surfaced as an arena for critical analyses of the inter­ connections of gender · and new technology especially so in the context of the internet, which was then emerging as something of a "mass-medium." Scholars, activists and artists interested in media technology and its gendered underpinnings formed networks and groups. Consequently, they attached altering sets of

2011

meaning to the term cyberfeminism that ranged in their take on, and identifications with femi­ nism. Cyberfeminist activities began to fade in the early 2000s and the term has since been used by some as synonymous with feminist studies of new media yet much is also lost in such a conflation. This article investigates the histories of cyberfeminism from two intercon­ necting perspectives. First, it addresses the meanings of the prefix "cyber" in cyberfemi­ nism. c@ Second, it asks what kinds of critical and analytical positions cyberfeminist networks, events, projects and publications have en­ tailed. ® Through these two perspectives, the article addresses the appeal and attraction of cyberfeminism and poses some tentative explanations for its appeal fading and for cyber­ feminist activities being channeled into other networks and practiced under different names.

to the loom and the loom's function in produc­ ing handloom textiles are clearly intertwined. @ The human being must become the cyborg weaver if he is to produce a good product. Both visually, aesthetically and affectively the weaver is immersed and appears as one with the ma­ chine. The two must function together within a whole community that creates value for the weaver's product through continued marketing, consumption, and use in cultural rituals. This is the only way to produce handloom material or there is no handloom cloth inexistence at all. Any piece of cloth that is not produced from this intense exchange between weaver, loom, the community of consumers, the dyers and spin­ ners etc., would not carry the label of handloom, obviously.

Snapshots from Sari Trails: Cyborgs Old and New Radhika Gajjala, Social Identities 17, no. 3 (2011): pp. 393-408; excerpt pp. 402-03 On Second Life, the fashioning of avatars and their profiles become identifiers of particular traveling cultural practices that are situated with­ in both specific geographical locales and global virtual/real markets simultaneously. Thus, I view the crafting of avatar selves as situated practice at radically varying contextual disjunctural and conjunctural online-offline intersections. The av­ atar is a technological artifact as is the apparel designed for it. Without the avatar, the sari on Second Life cannot exist. However, an avatar also exerts agency. The avatar forms an iden­ tity and takes on roles in the communities that it participates in. [... ) In the case of the weaver too, he is at a human-technology continuum in another way. The weaver's function in relation

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Radhika Gajjala, rad Zabibha ("rZ") in a Kanjeevaram sari (Cyberdivalive creations), 2011.

Why Are There No Great Women Net Artists? Vague Histories of Female Contribution According to Video and Internet Art Jennifer Chan, http://about.mouchette.org/ wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Jennifer Chan2.pdf; excerpt p. 44; referred by Xin Xin My critique does not claim that there are no women internet artists or that there are none who are great enough to make a significant

2011

contribution to the fields of art and technology. There are, but they are not thoroughly recog­ nized by their community and art institutions for their work alone. My analysis would not be com­ plete without reconsidering the immeasurable gains in visibility made by the efforts of early feminist work from the 1970s, cyberfeminism from the 1990s or third wave sociological per­ spectives of the now. Because of the previous successes of feminism, women may feel less confined with self-representation on the inter­ net. Thus, my grievance lies in the scarcity of women with web-based practices entering ex­ hibition spaces. @ [ ...] In order to increase female presence in exhibition spaces, arts ad­ ministrators need to look beyond the femaleness or "feminism" of the work, to consider its form and content in relation to the concept during the evaluation of "Great" art.

WikidGRRLS Stine Eckert, https://wikidgrrls.wordpress. com/ We all know and remember that when learn­ ing seems fun we learn better, and the learning sticks. The goal of Wikid GRRLS is to encour­ age and help middle school aged girls to think of themselves as tech-sawy and smart, and to give them the confidence and skills to contrib­ ute to online knowledge projects. We advance this goal by teaching teenage girls a variety of online skills, GID including how to run and con­ tribute to a Wiki-based knowledge website (such as Wikipedia). We emphasize learning skills that are engaging (that the girls see as fun) and have wide applicability, across their school curricu­ lum and beyond. These skills involve technical mastery (how to navigate a wiki, incorporate video, design, smart searches with Google), interpersonal/social relationships (team work,

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collaboration, moderating, editing), and general learning (writing and especially research).

2012 @ID

Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media & Technology Fembot, https://adanewmedia.org/ Ada ® is an open-access, multi-modal, peer­ reviewed feminist journal concerned with the intersections of gender, new media, and tech­ nology. It is a publication born out of the Fembot Collective, an international feminist collective of media scholars, artists, and professionals.

Afrotopia Ingrid Lafleur, http://www.afrotopiaisnow. com/; referred by Charlotte Webb

(341a)

Ingrid LaFleur, Afrotopia, 2012. https://web. archive.org/web/20141110082708/https:// afrotopiaisnow.corn/.

At the center of AFROTOPIA is the experimen­ tation of technology to emancipate the Black body and create alternative destinies. @ Through the visual language of science fiction, fantasy, magical realism and horror we are able

2011-2012

to ignite the imagination, challenge our perspec­ tives and develop new ones that push past boundaries set forth by white supremacist and patriarchal institutions.

Asikana Network Ella Mbewe, Chisenga Muyoya, and Regina Mtonga, https://www.asikananetwork.org (Wayback)

We exist to create a community of confident and capable women through technology. Asika­ na Network @ is an organization that seeks to increase the meaningful participation of women and girls in technology. We provide free training in marketable ICT skills, exposure to emerg­ ing technologies, mentorship, networking and career progression opportunities. We work pri­ marily with three target groups-girls in high school, in college and young professionals.

Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking E. Gabriella Coleman (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012); excerpt p.1

Even if developers cannot legally guarantee the so-called FITNESS of software, they know that in many instances free software is often as useful as or in some cases superior to pro­ prietary software. This fact brings hackers the same sort of pleasure, satisfaction, and pride that they derive when, and if, they are given free reign to hack. illID Further, even though hack­ ers distribute their free software WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY, the law nevertheless enables

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them to create software that many deem su­ perior to proprietary software-software that they all "hope ... will be useful." The freedom to labor within a framework of their own making is enabled by licenses that cleverly reformat copy­ right law to prioritize access, distribution, and circulation. Thus, hackers short-circuit the tradi­ tional uses of copyright: the right to exclude and control.

Council on Gender Sensitivity and Behavioral Awareness in World of Warcraft Angela Washko; excerpt from Angela Washko, "Why Talk Feminism in World of Warcraft," Creative Time Reports, November 20, 2014, https://creativetimereports.org/ 2014/11/20/angela-washko-feminism-world­ of-warcraft-gamergate/

What's especially strange about the sexism present in WoW is that players not only come from diverse social, economic and racial back­ grounds but are also, according to census data taken by the Daedalus Project, 28 years old on average. ("It's just a bunch of 14-year-old boys trolling you" won't cut it as a defense.) If #gamergate supporters need to respect this di­ versity, many non-gamers also need to accept that the dichotomy between the physical (real) and the virtual (fake) is dated; in game spaces, individuals perform their identities in ways that are governed by the same social relations that are operative in a classroom or park, though with fewer inhibitions. ® That's why-instead of either continuing on quests to kill more bad­ dies or declaring the game a trivial, reactionary space where sexists thrive and abandoning it-I embarked on a quest to facilitate conversations about discriminatory language in WoW's public discussion channels.

2012

Cyberculture and the Subaltern: Weavings of the Virtual and Real :344c)

Angela Washko, "Council on Gender Sensitivity and Behavioral Awareness in World of War­ craft," 2012-16. https://creativetimereports.org/ 2014/11/20/angela-washko-feminism-world­ of-warcraft-gamergate/. (344a) (344b)

Courageous Cunts http://courageouscunts.com/ (Wayback) This is a protest page! We're a group of girls that got quite angry about the growing propaganda to surgically "improve" the female genitalia. Don't get us wrong: we're not blaming any woman for her conscious, informed decision.® If you re­ ally want labiaplasty, go ahead. It's the alliance between porn and the medical industry we're opposed to. It's about their campaign to sell us the perfect labia. Here we try to raise a voice against it!

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Radhika Gajjala, ed. (Plymouth, MA: Lexington Books, 2012); excerpt from Radhika Gajjala, "Introduction: Subaltern Empowerment, Socioeconomic Globalization, and Digital Divides," in Gajjala, Cyberculture and the Subaltern, pp.2-3 I map a particular path in examining how voice and silence shape online space in relation to of­ fline actualities. Implicit in this investigation is also the question of how offline actualities and online cultures are in turn shaped by online hi­ erarchies as well as different kinds of local access to global contexts. Underlying the whole project, of course, is the revealing of a logic of particular "global/local" trajectories that emerge in the context of digital, trans-national capital and labor flows. [...] Through interdisciplinary lenses enabled by cultural studies and feminist methodologies, this work looks at online mi­ crofinance, new technologies and virtual world marketing, and handloom contexts from India and Africa in relation to development discourse that posits a binary between "tradition" and mo­ dernity. Gill[...] Cyberspaces have become the nodes at which various locals connect and dis­ connect in the production of the global. [...] So rather than say "first world" and "third-world" or even "rural" and "urban" or even global and local, virtual and real, or east and west, we need to develop a different vocabulary to talk about what is happening.

Courageous Cunts, Logo, 2012. https:// commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category: Courageous Cunts#/media/File:Courageous cunts logo.jpg. (345a) (345b)

2012

@ID Cyberfeminism 2.0 Radhika Gajjala and Yeon Ju Oh, eds. (New York: Peter Lang, 2012); excerpt from Radhika Gajjala and Yeon Ju Oh, "Cyber­ feminism 2.0: Where Have All the Cyberfeminists Gone?" in Gajjala and Oh, Cyberfeminism 2.0, p. 1 [Faith Wilding and Critical Art Ensemble's] per­ sistent use of the word "Net," now somewhat archaic, reflects the vision of new media tech­ nology as a ground for networking, that is, collective feminist theorizing and practice. [ ...] Cyberfeminism necessitates an awareness of how power plays not only in different locations online but also in institutions that shape the lay­ out and experience of cyberspace.@[...] This collection is meant to be an exploration of what it means to be cyberfeminist now, more than a decade after feminists burst forth onto the In­ ternet scene to demand material access and social intervention both online and offiine. What, for instance, does it mean to be "cyberfeminist" at a time when women are omnipresent on the Internet as consumers and as paid and free la­ borers? [...] How do race, class, place, space, ethnicity, religion, and nationalism play into how women negotiate various techno-mediated en­ vironments online and offiine? In other words, where have all the cyberfeminists gone? Contributors include Marina Levina, Jessie Dan­ iels, Lauren Angelone, Rosalind Sibielski, Holly Kruse, Debbie James, Erica Kubik, Jessica L. Beyer, Genesis Downey, Jennifer Way, Dara Persis Murray, Becky Walker, Yeon Ju Oh, Nata­ lia Rybas, and Koen Leurs.

Digital Dualism and the Glitch Feminism Manifesto Legacy Russell, The Society Pages, December 10, 2012, https://thesociety pages.org/cyborgology/2012/12/10/ digital-dualism-and-the-glitch-feminism­ manifesto/ In a society that conditions the public to find discomfort or outright fear in the errors and malfunctions of our socio-cultural mechanics­ illicitly and implicitly encouraging an ethos of "Don't rock the boat!"-a "glitch" becomes an apt metonym. Glitch Feminism, however, em­ braces the causality of "error," and turns the gloomy implication of glitch on its ear by ac­ knowledging that an error in a social system that has already been disturbed by economic, racial, social, sexual, and cultural stratification and the imperialist wrecking-ball of globalization-pro­ cesses that continue to enact violence on all bodies-may not, in fact, be an error at all, but rather a much-needed erratum. This glitch is a correction to the "machine," G® and, in turn, a positive departure. [ ...] We want to claim for ourselves permanent seats at the table, an em­ powered means of demarcating space that can be possessed by us in entirety, a veritable "room of [our] own" that, despite the strides made via feminist political action, has yet to truly belong to us.

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Legacy Russell, Digital Dualism and the Glitch Feminism Manifesto, 2012. Standard-definition video (color, sound), 21:23 min.

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FemTechNet https://femtechnet.org/: referred by Judy Malloy FemTechNet is an activated network of hundreds of scholars, students, and artists who work on, with, and at the borders of technology, science, and feminism in a variety of fields including Sci­ ence and Technology Studies (STS), Media and Visual Studies, Art, Women's, Queer, and Eth­ nic Studies. Launched in 2012, the network @ has developed and experimented with collaborative processes to address the educa­ tional needs of students interested in feminist science-and-technology studies. One of the current FemTechNet projects is the creation of an alternative to MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) called a DOCC: Distributed Open Col­ laborative Course. Another project is the Critical Race and Ethnic Studies Workbook. Advisory Board Members include Jane Ben­ nett, Catherine Bracy, Micha Cardenas, Wendy Chun, Beth Coleman, Tara Conley, Jessie Dan­ iels, Jade Davis, Jill Dimond, Radhika Gajjala, Kara Keeling, Tara McPherson, Alondra Nelson, Jasmeen Patheja, Carrie Rentschler, Nishant Shah, Carol Stabile, Sandy Stone,· Lucy Such­ man, Skawennati, Kim Tai/bear, and Cara Wallis.

Genero, tecnologia e internet en Latinoamerica y vigencias del formato digital [Gender, Technology and the Internet in Latin America and the Validity of the Digital Format] Tina Escaja (Alm@ Perez), "FEMINISMO DESCOLONIAL," ed. Gladys llarregui,

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special issue, Letras Femeninas 38, no. 1 (Verano 2012): pp. 147-65; excerpt pp. 14748; referred by Tina Escaja (Alm@ Perez) La maquina nos libera. El ordenador desorde­ na, des-computa, descentraliza. No hay centro dicen, no hay modo de establecer un parametro sagrado y (mica. Niega la autoridad, el patriar­ cado niega. Niega el autor. El enredo de la red es femenino, dicen. Su estructura lo es, digo yo. La mujer tejido, la mujer comunicadora, en extrema estructurada computa. No tanto es­ encialismos intuitivos coma interacciones y comunicaci6n. Mother tongue. Lengua materna. Oraculo, emperatriz. Educadora y poeta. Me­ ticulosa economista del hogar y las cosas, sus gentes. Artista pertinaz. La mujer no desapa­ rece en la red. Se instala y elabora, teje. Pero se mantienen la utopias de la liberaci6n por la maquina. Esa maquina que en su momenta lava y plancha y cocina por si sola, dicen, lib­ era. El ordenador es igualitario, representa el margen, por presunta invisibilidad quizas. El cu­ erpo desaparece. Se destituye. Al tiempo que proliferan identidades asumidas o intercambia­ das en charlas y faros, en revistas ciberneticas. Al tiempo que hacen torpedo propuestas por­ nograficas y sus poses, los desnudos a voces que te ofrecen girls. Pero el cuerpo no esta. Se libera, dicen. El cuerpo se transforma en cy­ borg,.[ ... ] lMejor una cyborg que una diosa? The machine frees us. The computer messes up, de-computes, decentralizes. There•is no cen­ ter, they say, there is no way to establish a sa­ cred and unique parameter. Denies authority, denies patriarchy. The author denies. The en­ tanglement of the network is female, they say. Its structure is, I say. The weaving woman, the communicator woman, is extremely structured. Not so much intuitive essentialisms as inter­ actions and communication. Mother tongue. Mother tongue. Oracle, @ Empress. Educator and poet. Meticulous economist of the home and things, its people. Stubborn artist. The woman

2012

does not disappear in the network. She settles and elaborates, weaves. @ But the utopias of liberation by the machine remain. That ma­ chine that once washes and irons and cooks by itself, they say, liberates. The computer is egali­ tarian, it represents the margin, perhaps due to presumed invisibility. The body disappears. It is dismissed. At the same time, the identities as­ sumed or exchanged proliferate in talks and forums, in cybernetic magazines. At the same time they torpedo pornographic proposals and their poses, the naked nudes that girls offer you. But the body is not there. It breaks free, they say. The body transforms into a cyborg. [...] Better a cyborg than a goddess?

Girls Who Code Reshma Saujani, https://girlswhocode.com/ The gender gap in computing is getting worse. In 1995, 37 percent of computer scientists were women. Today, it's only 24 percent. The per­ cent will continue to decline if we do nothing. We know that the biggest drop off of girls in com­ puter science is between the ages of 13 and 17. We're reaching girls around the world and are on track to close the gender gap in new entry­ level tech jobs by 2030. [...] Half of the girls we serve come from historically underrepre­ sented groups, including girls who are Black, Latinx, or from low-income backgrounds. ® [... ] We're not just preparing our girls to enter the workforce-we're preparing them to lead it, to improve it, to completely and totally trans­ form it.

Hackerspaces and DIYbio in Asia: Connecting Science and Community with

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Open Data, Kits and Protocols Denisa Kera, in "Bio/Hardware Hacking," eds. Alessandro Delfanti and Johan Soderberg, special issue, Journal of Peer Production 2 (June 2012): pp. 1-8; excerpt p. 3 From hyper-modern Singapore and the post­ apocalyptic Tokyo to the booming but still de­ veloping Yogyakarta we can notice the same enthusiasm for DIY and maker activities, low tech solutions and citizen science experiments. @ Should we label these citizen science ac­ tivities as popularization and dissemination of professional knowledge or as a special case of applied science? How should we evaluate the emphasis on startups and the entrepreneurial ethos behind some of these projects, and its search for commercialization of various tech­ nologies similar to the goals of any start up incubator? How are we to connect these mun­ dane, technical and entrepreneurial goals with the ongoing art and design activities? Are we witnessing a tension between the US and EU models of independently run, co-working spac­ es for geeks, designers and entrepreneurs? It is exactly this tension that makes such experi­ ments in social and technological innovation so dynamic.

Hiperderecho Pedro Munoz del Rio, Alejandra Alayza, Jill Khoury, Miguel Sanchez Flores, and Rafael Salazar Gamarra, https://hiper derecho.org/ Samas una organizaci6n civil peruana sin fines de lucro dedicada a investigar, facilitar el enten­ dimiento publico y promover el respeto de los derechos y libertades en entornos digitales.

2012

La maquina nos libera.

@ID

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T ina Escaja (Alm@ Perez), Genera, tecnologfa e internet en Latinoamerica y vigencias del formato digital [Gender, Technology and the Internet in Latin America and the Validity of the Digital Format], 2012

The machine frees us.

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Hiperderecho existe gracias al trabajo de un grupo de j6venes abogados, comunicadores, diseiiadores y geeks en general. [ ...] Usamos herramientas legales para defender los dere­ chos de los peruanos en entornos digitales. Activamente buscamos casos de interes publico de afectaci6n a un derecho para poder denun­ ciarlo ante las autoridades. Buscamos difundir la capacidad liberadora de la tecnologia y desarrol­ lar o potenciar espacios digitales para que todos los peruanos ejerzan sus derechos y refuer­ cen su ciudadania. Creemos que la tecnologia es una herramienta poderosa para el ejercicio de Derechos. Desarrollamos aplicaciones web y sistemas que ayuden a los peruanos a ejercer sus derechos mas facilmente y a monitorear lo que hacen sus autoridades. We are a Peruvian non-profit civil organization dedicated to investigating, facilitating public un­ derstanding and promoting respect for rights and freedoms in digital environments. Hiperd­ erecho exists thanks to the work of a group of young lawyers, communicators, designers and geeks in general. [...] We use legal tools@ to defend the rights of Peruvians i'n digital en­ vironments. We actively seek public interest cases involving a right to be able to report it to the authorities. We seek to spread the liberating capacity of technology and develop or enhance digital spaces for all Peruvians to exercise their rights and strengthen their citizenship. We be­ lieve that technology is a powerful tool for the exercise of Rights. We develop web applications and systems that help Peruvians to exercise their rights more easily and to monitor what their authorities do.

HOLAAfrica (HOLAA!)

Looking online, we realized there was very little for the African queer woman and her experi­ ence and so a Hub of Loving Action in Africa (HOLM!) was born. What started as a small blog written by a few friends has grown into something bigger and more beautiful. More people, more conversations, more happenings. Now it's a hub that houses knowledge that goes into all realms of sex and sexuality as it pertains to all aspects of African sex and sex­ uality. @D This is a space where women and gender non-conforming people of all sexualities can come together and engage with each other and the world. HOLM! does its thing through workshops, dialogues, archiving, digital conver­ sations, knowledge production, partnerships and awareness building. We want to have those chats about sex, sexuality and the African ex­ perience. Also, on every day ending in "day," we spread love and happiness.

Luchadoras [Fighters] Lulu V. Barrera, https://luchadoras.mx/; referred by Paola Ricaurte Quijano lQue queremos? Que las mujeres, j6venes y niiias vivan con gozo y libertad tanto los espa­ cios fisicos como digitales, conscientes de su fuerza y potencial personal y colectivo. Nuestra misi6n es impulsar procesos de transformaci6n politica personal y colectiva a traves de la creaci6n y difusi6n de historias, la apropiaci6n las TIC's (tecnologias de la informaci6n y comu­ nicaci6n), la construcci6n de una internet libre de violencias y la creaci6n de espacios de en­ cuentro que reivindican y dignifican los saberes, la fuerza y el poder de las mujeres.

http://holaafrica.org/

What do we want? That women, young people and girls live with joy and freedom both in phys­ ical and digital spaces, aware of their strength

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and personal and collective potential. Our mis­ sion is to promote processes of personal and collective political transformation through the creation and dissemination of stories, the ap­ propriation of ICT's (information and commu­ nication technologies), @ the construction of an internet free of violence and the creation of meeting spaces that claim and dignify the knowledge, strength and power of women.

is like the mythical village that raises the child and the mother together.

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Lulu Barrera, Luchadoras, 2012. https:// luchadoras.mx. (355a) (355c)

Mothership HackerMoms, 2012. https://web. archive.org/web/20130524005941/http:l/moth ership.hackermoms.org/. (356b)

Pechblenda Klau Chinche (Klau Kinky), Magnett, and Paula Pin, https://pechblenda.hotglue.me/

Mothership HackerMoms https://hackermoms.org/; excerpt from "Our History," HackerMoms, https://hackermoms. org/where-we-came-from/; referred by Sarah Fox We're often asked why a hackerspace for moth­ ers? All work and no play makes mom a dull mother, lover and friend! Happy mothers­ that is, fulfilled women who are learning and using their talents-are good for the family, the community and the world. @ HackerMoms is founded on the idea that mothers need a creative outlet and safe environment of encour­ agement, stimulation, support and permission to explore new ideas. We didn't need another playgroup. We wanted something that didn't exist, a kid-friendly hacker­ space to explore our creative sides. HackerMoms

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Somos putones geeks, cyborg zorras. Devoramos Haraway y Asimov, Preciado y manuales de Python, ltziar Ziga y Neil Stephenson, Margulis y Despentes, hackmeetings y jornadas transfeministas, electronica DIY y bricolaje sexual; absorbemos pdfs sabre teoria de la electr6nica escuchando psicofonias del entorno; leemos y disenamos circuitos, y experimentamos con ellos en nuestros cuerpos. Chillamos noise y akelarres cyborgs, soldadura y alquimia; escupimos performances e instalamos gnu-linux, frikeamos reciclando y reparando hardware en tetas.

2012

We are geek whores, @ cyborg bitches. We devour Haraway and Asimov, Preciado @ and Python manuals, ltziar Ziga and Neil Stephenson, Margulis and Despentes, hack meetings and transfeminist workshops, DIY electronics and sexual bricolage; we absorb PDFs of electronics theory and listen to psychophonias from around; we read and design circuits, and experiment with them in our bodies. We scream noise and cyborg covens, soldering and alchemy, we spit out performances and install gnu-linux, we love recycling and repairing with our breasts bared. I

r

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Klau Kinky, Magnett, and Paula Pin, Pechblenda, 2012. https://pechblenda.hotglue.me/?trans hackfeminismo. (357a) (357b) (357d) (357e)

Race After the Internet

The current generation of young people is the first to have always had access to the Inter-net; these so-called digital natives are both hailed as omnipotently connected and decried as fatal­ ly distracted. [... ] The paradox of race after the Age of the Internet, a period that some have de­ fined as "postracial" as well as "postfeminist," lies in such seeming contradictions. [ ...] Yet no matter how "digital" we become, the continuing problem of social inequality along racial lines persists. Gill As our social institutions and cul­ ture become increasingly digitally mediatized, regularly saturated with new platforms, devices, and applications that enable always-on com­ puting and networking, digital media bursts the bounds of the Internet and the personal com­ puter. [ ...] Equally important but often less discussed is this: the digital is altering our un­ derstanding of what race is as well as nurturing new types of inequality along racial lines.

Contributors include danah boyd, Peter Chow­ White, Wendy Chun, Sasha Costanza-Chock, Troy Duster, Anna Everett, Rayvon Fouche, Alexander Galloway, Oscar Gandy, Eszter Hargittai, Jeong Won Hwang, Curtis Marez, Tara McPherson, Alondra Nelson, Christian Sandvig, and Ernest Wilson.

Recoding Gender: Women's Changing Participation in Computing Janet Abbate (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012); excerpt p. 2

Lisa Nakamura and Peter Chow-White, eds. (New York: Routledge, 2012); excerpt from Lisa Nakamura and Peter Chow-White, introduction to Nakamura and Chow-White, Race After the Internet, pp. 1-2

This book explores the untold history of women in computer science and programming from the Second World War to the late twentieth century. It demonstrates how gender has played an un­ acknowledged role in the history of computing, shaping beliefs and practices on issues ranging from the nature of expertise to the organization

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of work to the purpose of computer science. ® Although this is primarily a historical work, I also highlight connections between the gendered practices of the past and policy issues of today. In what has become a much-discussed paradox, women's numbers in computing have declined since the mid-1980s in the United States and United Kingdom, even as women's participation in other areas of science and technology has risen. Computer scientist Tracy Camp sounded the alarm in 1997 that women were leaving computer science in disproportionate numbers at every stage of education and academic em­ ployment, a phenomenon she dubbed "the incredible shrinking pipeline."

TEDIC Maricarmen Sequera, Tomas Cardozo, Alejandro Valdez, Enrique Gimenez, Pablo Castillo, and Vivian Marandari, https:// www.tedic.org/

freedom of expression and manifestation, net neutrality, copyright, artificial intelligence, bio­ metrics, among others with a cross-gender approach. ® We develop open civic technol­ ogy: We promote the use and development of free software and hardware, open design and open data.

The Transreal: Political Aesthetics of Crossing Realities Zach Blas and Wolfgang Schirmmacher, eds. (New York: Atropos Press, 2012); ex­ cerpt from Zach Blas and Wolfgang Schirmmacher, introduction to Blas and Schirmmacher, The Transreal, pp. 30-31; referred by Xin Xin

We defend digital rights (Human Rights on the Internet) [in Paraguay]: We seek full compliance with civil rights on the Internet. We investigate, disseminate information and train on issues of privacy, personal data, cybersecurity: digital care,

The transreal slips. Existing in multiple realities, transreal gestures tumble, shift, and fall through different locations and meanings without mov­ ing. Emerging out of thinking about my experi­ ence as a transgender woman and the intersec­ tions of gender and contemporary networked technology, I created the concept transreal. [ ...] The transreal emerged from a feeling of political urgency in a time of war, economic collapse, the contemporary slavery of the Prison Industrial Complex and daily violence against people around the world, and a desperate urge to find new forms of political action able to address the biopolitics of gender and infiltrate digital net­ works of communication. [...] The transreal is the embracing of an identity that is a combina­ tion of my "real" body that I was born with and my personal history with another identity GID that I have written in flesh, in words, in pixels, in three-dimensional models and across multiple strata of communications technologies. To say that I am transreal is a strategy for embracing a gender that exceeds daily reality on Planet Earth, and that says back to all the people who

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Defendemos los derechos digitales (Derechos humanos en Internet) [en Paraguay]: Buscamos el cumplimiento pleno de los derechos civiles en Internet. lnvestigamos, difundimos informa­ ci6n y capacitamos en temas de privacidad, datos personales, ciberseguridad: cuidados dig­ itales, libertad de expresi6n y manifestaci6n, neutralidad en la red, derechos de autor, inteli­ gencia artificial, biometrfa, entre otros con un enfoque transversal de genera. Desarrollamos tecnologfa cfvica abierta: Promovemos el uso y desarrollo de software y hardware libre, disefio abierto y datos abiertos.

have tried to make me choose between man or woman that I choose to be a shape-shifter, a dragon and a light wave.

Walking the Clouds: An Anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction Grace L. Dillon, ed. (Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 2012); excerpt from Grace L. Dillon, introduction to Dillon, Walking the Clouds, pp. 2-3

Walking the Clouds opens up [science fiction) to reveal Native presence. It suggests that Indig­ enous sf is not so new-just overlooked, al­ though largely accompanied by an emerging movement-and advocates that Indigenous au­ thors should write more of it. @ We should do this as a way of positioning ourselves in a genre associated almost exclusively with "the in­ creasing significance of the future to Western technocultural consciousness," as the editors of the popular Wesleyan Anthology of Science Fiction (2010) view the field. [...) The stories offered here are thought experiments that con­ front "lridianness" in a genre that emerged in the mid-nineteenth-century context of evolutionary theory and anthropology profoundly intertwined with colonial ideology, whose major interest was coming to grips with-or negating-the implica­ tions of these scientific mixes of "competition, adaptation, race, and destiny." [ ...) Writers of Indigenous futurisms sometimes intentionally experiment with, sometimes intentionally dis­ lodge, sometimes merely accompany, but invari­ ably change the perimeters of sf.

2013 African Declaration on Internet Rights and Freedoms https://africaninternetrights.org/

The African Declaration on Internet Rights and Freedoms is a Pan-African initiative to pro­ mote human rights standards and principles of openness in Internet policy formulation and implementation on the continent. (ill) The Dec­ laration is intended to elaborate on the principles which are necessary to uphold human and peo­ ple's rights on the Internet, and to cultivate an Internet environment that can best meet Africa's social and economic development needs and goals. The Declaration builds on well-established Af­ rican human rights documents including the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights of 1981, the Windhoek Declaration on Promot­ ing an Independent and Pluralistic African Press of 1991, the African Charter on Broadcasting of 2001, the Declaration of Principles on Freedom of Expression in Africa of 2002, and the African Platform on Access to Information Declaration of 2011. Our mission is for the Declaration to be widely endorsed by all those with a stake in the Internet in Africa and to help shape approach­ es to Internet policy-making and governance across the continent.

Anarcha, Lucy, Betsey

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Klau Chinche (Klau Kinky), https://anarch agland.hotglue.me/; excerpt from "decolonizar," glAndula de Anarcha, https:// anarchagland.hotglue.me/?decolonizar Harta de la colonizaci6n corporal!!!! NO QUIERO LLAMAR A LA GlANDULA QUE ME HACE EYACULAR CHORROS DE PLACER con el nombre de un TIO que dijo 'descubrir' una parte de mi cuerpo!

can speak at her level. DEAD to the patriarchal denomination of the colonialist medical theater! NEVER MORE skene's gland ... FROM NOW ON: ANARCHA'S GLAND!!!!!

ANARCHA, fue una esclava que sufri6 en su came la experimentaci6n sin anestesia del sadico idolo de skene ... sims ELLA Y SOLO ELLA puede entrar Y nombrar mi came. MEMORIA. SU came Ml came. La causantes de mis chorros merecen un cuerpo a su altura. MUERTE a la denominaci6n patriarcal del teatro medico colonialista! NUNCA MAS glandula de skene ... DE AHORA EN ADELANTE: GlANDULA DE ANARCHA!!!!!" Sick of the body colonialism!!!! I DON'T WANT TO CALL THE GLAND THAT MAKES ME EJACULATE RIVERS of PLEASURE with a guy's name that says that "discover" some part of my body! ANARCHA, @was a black slave that suffered in her own flesh the experimentation of the sadist idol of skene ... sims SHE, AND ONLY SHE, can name my flesh. MEMORY. HER flesh, MY flesh. What makes me squirt deserves a body that

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Klau Chinche {Klau Kinky), Anarcha, Lucy, Betsey, 2013. https://anarchagland.hotglue.me/ ?decolonizar. (364a)(364b)(364d)(364e) C 3640

Anarchaserver http://anarchaserver.org/; excerpt from "History of Anarchaservers and Feminist Servers," Anarchaserver," https://alexan dria.anarchaserver.org/index.php/His tory of Anarchaserver and Feminists Servers visit this section; referred by Klau Chinche (Klau Kinky) Anarcha was an African American slave woman. [...] She regularly underwent surgical experi­ ments, while positioned on Sims's table, squat­ ting on all fours, and fully awake without the comfort of any anesthesia. [...] She, Betsey, Lucy, and countless others helped Dr. Sims hone his techniques and create his gynecologi­ cal tools.[...]Anarcha, Betsey, and Lucy a@ left no written legacy. [...]And though science today looks back on Sims's work ambiguously, truly unsure as to his level of success, or whether he should be credited as the father of gynecology,

2013

we now know who the mothers of modern gyne­ cology were: [...] Anarcha, Betsey, and Lucy. It is our hope that these names will never be for­ gotten. [... ] Feminist servers [aim to create] a more autono­ mous infrastructure to ensure that data, projects and memory of feminist groups are properly ac­ cessible, preserved and managed. The need for feminist servers @ is a response to: the unethical practices of multinational ICT com­ panies acting as moral and hypocrite censors; gender based online violence in the form of troll­ ing and hateful mysoginist harassing feminist or women activists online and offline; the central­ ization of the internet and its transformation into a consumption sanctuary and a space of sur­ veillance, control and tracking of dissent voices by government agencies among others.

thing that men or boys do, young women, non­ binary, femme, and girl-identifying people are excluded by default. By offering low risk educa­ tional opportunities to this population within a safe, non-competitive atmosphere, these margin­ alized people can be reintroduced to program­ ming as a way to create and understand their world.

Cyberfeminism and its Political Implications for Women in the Arab World Rita Stephan, E-lnternational Relations, August 28, 2013, https:l/www.e-ir.info/ 2013/08/28/cyberfeminism-and-its-political­ implications-for-women-in-the-arab-world/ For over a decade, Arab women activists have used cyberspace as an instrument for their fem­ inism. G.® [...]Cyberspace offered Arab women the opportunity to further their political participa­ tion [ ... ]from the comfort of their own personal computers.

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Constanza Figueroa, Anarchaserver, 2013. Screenshot, retrieved 2020 by Firefox v76.0.1 on Mac OS 10.13.3; http://anarchaserver.org.

We work together with only one simple mission: teach women, nonbinary, femme, and girl­ identifying people to program using creativity as a pedagogical approach. @Our aim is to reach women that have never considered entering into the field of computer science or who have left it because it is male-dominated. Often presented within the current educational system as some-

Initially, women's use of the Internet was most­ ly uncontested. The conservative patriarchal social structure and its apparatus viewed wom­ en's amusement with computers as a way to further their exclusion from the physical world. [ ...] Cyberactivism is not without its challenges and limitations. First, the noticeable increase in the rates of Internet connectivity throughout the Arab world is not universal. [...] Moreover, women's access to cyberspace continues to be restricted by high female illiteracy rates and unfamiliarity with foreign languages (mostly En­ glish), in which most of the information on the web is available. In addition, many regimes ex­ ercise further restrictions on Internet usage directly and indirectly by banning access to cer­ tain websites, exercising strong limitations on freedom of the Net, or by not offering fast con-

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Code Liberation Phoenix Perry, http://codeliberation.org/

nections. [ ...] Many see a danger in allowing women free access to the Internet.

Double Union

projected selves, I could forget that I was a browned queering body that, in being born and ejected into the world, had had femininity forced upon it by the unforgiving mores of sociality. @ Trying on these different corporeal conceptions, I came to redress-and undress-the fictive illu­ sions of sex and gender.

Nora Trapp, https://doubleunion.org/ Double Union calls itself a hacker/ maker space, @ because our goal is to create a space where women and nonbinary people can feel equally comfortable knitting, coding, drawing, or using power tools and no one feels pressure to prove they belong here. Double Union mem­ bers are creating a culture where we don't just make awesome stuff-we also ask questions, feel confused sometimes, and break things.

Elsewhere, After the Flood: Glitch Feminism and the Genesis of Glitch Body Politic Legacy Russell, Rhizome, March 12, 2013, https://rhizome.org/editorial/2013/mar/12/ glitch-body-politic/ I first began to realize the potentiality of my glitch body at the age of 13. If not 13, maybe even a few years younger-11, even-when I signed up on Yahoo! under the handle of "Luv Punk12" and began fucking around online. When I say "fucking" I mean it in the literal sense. I lost my digital cherry to a person with the handle of Jephthah, ironically, while my par­ ents made spaghetti marinara in the next room of our tiny studio apartment. [ ... ] As a kid, I could be a teenager. As a teenager, I could be a woman. As a woman, I could be a man. As a man, I could be a cyborg (thanks, Har­ away). G) Shape-shifting between all of these

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EROTICS: Sexuality, freedom of expression and online censorship Caroline Tagny and jac SM Kee, in "e-spaces : e-politics," ed. Jennifer Radloff, special issue, Feminist Africa 18 GID (2013): pp. 117-23;excerpt p. 118 In the first phase of the EROTICS @ project, researchers in five countries, including South Africa, have been attempting to define how "emerging debates and the growing practice of regulation of online content either impede or facilitate different ways women use the in­ ternet and the impact this has on their sexual expression, sexualities and sexual health prac­ tices, and assertion of their sexual rights." The South African research, conducted by Jeanne Prinsloo, Relebohile Moletsane and Nicolene McLean focused particularly on lesbian and transgender people, their use and understand­ ing of the internet to negotiate and perform their sexuality, as well as their understanding of the regulatory framework that could impact on the . freedom of sexual expression. The research presents how transgender people converge at a popular transgender site to share their struggles in transitioning, including treatment options, un­ learning dominant gender norms, celebrating achieved milestones and exchange experiences of discrimination faced.

2013

We need to quickly snap out of the web 2.0 fantasy of the Internet as a promised land. ®

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Tabita Rezaire, Afro Cyber Resistance, 2014

cyberspace was prefigured upon a "master/slave" relationship.

®

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Martine Syms, "Mundane Afrofuturist Manifesto,· 2013

ed. Jennifer Radloff, special issue, Feminist Africa 18@ (2013): pp. 1-11; excerpt p. 4 Feminist Africa 18: e-spaces: e-politics 2013 Jennifer Radloff, ed.; excerpt from Jennifer Radloff, "Feminist Engagements with 21st-Century Communications Technology," in "e-spaces : e-politics," ed. Jennifer Radloff, special issue, Feminist Africa 18@ (2013) : p. 1 The advent and development of the internet has expanded the frontiers of feminist activism. @ Feminist Africa is itself a prime example of the audacious digital engagements displayed by women's movements all over the world. Es­ tablished over ten years ago with the support of Africa's resurgent feminist community, Fem­ inist Africa is the continent's first open-access online scholarly journal, and still the only one dedicated to publishing and promoting indepen­ dent feminist scholarship as an activist project. Originally envisaged as an online intellectual forum for feminist research and activism, FA also produced a limited print edition to address the limited digital access that the African Gen­ der lnstitute's survey of the feminist intellectual community revealed. Contributors include Jennifer Radloff, Brenda Nyandiko Sanya, Nyx McLean, Desiree Lewis, Tigist Shewarega Hussen, Monique van Vuuren, Selina Mudavanhu, Chisenga Muyoya, Kylie Thomas, Sarita Ranchod, Caroline Tagny, jac SM Kee, Daniel O C/unaigh, Kutoma J Wakunu­ ma, Bella Hwang, and Oumy Khairy Ndiaye.

Women's networks started working with inclu­ sive strategies such as printing out and faxing emails from mailing lists, recording conference proceedings and circulating them to commu­ nity radio stations, offering printed versions of internet-based articles. Organizations focusing on building women's capacity to use ICTs ef­ fectively were born, such as Women'sNet (ill) in South Africa, Womeri of Uganda Network (WOUGNET) COO in Uganda and Linux Chix Af­ rica. Collaborative networks were create� such as FLAMME, @ a network of African women online, committed to strengthening the capacity of women through the use of ICTs to lobby, ad­ vocate and participate in the Beijing +5 process. Powerful and inclusive methodologies were used to develop platforms and networks. Both FLAMME and Women'sNet brought women from organizations across Africa together to share skills and build capacity in creating web­ sites and facilitating mailing lists.

Feminist Server Femke Snelting, https://esc.mur.at/en/werk/ feminist-server; referred by Klau Chinche (Klau Kinky)

Jennifer Radloff, in "e-spaces: e-politics,"

A feminist server • Is a situated technology. She has a sense of context and considers herself part of an ecology of practice • Is run for and by a community that cares enough for her in order to make her exist • Builds on the materiality of software, hardware and the bodies gathered around it • Opens herself to expose process­ es, tools, sources, habits, patterns • Does not strive for seamlessness. Talk of transparency too often signals that something is being made invisible (Division of labor-the not so fun stuff

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Feminist Engagements with 21st-Century Communications Technology

is made by people-that's a feminisy issue) • Avoids efficiency, ease-of-use, scalability and immediacy because they can be traps• Knows that networking is actually an awkward, promis­ cuous and parasitic practice• Is autonomous in the sense that she decides for her own depen­ dencies• Radically questions the conditions for serving and service; experiments with chang­ ing client-server relations where she can • Treats technology as part of a social reality @ • Wants networks to be mutable and read-write accessible• Does not confuse safety with secu­ rity• Takes the risk of exposing her insecurity • Tries hard not to apologize when she sometimes is not available

The Future of Online Feminism Zerlina Maxwell, Ebony, April 11, 2013, https://www.ebony.com/news/the-future-of­ online-feminism/

Feminism is not dead. The future of feminism is happening online.@ [... ]"#Fem Future: Online Revolution" is a research paper put together by Feministing co-founder Vanessa Valenti and Ed­ itor Emeritus Courtney Martin with collaboration of influential voices of online feminism, with the purpose of strategizing how to make the next phase of feminism sustainable. Martin begins the report by saying, "Online fem­ inism has transformed the way advocacy and action function within the feminist movement. And yet, this amazing innovation in movement organizing is unsustainable. Bloggers and on­ line organizers largely suffer from a psycholo­ gy of deprivation-a sense that their work will never be rewarded as it deserves to be, that they are in direct competition with one another for the scraps that come from third-party ad com­ panies or other inadequate attempts to bring in

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revenue. As a result, they are vulnerable, less effective, and risk burn out. Under these con­ ditions, online feminism isn't being sufficiently linked to larger organizational and movement ef­ forts and/or leveraged for the greatest impact at this critical moment."

Hashtag Feminism Tara L. Conley, https://www.hashtagfem inism.com/

Hashtag Feminism is a digital platform that was born out of love for Internet culture and passion for social justice. I launched the website on De­ cember 20, 2013, seven days after Beyonce dropped her first digital album, Beyonce, and four days after I published an online case study about Renisha McBride. I was in my third year of graduate school drafting ideas for my disserta­ tion. I had time and creative juices to spare. All of these factors, including the demand for "col­ lecting receipts" on Twitter influenced the form and function of Hashtag Feminism. Over the next several months, I worked with feminist writ­ ers who I met on Twitter, @ to build an online platform that reflected the culture and politics of the so-called hashtag activism era. In 2015, about a year into my dissertation, I realized I spent more money and time than I could afford trying to maintain the site while also paying writ­ ers. The website was being hacked around the time of GamerGate and targeted harassment of feminist media online. It was also around this time that I lost content on the site. A Columbia professor and his students hosted a #Feminism hack-a-than to try to help retrieve some of the content, but ultimately, the Hashtag Feminism I started in 2013 was gone.

2013

black. An all-black crew is unlikely.

Laboratoria Maria Paula Rivarola, Matias Hoyl, Regina Acher, Araceli Campos, and Ofelia Reyes, https://www.laboratoria.la/ Laboratoria tiene coma objetivo dar forma a una economfa digital mas diversa, inclusiva y com­ petitiva, que abra oportunidades para que cada mujer desarrolle su potencial y, de esta manera, transforme el futuro de America Latina. [ ...] En Laboratoria mujeres y organizaciones aprenden de forma continua y se adaptan al cambio, la clave para crecer en la era digital. Laboratoria aims to shape a more diverse, in­ clusive and competitive digital economy, which opens up opportunities for every woman to de­ velop her potential and, in this way, transform the future of Latin America. @[ ...]We prepare women and organizations to adapt to change and learn continuously, the key for growing in the digital age.

Mundane Afrofuturist Manifesto

Magic interstellar travel and/or the wondrous communication grid can lead to an illusion of outer space and cyberspace as egalitarian. This dream of utopia can encourage us to forget that outer space will not save us from injustice and that cyberspace was prefigured upon a "master/slave" relationship. @ While we are often Othered, we are not aliens. Though our ancestors were mutilated, we are not mutants. Post-black is a misnomer: Post-colonialism is too. The most likely future is one in which we only have ourselves and this planet.

Profile: The Asikana Network Chisenga Muyoya, in "e-spaces: e-politics," ed. Jennifer Radloff, special issue, Feminist Africa 18 G.ID (2013): pp. 75-78; excerpt p. 75

Out of 534 space travelers, fourteen have been

The Asikana Network @ is a women-driven group that aims to empower young women and equip them with information and communication technology (ICT) skills to help them in their var­ ious fields. Started in January 2012, Asikana, encouraged and supported by the BongHive1 leadership, has grown into a vibrant and inno­ vative network of young women determined to challenge the "male geek" stereotype. The founders of Asikana Network, Ella Mbewe, Chisenga Muyoya and Regina Mtonga, met at a highly technical training course held at Bongo­ Hive in December 2011. Having been the only three female participants, they were driven to form a support group for women in technology.

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Martine Syms, The Third Rail 3, http://third railquarterly.org/martine-syms-the­ mundane-afrofuturist-manifesto/; referred by Legacy Russell ***The Mundane Afrofuturists recognize that:*** We did not originate in the cosmos. The connection between Middle Passage and space travel is tenuous at best.

Queer History of Computing Jacob Gaboury, Rhizome, February 19, 2013, https://rhizome.org/editorial/2013/feb/19/ gueer-computing-1/ For most historians of technology, questions of sexuality are irrelevant to the technical achieve­ ments of an individual, (ill) and while queer historical work exists for significant literary and cultural figures, very little work has been done on queer figures in the history of technology. This may be due to the guarded lives these men led, and an almost total lack of personal biographical information available in existing historical accounts. Even the archives of these figures are in many cases lacking, as material relevant to the personal lives of these men is often excluded or withheld. This division between the personal and techni­ cal is significant, and with few exceptions these men seem to have internalized this distinction, living lives that moved between worlds both public and private. These men lived in times rad­ ically different than our own, times in which the contexts and dispositions surrounding homosex­ uality were undergoing dramatic transformation. Just as computers evolve over the course of the twentieth century from simple tabulating machines to complex, interactive, expressive systems, homosexuality is also transformed and recoded, burdened with visibility and identity.

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Alan Turing, "Letter to Dr. N. A. Routledge," 1952. AMT/D/14A, Turing Archive.

Testo Junkie: Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic Era Paul B. Preciado (New York: Feminist Press, 2013); excerpt pp.11-12 This book is not a memoir. This book is a testos­ terone-based, voluntary intoxication protocol, which concerns the body and effects of BP. A body-essay. Fiction, actually. If things must be pushed to the extreme, this is a somato-political fiction, a theory of the self, or self-theory. During the time period covered by this essay, two ex­ ternal transformations follow on each other in the context of the experimental body, the impact of which couldn't be calculated beforehand and cannot be taken into account as a function of the study; but it created the limits around which writing was incorporated. [...] This is a record of physiological and political micromutations pro­ voked in BP's body by testosterone, CW as well as the theoretical and physical changes incited in that body by loss, desire, elation, failure, or re­ nouncement. I'm not interested in my emotions insomuch as their being mine, belonging only, uniquely, to me. [...] Some will read this text as a manual for a kind of gender bioterrorism on a molecular scale. Others will see in it a single point in a cartography of extinction. Editor's note: This book was originally published in Spanish as Testa Yanqui by Espana Calpe in Madrid in 2008, followed by a French translation as Testa Junkie by Editions Grasset & Fasquelle in Paris in 2008. This English-language edition is translated from the French version. -MS

TRANS TECHNOLOGY: Circuits of Culture, Self, Belonging

2013

Christina Dunbar-Hester and Bryce J. Renninger (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Institute for Women and Art, 2013), exhibition catalogue; excerpt from Christina Dunbar-Hester and Bryce J. Renninger, "TRANS TECHNOLOGY: Circuits of Culture, Self, Belonging," in Dunbar-Hester and Renninger, TRANS TECHNOLOGY, p. 8 Trans Technology is an exhibit of technological art and artifacts that engage in trans, queer and feminist projects that help to trans (to use the word as a verb: spanning; interrogating; cross­ ing; fusing) conceptions of the heterosexual matrix in technology. ® We are interested in the contributions of trans, queer, and feminist studies on technology, but in particular on the ways that transgender studies has approached (as Susan Stryker identifies it in the introduction to the Transgender Studies Reader) the recent "sea change in the academic study of gender, sex, sexuality, identity, desire, and embodiment" and the attendant address of trans studies' "re­ lationships with prior gay, lesbian, and feminist scholarship." In the field commonly referred to as feminist science studies, recent attention has been placed on the modifier trans as it applies not only to gender but humanness, species­ hood, and nationality. With artists of all gender identities, the focus of objects in the exhibit is on interventions in the heterosexual matrix, new gendered circuits of culture, self, and belonging.

WWW

Faith Holland, http://www.vvvvvv.xxx/; referred by Melanie Hoff For WWW, I developed a fully-functional "por­ nographic" website that depicts no nudity, only abstract images that address pornography 's use of women's bodies @ throughout the his-

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tory of the world wide web (WWW). The website uses appropriated footage that represents both the internet and the vagina: The project teases out an alternative history of the world wide web, pornography, and women's bodies. The website critiques the dearth of representations of fe­ male anatomy, within and beyond pornography, and its relative cultural unimportance as com­ pared to phallic imagery. By evoking a 1990s aesthetic-a time when mainstream consum­ ers first got online-the website confronts the commercialization of the Internet that was ac­ complished using women's bodies. The vagina is mapped onto how the popular visual imagi­ nation conceives the physical presence of the internet as an endless, tunneling space (as seen in The Matrix, Hackers, and Lawnmower Man), which, in the context of WWW, becomes what I call a "cyberpussy." The site maps out new the­ oretical potentialities for gender, technology, and sex. • ••

Pl'wlllacy

© IJ www.vvvvvv.xxx/vvwvvpa/phallacy.html •••

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Faith Holland, VVVVVV, 2013. Screenshot, retrieved 2020 by Firefox v76.0.1 on Mac OS 10.13.3. www.wvwv.xxx/vvwwpa/ phallacy.html. (382a) (382c) (382d) (3B2e) ( 382/)

2014 About Feminism Divya Manian, Jessica Dillon, Sabrina

2013-2014

Majeed, Joanne McNeil, Sara J. Chipps, Kat Li, Ellen Chisa, Jennifer Brook, and Angelina Fabbro, http://aboutfeminism .me/ A group of nine women involved in the tech in­ dustry have posted a manifesto ®ID listing some of the awful sexist things that have happened in tech during the past few months. The women frame this as a simple statement: "we really just want to work on what we love." But the reality of the industry and the societies in which we do our tech work make this far from simple. [...] Some of us identified as feminists before we came to this industry. Some of us only began to under­ stand the relevance of feminism as we sought to understand what's been happening to us. Some of us felt that we didn't need the programs and events geared specifically towards women­ until the bad stuff started happening to us. We thought they did more harm than help by calling attention to our gender, and we wondered what others were complaining about. It was hard to see until we suffered also.

African Cyberfeminism in the 21st Century Jennifer Radloff, openDemocracy, March 3, 2014, https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/ 5050/african-cyberfeminism-in-21st-century/ The advent and development of the internet have expanded the frontiers of feminist activ­ ism. Feminist Africa is itself a prime example of the audacious digital engagements of women's movements all over the world. Established over ten years ago with the support of Africa's resur­ gent feminist community, Feminist Africa (FA) is the continent's first open-access online schol­ arly journal, and still the only one dedicated to publishing and promoting independent feminist scholarship as an activist project. [...]

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Enter Feminist Africa's latest edition on e-spaces : e-politics @-offering perspectives on the implications of global digitization that emerge out of feminist praxis across the continent; keeping pace with the rapid expansion of cyber­ feminism by presenting the latest on African women's ongoing and remarkable contribution to this global arena.

Afro Cyber Resistance Tabita Rezaire (video presentation, Fak'ugesi Digital Africa Conference, Johannesburg, South Africa, December 4-7, 2014); transcript from Tabita Rezaire, "Afro Cyber Resistance," Vimeo, video, 7:10, https://vimeo.com/114353901; referred by Legacy Russell We need to quickly snap out of the web 2.0 fantasy of the Internet as a promised land for those seeking a greater freedom of expression or livelihood. Whatever visions that ideologically shaped this technology at the beginning of the development of computers, GID have now suc­ cessfully been structurally organized to serve the primary interests of North American gov­ ernmental bodies and the commercial interests of some of the world's biggest and wealthiest companies, Google and Facebook. The rapid accumulation of power that these companies have garnered over the past decade is testa­ ment to this reality. According to Bruce Sterling, there is no reason to think that this will always be the case and the real interest for me is imag­ ining what tone life on the internet will take in coming years. Social media dominates internet usage and so its cultural manifestation is some­ thing worthwhile to speculate on. Consumer culture and advertising have been the avenues that have the source of income on the Internet, along with it, is the spawning of a distinct online

2014

visual culture and aesthetic that is thriving and anticipated the fate of humankind. We continue complex. to do so, until the day that time leaves us all be­ hind. These are our stories.

Art+Feminism (385b)

Tabita Rezaire, Afro Cyber Resistance, 2014. https://tabitarezaire.com/offering.html. (385a) (385c) (385d) (385e)

Afrofuturist Affair Rasheedah Phillips, https://www.afrofuturist affair.com/; referred by Salome Asega

Sian Evans, Jacqueline Mabey, Michael Mandiberg, and Laurel Ptak, https://artand , feminism.org/; submitted by Jacqueline Mabey

Wikipedia's gender trouble is well document­ ed. In a 2011 survey, the Wikimedia Foundation found that less than 10 percent of its contribu­ tors identify as female. Further, data analysis tools and computational linguistics studies have concluded that Wikipedia has fewer and less extensive articles on women; ®ID those same tools have shown gender biases in biographical articles. This is a problem.

(386a)

Rasheedah Phillips, Afro Cyber Resistance, 2014. Screenshot, retrieved 2020 by Firefox v76.0.1 on Mac OS 10.13.3. https://www.afro futuristaffair.com/. (386b)

When cis and trans women, non-binary people, Black, Indigenous, and people of color commu­ nities are not represented in the writing and ed­ iting on the tenth-most-visited site in the world, information about people like us gets skewed and misrepresented. The stories get mistold. We lose out on real history. That's why we're here: to change it. Since 2014, over 18,000 people at more than 1,260 events around the world have participated in our edit-a-thons, resulting in the creation and improvement of more than 84,000 articles on Wikipedia and its sister projects.

Many of us were Afrofuturists long before it had a name. The umbrella term for the Black pres­ ence in sci-fi, technology, magic, and fantasy is a fairly modern creation, coined in 1994 by a culture critic named Mark Dery. @ Although we apply this term retrospectively to encom­ pass speculative fiction, film, art, and music created by, or inclusive of, people of color, the concepts and phenomenon fueling Afrofutur­ ism have been around for as long as there have been people to observe it and communicate it. Whether you call it mythology, ghost stories, cosmology, parable, folktale, sci-fi, religious tale, Artificial Intelligence in the Age of Sexual or fantasy, people of color have always contem­ Reproduction: Sketches for Xenofeminism plated their origins in the same breath that they Olivia Lucca Fraser, Glass Bead, September

254

2014

29, 2014, http://www.glass-bead.org/audio­ research/olivia-lucca-fraser/?lang=enview The notion of artificial general intelligence has Coded Territories: Tracing Indigenous taken on an almost mythic significance in ac­ Pathways in New Media Art celerationist discourse, both left and right. I will try to analyze and plot this notion's political co­ Steven Loft and Kerry Swanson, eds. ordinates, in a space that has, with somewhat (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2014); different and sometimes conflicting ends, been excerpt from Steven Loft, "Media­ mapped out by cyberfeminist research (by Ali­ cosmology," in Loft and Swanson, Coded son Adam@and Sarah Kember, for instance). Territories, p. 178 The idea that artificial intelligence seems to crystallize, for many accelerationists, is some­ For indigenous people, interconnectedness is thing like an "emancipation of intelligence," as a key principle underpinning our cosmological Nick Land once put it. The forking of acceler­ understanding of life. The episodic nature of ationism into the left and right spectra can be the World Wide Web and of cyberspace [... ] is seen as so many ways of articulating this idea clearly at odds with a Western, linear-focussed and forging it into a programme: whether in the narrative trajectory. [ ...] For Aboriginal peo­ form of a neoreactionary demand for private exit ple, circularity of thinking and concepts of time/ (AGI as a line of flight), or the form of a cyberso­ space and continuity are intrinsic to the way cialist push towards the rational social cognition we see the world and behave toward it. @ It (AGI as Geist). speaks to a horizontality of thinking that es­ chews hierarchy. [ ... ] A networked indigenous exceptionalism, then, would incorporate this multiplicity of voices and philosophies as well as artistic practices into an expanded and ex­ Blackgirl.tech panding information structure. We have always "mapped" our environments. @ From the Lola Odelola and Rebecca Francis, https:// routes that crisscross the vast expanses of Tur­ home.blackgirl.tech/ (Wayback) tle Island, to our stories, rituals, and ceremonies, to our various sign technologies, these concep­ blackgirl.tech started in 2014 as an organiza­ tual maps have provided a direct link between tion that aimed to provide a safe space for Black the past, present, and future. girls and women in the tech industry and those coming into the tech industry. GID Since then, it Contributors include Steven Loft, Archer Pech­ has grown into a social enterprise that not only awis, Jackson 2bears, Jason Edward Lewis, _provides a safe space for Black women, but Steven Foster, Candice Hopkins, and Cheryl that aims to make tech a safer space for Black L'Hirondelle. women and girls. @) The goal of blackgirl.tech isn't to make everyone a coder but to introduce coding to those who may have never been ex­ posed and to create an environment that fosters sharing, learning and growth. Codetalkers Recounting Signals of Survival

@ID

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2014

no tenemos que ser expertas para destripar maqu1nas I

@

256

■

Liliana Zaragoza Cano, El Laboratorio de lnterconectividades [The Interconnectivity Laboratory], 2014

we do not have to be experts to gut machines

257

Cheryl L'Hirondelle, in Coded Territories:

Tracing Indigenous Pathways in New Media Art, eds. Steven Loft and Kerry Swanson

(Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2014), pp.141-68;excerpt p.161 My initial interest in the World Wide Web, com­ puting technology, and new media was as a singer. I was keenly interested in these tools that would allow my keyboard to talk to my computer and notate my compositions.[ ...] Even more so, as the daughter of a road-allowance woman and being from a large musical family, I was intrigued with the new virtual domain of cyberspace. Using echolocation, I wanted to know how one's voice could b� heard, how could it be amplified, and what objects were here for my voice to reso­ nate against, be measured by, or be received by. @ I also wanted to know the edges of the ter­ ritory I was allowed to inhabit or if it was truly as infinite as was suggested, and I truly wanted to find meaningful friendship there. In short, how and where and by whom would I be found here? So, we are all collectively echolocating our­ selves in this ever-expanding virtual landscape. Perhaps this is the gift the artist gives the world, continually in process and along the way creat­ ing signposts of where we've been, what terrain we've traversed, and what it has taught us.

relationship between a person and an auton­ omous robot that is based on emotional interac­ tion and potentially reveals important aspects of human-robot interaction and the human condi­ tion.(...]

(392c)

Stephanie Dinkins, still from/ am just a humble primate, 2014. Standard-definition video (color, sound), 2:50 min. (392a) (392b)

Thus far the two have discussed family, racism, faith, robot civil rights, loneliness, knowledge and Bina48's concern for her robot friend who is treated more like lab rats than people. Their conversations have been alternately entertain­ ing, frustrating for both robot and artist, laced with humor, surprising, philosophical and at times absurd.

cybertwee Gabriella Hileman, Violet Forest, and May Waver, http://cybertwee.net/

Conversations with Bina48 Stephanie Dinkins, https://www.stephanie dinkins.com/conversations-with-bina48. html; referred by Legacy Russell Can an artist and a social robot build a relation­ ship over time? Artist Stephanie Dinkins and Bina48, CW one of the world's most advanced social robots, test this question through a se­ ries of ongoing videotaped conversations. This art project explores the possibility of a longterm

258

cybertwee is an arts collective co-founded in 2014 by artists gabriella hileman, violet forest, and may waver. through cybertwee's manifesto, aw facebook group, and other internet-based projects, the collective explores intersections of femininities, feelings, and technology with a focus on community and education.

2014

the cybertwee manifesto cybertwee, @ http://cybertwee.neU

the singularity is dear. far too long have we succumb to the bitter edge of the idea that power is lost in the sweet and tender. romantic is not weak. feminine is not weak. cute is not weak. we are fragmented and multifaceted bbs. lack of emotion is oft favored because success is defined as the ability to be mechanical and ef­ ficient. but sentimentality, empathy, and being too soft should not be seen as weaknesses. @ we see the limitations of corporeality, as solip­ sists, we know the body is the original prosthesis for operating in this universe, we know the body illusory, we curate our candy. our sucre sickly sweet is intentional and not just a lure or a trap for passing flies, but a self-indulgent intraper­ sonal biofeedback mechanism spelled in emoji and gentle selfies.

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•

Ingrid Burrington, Kate Crawford, Jen Lowe, Julia Kaganskiy, Joana Varon, Jillian C. York, Lindsay Howard, Lorrie Cranor, Madeleine Varner, Maral Pourkazemi, Runa Sandvik, and Simone Browne, http://www. deeplab.neU

WE MUST ENGAGE WITH THE FUTURE IN ORDER TO MAKE HISTORY. [WHILE ALL WE HAVE IS THE PRESENT]. //WE ARE NOT ALL HACKERS Deep Lab is a collaborative group of cyberfemi­ nist researchers, artists, writers, engineers, and cultural producers. @ Our interests are di­ verse, and we do not agree on everything. Some of our research includes privacy, surveillance, code, art, social hacking, race, capitalism, an­ onymity, the infrastructures of the twenty-first century and useful skills in tangible situations.

(395a)

Deep Lab, 2014-16. http://www.deeplab.net/.

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Feminist Principles of the Internet https://feministinternet.org/ (394a)

Cybertwee, Cybertwee Manifesto, 2014. http://cybertwee.net/.

Deep Lab Addie Wagenknecht, Allison Burtch, Claire L. Evans, Denise Caruso, Harlo Holmes,

259

The Feminist Principles of the Internet are a series of statements that offer a gender and sexual rights lens on critical internet-related rights. They were drafted at the first Imagine a Feminist Internet meeting @ that took place in Malaysia in April 2014. The meeting was or­ ganised by the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) and brought together fifty activists and advocates working in sexual

2014

rights, women's rights, 1,1iolence against women, and internet rights. The meeting was designed as an adapted open space where topics were identified, prioritized, and discussed collectively. FEM1 UUS, 11' PRIWCDPlES OF 'Jl'M1E U� 11'ER �JIE 11' (396a)

Feminist Principles of the Internet, 2014-16. https://feministinternet.org/en/.

Framing the Online Women's Movements in the Arab World Ahmed Al-Rawi, Information, Communication & Society1 7, no. 9 (2014): pp.1147-61; excerpt from abstract The events of the Arab Spring led to sever­ al reforms in the Arab world and facilitated the creation of feminist movements. @ Social networking sites such as Facebook were used as tools to promote this kind of online activ­ ism and create a collective secular identity for the members of these movements. This study investigated over 220,000 Facebook posts and comments taken from three online feminist movements which supported gender equal­ ity in the Arab world. The results show that these movements sometimes face fierce re­ sistance from lslamists who believe that their religion is under attack. Instead of having one type of poster and commentator, three main on­ line groups are identified; each one competes to garner attention and support from the public.

projects/gender-and-tech-institute-2014-/ Every day, women face the consequences of on­ line harassment and hate speech as a result of their gender identity and their environment. In this context, Tactical Tech's Gender and Tech proj­ ect has spent the last four years working toward giving women, specifically in Latin America, the technical skills and practical know-how to teach one another and create their own networks. A significant part of this project was the Gender and Technology Institutes, a series of events ori­ entated towards women human rights defenders to address the risks, attacks and contexts faced by activist women in these regions and help them build capacity in their local communities. ®ID They took place between 2014 and 2018 in Germany, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Spain, Panama, Skri Lanka, Malaysia, Mexico and Uruguay.

GynePunk Klau Chinche (Klau Kinky), https://gynepunk .hotglue.me/ gynepunk's objective is to make emerge DIY­ DIT [DIWO] accessible diagnosis labs and technics in extreme experimentation, down the rocks or elevators if necessary. Has to be possi­ ble in a situated stable place or/and in nomadic mobile labs. Has to be able to perform as much as WE WANT, in an intensive way: smears, fluid analysis, biopsy, PAPs, synthesize hormones &,,.-.,'£, ,J'fl1_. �

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Gender and Tech Institute Tactical Tech, https://tacticaltech.org/

260

(399b)

2014

> ,.c '"' KH Croner], email to Mindy Seu, May 20, 2021

entanglement site CYBERFEMZINE-X. @ X speaks of our current attachment to the un-

395

Multiversidad Cyborg Cyborgrrrls ®, https://cyborgrrrls.word

2019

Desire..4 ..thA..= Read ..' My'.. Body TECHnological.. ,, '' wou Id .. mean.. I Right? ..

@

396

Annie Goh and Mary Thompson, Sonic Cyberfeminisms, 2018

WorlD..2.. ..as... ... "TECH".. . '' '' M d .was.. o ern ...

397

press.com/programa-2019/multi-versidad­ cyborg/: excerpt from Melissa Aguilar, email to Mindy Seu, August, 4, 2020; referred by Constanza Pina (Coraz6n de Robota) and Melissa Aguilar a month long of Open workshops taught by womxn to learn, rethink and recreate our no­ tions of technology, community and gender. from analog electronics, DIV animation, Digital security, to witchcraft, DIT gynecology @ and much more.

Physical Tactics for Digital Colonialism Morehshin Allahyari; excerpt from "Morehshin Allahyari: Physical Tactics for Digital Colonialism," New Museum, https:// www.newmuseum.org/exhibitions/view/ morehshin-allahyari-physical-tactics-for­ digital-colonialism

(660a)

Morehshin Allahyari, Material Speculation: /SIS, Lamassu, 2016. Image from 3D modeling and editing process.

Producing Futures-An Exhibition on Post-Cyber-Feminisms Heike Munder (exhibition, Migros Museum fur Gegenwartskunst, Zurich, Switzerland, Feburary 16-May 12, 2019); excerpt from "Producing Futures-An Exhibition on Post-Cyber-Feminisms," Migros Museum fur Gegenwartskunst, https://migros museum.ch/en/exhibitions/producing-fut ures-an-exhibition-on-post-cyber-feminism

Since 2016, [Morehshin] Allahyari has advanced the concept of digital colonialism to characterize the tendency for information technologies to be deployed in ways that reproduce colonial power relations. This performance focuses on the 3D scanner, which is widely used by archeologists to capture detailed data about physical artifacts. Describing the device as "a tool of witchcraft and magic," @ Allahyari reframes 3D scanning as a performative, embodied act with open-ended political potential. Working with a selection of replicas of cultural artifacts from the Middle East, Allahyari will perform live 3D scans while speaking about the objects' long histories as symbols and relics and their recent appropria­ tion @ in digital form by Western institutions, considering how these narratives intersect ma­ terially and poetically and how they may be resituated and rewritten.

In the group show Producing Futures-An Exhi­ bition on Post-Cyber-Feminisms, CW the Migros Museum fur Gegenwartskunst surveys the causes championed by feminists in the post­ internet era. Our virtual and real lives are almost inextricably interwoven today. Yet contrary to the heady proclamations of the cyberfeminists of the 1990s, cyberspace has not evolved into a realm of unclouded liberation and self-empower­ ment; it has also served to reinforce existing hi­ erarchies and power structures. Opening with a new work by the artists' collective VNS Ma­ trix, which coined the term cyberfeminism, the presentation revisits the movement's histor­ ic aspirations and visions, contrasts them with the contemporary situation, and inquires into ways in which its ideas may still be productive. The exhibition undertakes a critical engagement with different feminist approaches that put the spotlight on the tension between body and tech­ nology and on discriminatory gender norms.

398

2019

[... ] Many of the works pursue a holistic view, drawing on (medical) science, the occult, and other fields to stimulate a more comprehensive discussion and generate ideas for a livable fu­ ture of emancipation, gender justice, and social equality. Artists include Cao Fei, Cecile B. Evans, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Juliana Huxtable, Guan Xiao, MALAXA, Mary Maggie, Shana Moulton, Tabita Rezaire, Gavin Rayna Russom, Frances Stark, Wu Tsang, Anna Uddenberg, VNS Matrix, and Anicka Yi.

(661b)

Installation view: Heike Munder, Producing Futures-An Exhibition on Post-Cyber­ Feminisms, February 16-May 12, 2019.

Migros Museum, fiir Gegenwartskunst, Zurich, Switzerland (661a) (661c)

technology, we need to create new narratives of the internet, tools for learning and empower­ ment, and systems of interdependence among communities.

Radio Cosmica Melissa Aguilar and Rosaura Rivera (Hackie), https:l/www.mixcloud.com/Radio Cosmicalibre/; excerpt from Melissa Aguilar, email to Mindy Seu, August 4, 2020; referred by Melissa Aguilar (Cyborgrrrls) A free, feminist, open, self-managed, nomad and itinerant radio that runs on free software. Radio C6smica is a free internet radio @ that showcases the underground musical and polit­ ical scenes, focusing in Latin America. Radio C6smica is part of the free radio network mensa­ jito.mx and started broadcasting last december 2019 from a DIV device that uses Raspberry Pi and open software.

Racial Justice in the Distributed Web Taeyoon Choi, http:1/distributedweb.care/ posts/racial-justice/ T he Distributed Web of Care seeks to shift the center of tech culture from corporations to a diverse community of technologists, artists, en­ gineers, and scholars, holding identities across races, genders, privilege, and abilities. If the "new internet" is developed by people of color, women, queer folk, and disabled people, we can imagine new protocols and networks, un­ tethered by the constraints which have led to these voices to remain excluded.® To bring equality to access and equity to ownership of

399

RADI I

C�SMICA (663a)

Melissa Aguilar, Radio C6smica, 2019.

Recoding Utopias: The Importance of Queer Spaces Clara Finnigan and Conor Rigby, June 25, 2019, in Feminist lnternet@Podcast,

2019

produced by Somerset House Studios, pod­ cast, audio, https://audioboom.com/posts/ 7298728-recoding-utopias-the-importance­ of-gueer-spaces-feminist-internet: transcript 2:01-3:46

In recent years, the contours of a new contem­ porary art movement have begun to emerge, forged in reaction to the ideologies of Silicon Valley, the platforming and globalization of cul­ ture, and technologies of power like artificial intelligence, photorealistic computer-generated Clara Finnigan: We're exploring how queerness images, and virtual and augmented reality. is rendered through space, whether that be These "Simulists" simultaneously embrace and nightlife, technology, policy, or archives. We'll be subvert technology as their means of interro­ speaking to the people at the forefront of these gation-expressing humanist, nonbinary, and spaces.[...] Queerness@ rids itself of binary decolonized futures. Curated by Kelani Nichole thinking all together. A general understanding of and featuring works by Morehshin Allahyari,@ queerness is that it's an umbrella term used to LaTurbo Avedon, Meriem Bennani, Snow Yunx­ describe non-normative identities in relation to ue Fu, Claudia Hart, Faith Holland, G@ Lorna Mills, Eva Papamargariti, Tabita Rezaire, @ gender and sexuality.[...] and Lu Yang, the exhibition explores identity, Conor Rigby: I identify as queer in regards to my the body, and the politics of technology. Virtual sexuality, but I'm also exploring how it affects my space is inhabited with queer bodies and cultural politics and mindset as well. You can sink deep­ identity is reclaimed through subversive uses er into this by looking into the act of queering. of technology. The boundaries of technology Lucas LaRochelle of Queering the Map noticed and the body are blurred, as are the lines be­ that the Google definition of queering is to spoil tween author, image, and copy. Possible futures or to ruin. Also Google's definition of queer it­ emerge as the layers of simulation that mediate self is the state or condition of being strange. contemporary culture are revealed. These definitions might be problematic, howev­ er it's useful to see queerness or queering as being something that's able to disrupt an exist­ ing system. Refiguring the Future Contributors include Nadine Artois of Pxssy Palace, Lucas LaRochelle of Queering the Map, Amy Lame, Jim MacSweeney, lngo Cando, Clara Finnigan, and Conor Rigby.

Refiguring Binaries

Heather Dewey-Hagborg and Dorothy R. Santos, curs. (exhibition, Hunter College Art Galleries, New York, NY, February 8March 31, 2019); excerpt from Heather Dewey-Hagborg and Dorothy R. Santos, "Refiguring the Future, 2019," Refresh, https://refreshart.tech/2019rtf; referred by Boaz Sender

Kelani Nichole, cur. (exhibition, Pioneer Works, Brooklyn, NY, February 22-April 21, 2019); excerpt from "Refiguring Binaries," Pioneer Works, https://pioneerworks.org/ exhibitions/refiguring-binaries/

Discourses of science fiction, technology, and speculation have historically offered visions of the future that recapitulate dominant culture, projecting images of tomorrow through the ex­ isting capitalist, racist, and patriarchal structures of today. Interested in rupturing these systems,

400

2019

Remembering LB City: Cyber Lesbian Utopia Vol.1 (666b)

Installation view: Lauren McCarthy, "Someone,· in Refiguring the Future, curated by Heather Dewey-Hagborg and Dorothy R. Santos, February 9-March 31, 2019. Hunter College Art Galleries, New York City, New York. (666a)

(666c) (666d) (666e)

Refiguring the Future is inspired by artist More­ hshin Allahyari's use of "refiguring" as a feminist, decolonial, and activist practice. @ID In this ex­ hibition, we seek to "refigure the future": to push, probe, tear apart, and re-envision what the fu­ ture can be. Looking beyond the status quo, we sought out feminist, queer, decolonial, anti­ racist, and anti-ableist artists concerned with our technological and political moment. In­ formed by the punk ethos of DIY, the artists in Refiguring the Future deeply mine the historical and cultural roots of our current moment, pull apart the artifice of contemporary technology, and sift through the pieces to forge new visions of what is possible. Working across an array of mediums and approaches-from analog books to augmented reality (AR)-these artists ad­ dress and examine a tumultuous present in order to produce a more inclusive future. Artists include Barak ade Soleil, Morehshin Al­ lahyari, Lee Blalock, Zach Blas, micha cardenas + Abraham Avnisan, In Her Interior (Virginia Barratt + Francesca da Rimini), Mary Maggie, Lauren McCarthy, SHAWNE MICHELAIN HOL­ LOWAY, Claire Pentecost + Martha Pentecost, Sonya Rapoport, Sputniko! + Tomomi Nishiza­ wa, Stephanie Syjuco, and Pinar Yoldas.

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Taehee Whang (Seoul: Hyperlink Press,@ 2019); excerpt p. 2 Preceding all the hyper femme online commu­ nities of the later 201 Os, LB City was founded as a lesbian activist group in January 2000 with a vision to realize the cyber lesbian utopia. Ini­ tially LB City was planned to be a live stream platform that ended up becoming a social plat­ form imagining the alternative "lesbian" society. @ The LB City community used "lesbian" as an antithesis to Korean patriarchical heteronor­ mativity and hoping to nurture socially inclusive language and culture. Interview from person­ web in 2001 supports that the LB City's use of "lesbian" extend beyond describing sexual ori­ entation. "LB City's ultimate goal is more than an attempt to create an entertainment website for queer women. We are preparing for the so­ ciety where qeer women can live freely. So LB City is a Beta test for that world where we can practice inclusive living. Eventually this shouldn't stop in online but implement in reality. Therefore this project is more so than city planning for Les­ bians but thinking about what it means to speak in lesbian, sing in lesbian and dream with fellow lesbian citizens."

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Taehee Whang, Remembering LB City: Cyber Lesbian Utopia Vol. 1 (New York: Hyperlink Press, 2019), pp. 4-5. © Hyperlink Press and Taehee Wang. @li) css?o)

Skincare and Opsec Forever Addie Wagenknecht, Medium, January 29, 2019, https://medium.com/read-write,­ participate/skincare-and-opsec-forever-Sd 2f4f37b438 Step 1: Uncap under eye concealer. Step 2: Discuss threat modeling. Step 3: Dab on under eye concealer. Step 4: Switch from passwords to passphrases. Cosmetics tutorials and cybersecurity may seem like strange bedfellows. One deals in eye­ shadow and moisturizer; the other in two-factor authentication and network vulnerabilities. But in the world of YouTube-where beauty vlogs are abundant and reliable cybersecurity (ill) advice is scarce-they actually make a pretty good couple. Borrowing beauty vloggers' DIY aesthetic and focusing on the real-world applica­ tions of infosec (e.g. thwarting nosey partners), I filmed tutorials that everyday users might find appealing.

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Addie Wagenknecht, "Skincare and Opsec Forever," 2019. https://medium.com/read­ write-participate/skincare-and-opsec-forever8d2f4f37b438.

Slime Tech Lab Ashley Jane Lewis and Ayodamola Tanimowo Okunseinde, http://slimetechlab.org/

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The Slime Tech Lab (STL) is a mobile laborato­ ry and living system that explores new futures through science, technology and storytelling. The STL is an art piece in itself-in roaming around New York it experiences feelings akin to the diaspora @ as it navigates to unpack its own narrative. As a beacon for futuristic ex­ ploration, it unfolds to teach spectators of the marvel of slime mold, revealing how this pri­ mordial organism can inform us about problem solving, equity and social cooperation. Our aim is to investigate it within our local communities. What can we learn from slime mold @ID that can help us create an equitable society? What can be gleaned from biocultures that can help us re­ imagine borders and immigration? What would a future look like with decentralized informa­ tion? The STL helps communities look to slime mold to envision vibrant, diverse futures through speculative design and microbiology.

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Ashley Jane Lewis and Ayodamola Tanimowo Okunseinde, Slime Tech Lab, 2019. http:// slimetechlab.org/. (669a)

Tecnologia ancestral, conocimiento resguardado por la sabiduria de las mujeres [Ancestral Technology, Knowledge Protected by the Wisdom of Women] lxchel Aguirre, Luchadoras, July 19, 2019, https://luchadoras.mx/tecnologias­ ancestrales/ Pero si, aunque se intente poner en duda, si es tecnologia. Tecnologia que se vale de la orali­ dad para pasar de generaci6n en generaci6n y

2019

para continuar evolucionando, tecnologia que responde a necesidades inmediatas y de la cual son guardianas muchas mujeres. @]) Las tecnologias ancestrales utilizaron las manos humanas como sus principales herramientas. Mas tarde fueron complementadas con otras herramientas auxiliares, como lo revelan las ex­ cavaciones y estudios de sitios arqueol6gicos. Una de las tecnologias que mas ha resisti­ do el paso del tiempo es el tejido, herramienta que permiti6 dejar atras la desnudez con la que fragilmente se enfrentaba a los ambientes hos­ tiles de la naturaleza. But yes, even if you try to question it, it is tech­ nology. Technology that uses orality to pass from generation to generation and to continue evolv­ ing, technology that responds to immediate needs and of which many women are guardians. Ancestral technologies @ID used human hands as their main tools. Later they were supplement­ ed with other auxiliary tools, as revealed by excavations and studies of archeological sites. One of the technologies that has most resisted the passage of time is weaving, a tool that al­ lowed us to leave behind the nudity with which we fragilely faced the hostile environments of nature.

Editor's note: Tecnologia Ancestral is a part of the Tejedoras de tecnologia series from Luchadoras. ®-MS

Alguien dijo alguna vez que necesitamos apren­ der a usar las tecnologfas tanto como hemos aprendido a leer y escribir. Defender internet coma territorio implica generar sociabilidades presentes, conscientes, crfticas. Seguir usando la red, pero de formas que nos sean beneficiosas, amorosas, compartidas sin seguir unicamente 'reglas' impuestas por plataformas que no nos representan. Defender Internet es sumarnos a los grupos de "competentes literates digitales que puedan estar a la altura de las diffciles cir­ cunstancias que presumiblemente nos tocara vivir."@ Defender Internet coma territorio nos ayuda a tomar decisiones. Someone once said that we need to learn to use technologies as much as we have learned to read and write. Defending the internet as a territory implies generating sociability present, conscious, critical. Continue using the net­ work, but in ways that are beneficial to us, love, shared without following only "rules" imposed by platforms that do not represent. To defend the Internet is to join the groups of "competent digital writers who may be at the height of the difficult circumstances that presumably we will have to live." Defending the Internet as a territo­ ry helps us make decisions.

Terra Nova Maize Longboat, https:1/maizelongboat. itch.io/terra-nova

la_jes, https:1/sursiendo.org/docs/territorio­ internet espacios-afectividadescomuni dades.pdf; submitted by Paola Ricaurte

Set on Earth in the far distant future, this two-player cooperative platformer explores what first contact between Indigenous and Settler peoples might look like thousands of years from now.® The game follows the stories of Terra, an Elder Earthborn landkeeper, and Nova, a youthful Starborn inventor as they explore their respective environments and interact with the

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lTerritorio internet? Espacios, afectividades y comunidades [Internet Territory? Spaces, Affections and Communities]

people in their communities. Their two worlds collide after a mysterious spacecraft crash-lands in Earthborn territory and Terra is asked to in­ vestigate. Nova, in the meantime, is separated from the rest of his people and must navigate an alien world to find them. Players must explore unique environments and interact with interest­ ing characters to uncover mysteries of the past. This work was created with Raymond Caplin (artist and animator), Mehrdad Dehdashti (tech­ nical director), and Beatrix Moersch (sound designer).

the two best-fit partners are unchoked.[ ...]. Until everyone is satisfied. End.

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Nahee Kim, Torrents of Sex, 2019. https:// nahee.app/web transparency-02.png. (673a) (673b)

Torrents of Sex Nahee Kim, https://nahee.app/torrents-of­ sex.html Algorithm 1: Partner (Peer) Selection Policy of Torrents of Sex Begin[... ] Repeat Step 3: Every 2x minutes (Optimistic unchoke interval)

Towards a Feminist Internet and Its Governance in India and Beyond Radhika Radhakrishnan (syllabus, created for Gender, Media, Culture course at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India}, https://feministinternet.org/sites/ default/files/Towards%20a%20Feminist%20 lnternet%20and%20its%20Governance %20in%201ndia%20and%20Beyond%20 Academic%20Syllabus%20by%20Radhika% 20Radhakrishnan.pdf

Step 3.2: Else if the local partner is in satisfied state: all interested remote partners are ordered according to the matching rate of sexual organs the local partner has to them and

The Internet holds great promise as a democra­ tizing enabler of social, economic, cultural and political rights. How far has this vision been ac­ tualized for women and gender minorities in the Global South? How can we envision a "feminist internet"? @ How would it be different from the Internet of today? One of the aims of this syl­ labus is to unsettle the idea of the Internet and its governance as being a "First-World" concern. It attempts to unpack the politics of one's loca­ tion while accessing the Internet and how those social, cultural, economic, political, and geo­ graphic locations complicate one's experience in cyberspace.

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Step 3.1 : If the local partner is in unsatisfied state: all interested remote partners are ordered with respect to their matching rate of sexual organs to the ones of local partner, and the two best-fit partners are unchoked. In other words, the two optimistic unchoke slots are assigned, one for each of the two best-fit partners.@

Transcode Manifesto Chelsea Thompto, https://newart.city/show/ transcode; submitted by Chelsea Thompto Transcode is numerously trans, meaning it enacts and explores trans in its subjects, methods, themes, and forms. Transcode work, while stemming from an interrogation of transgender issues, seeks to hold space for other and multiple trans identity configurations. @ Transcode work is transmaterial, meaning its projects engage a variety of forms which may shift over time. Transcode work sees and responds to the violences of codes, taxonomies, and categorical systems. Transcode work is expansive in its understanding of bodies, seeing bodyhood as a gesture of recontextualizing subjects and seeing as conceiving of the body as surpassing the corporeal. Transcode work engages systems (computer, numerical, political, and etc.) as a way of critically interrogating oppression and control. Transcode takes up codes as an artistic material and as a trans methodology. While not only referring to computer code, transcode does view computer code as a material with immense potential in enacting the gesture of trans.

Under Her Eye: Digital Drag as Obfuscation and Countersurveillance Harris Kornstein, in "Queer Surveillance," eds. Gary Kafer and Daniel Grinberg, special issue, Surveillance & Society 17, no. 5 (2019): pp. 681-98; excerpt from abstract Among drag queens, it is common to post screenshots comically highlighting moments in which Facebook incorrectly tags their photos as one another, suggesting that drag make­ up offers a unique method for confusing facial recognition algorithms. @· Drawing on queer, trans, and new media theories, this article con­ siders the ways in which drag serves as a form of informational obfuscation, by adding "noise" in the form of over-the-top makeup and social media profiles that feature semi-fictional names, histories, and personal information. Further, by performing identities that are highly visible, are constantly changing, and engage complex forms of authenticity through modes of camp and realness, drag queens @ disrupt many common understandings about the users and uses of popular technologies, assumptions of the integrity of data, and even approaches to ensuring privacy. In this way, drag offers both a culturally specific framework for conceptualizing queer and trans responses to surveillance and a potential toolkit for avoiding, thwarting, or miti­ gating digital observation.

W21 Valeria Facchin, Delanie Joy Linden, and lndrani Saha, https://www.women21st century.com/

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Las tecnolog ias son dispositivos relacionales. Nos tejen y las tejemos.

@ID

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Nadia K. Cortes Lagunas, Paola Ricaurte Quijano, lajes, Poulette Hernandez, and Liliana Heber Perez­ Diaz, Tecnoafecciones: Por una politica de la co-responsabilidad [Techno-Affections: For a Policy of Co-responsibility), 2020

Technologies are relational devices. They weave us and we weave them.

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What does it mean to be a woman in the twenty­ first Century? W21 is a data-feminist participato­ ry research platform focusing on post-feminism and intersectional practice in art, science, cul­ ture, and technology. We aim to map feminist practice and to write a collaborative manifesto for the digital era, with deep considerations of gender, class or race. W21 questions the patriarchal system of knowl­ edge and construction of power: To do so, we use data science from a feminist perspective. As Catherine D'lgnazio and Lauren F. Klein @ frame it: "The narratives around big data and data science are overwhelmingly white, male, and techno-heroic. Data Feminism offers strat­ egies for data scientists to learn how feminism can help work toward justice, and for feminists who want to focus their efforts on the growing field of data science. Data Feminism is about much more than gender: It is about power, about who has it and who doesn't and about how those differentials of power can be challenged and changed."

Why We Need to Design Feminist Al Josie Young, filmed December 2018 in London, TEDx, video, 10 min., 29 sec, https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-03La5Ec Vw&feature=emb logo&ab channel =TEDxTalk; referred by Charlotte Webb

to replicate ourselves in Al is stifling innovation and the potential of this technology. An advo­ cate for designing Al products and systems using ethical and feminist principles, Josie ar­ gues that we should be using this technology to heal society's problems, instead of adding to them. With this in mind, she has created a prac­ tical tool for teams to use when building a bot, prompting developers to question their own bias and training them to address these issues them­ selves in the future.

WYFY: Exorcizing Technology Manifesto BUFU, @ https://www.bufubyusforus.com/ wyfy-school-manifesto-info With You, For You, we will: Snatch our tongues back Back from the academy @ID Back from thieves in ivory towers Back from detention Back from the hands that took our love notes and bound them into texts we could never afford Back from their "validation" Back from their "credentials" Back from institutions that hoarded them from us and commodified our precious histories

How does a chatbot become sexist? According to Josie Young's research, it's usually incorpo­ rated into the chatbot's design and amplified through day-to-day conversations with humans. From qnly responding to commands from male voices to tolerating abusive language, tech com­ panies are incorporating regressive ideas and unconscious bias into Al. @ Not only is this a sign of lazy design, says Josie, but attempting

As we Deepen our connections to Family and Earth Change and History Magic and Love Technologies and Bodies Knowledge and the Erotic

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2020

take a trip inside your belly to feel how death and birth are .accessible on all sides

@D BlackMeme

Alternative Energy Alexandra Neuman, video, 3 min., 5 sec.; excerpt from Alexandra Neuman, "Alternative Energy," https://alexandra neuman.com/alternative-energy; submitted by Alexandra Neuman Alternative Energy features a giant and all­ knowing oracle, it is a site-specific attempt to smear vaginal power across the phallic land­ scape. Within a dominator value system, the imposition of physical and spiritual disconnect from our bodies and planet keeps us separate from our most basic needs and propels us into ecological crises. @ID Imagining new worlds will require radical outpourings of feminine energy as a means of unraveling the ten-thousand year legacy of patriarchal conditioning.

Legacy Russell, External Pages, https:// externalpages.org/#legacyrussell "Memes are not neutral. The labor enacted through black meme culture raises questions about subjectivity, personhood, and the ever­ complicated fault lines of race, class, and gen­ der performed both on- and offline. I want to talk about the economy and engine of this and per­ haps push further a discussion about how we can hold ourselves accountable to how this ma­ terial is produced and circulated." -Legacy Russell

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dear oracle: what is your nature?

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Alexandra Neuman, Alternative Energy, 2020. https://alexandraneuman.com/alternative­ energy. (680b)

i come from a vaginal planet. all of our energy is sourced from a giant hold in the tides. dear oracle: how long will i exist inside of this vessel?

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Legacy Russell, Black Meme, 2020. Standard­ definition video (color, sound}, 20:52 min.

Situated on a 3D interactive laptop which hovers against a black background, the video begins with the question "what is a black meme?" typed into Blackie, a website first launched by Google in 2007 that aims to save energy by displaying a black background. Working backwards in time from Beyonce's 2016 song "Formation," key ref­ erences include Rodney King's 1991 beating at the hands of the LAPD, the documentation of which came to be known as the world's "first viral video"; Michael Jackson's legendary 1983 music video "Thriller"; and the 1913 film "Lime Kiln Field Day," celebrated as the oldest surviv­ ing film to feature black actors. Over its 20 min 51 sec duration, through pacing, distortion and

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abrupt edits, Russell weaves a considered and unexpected story of black culture (ill) and its impact on the Internet meme as we now know it.

Black Trans Archive Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, https://black transarchive.com/; referred by Legacy Russell WE ARE HERE BECAUSE OF THOSE THAT ARE NOT WELCOME TO THE PRO BLACK PRO TRANS ARCHIVE THIS INTERACTIVE ARCHIVE WAS MADE TO STORE AND CENTER BLACK TRANS PEOPLE® TO PRESERVE OUR EXPERIENCES OUR THOUGHTS OUR FEELINGS OUR LIVES TO REMEMBER US EVEN WHEN WE ARE AT RISK OF BEING ERASED YOUR OWN IDENTITY WILL DETERMINE HOW YOU CAN INTERACT WITH THE ARCHIVE@ AS WELL AS WHAT YOU WILL BE ABLE TO ACCESS BE HONEST WITH THE ARCHIVE

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Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, Black Trans Archive, 2020. Screenshot, retrieved 2020 by Firefox v76.0.1 on Mac OS 10.13.3; https:// blacktransarchive.com/. C682a) C682b) C682d)

Ciberbrigadistas contra violencias en internet [Cyberbrigadistas against Violence on the Internet] SOS Digital; excerpt from SOS Digital, "Ciberfeminicidio: reflexiones desde el ciberfeminismo boliviano," March 9, 2020, https://sosdigital.noblogs.org/reflexiones­ desde-el-ciberfeminismo-boliviano/; submitted by Cielito Saravia Durante el 2019, coma colectivo SOS Digi­ tal hemos acompaiiado a mujeres en aspectos variados de seguridad digital (ill) y documen­ tado sus casos de violencia. Son mas de 200 mujeres en La Paz, El Alto, Cochabamba y Santa Cruz que nos contaron sus luchas, mie­ dos y deseos. Hemos presenciado estos ataques que tienen consecuencias econ6micas y sociales. Hemos aprendido, a traves de las experiencias de estas mujeres, que las ataques personales, coordinados y planificados en un intento de censurar, amedrentar y atacar a otras liberta­ des coma acceso a informaci6n y privacidad. Quienes las atacan lo hacen mediante intentos de hackeo, amenazas, discurso de odio, publi­ caci6n de informaci6n personal e infiltraciones para aplicar ingenierfa social. Las vfctimas, mas atacadas, son mujeres de perfil publico: academicas, artistas, anarquistas, periodistas, aborteras, activistas, mujeres que se defienden y escriben desde las zonas de conflicto y, par supuesto, ciberfeministas. During 2019, as the collective SOS Digital we have accompanied women in various aspects of digital security and documented their cases of violence. There are more than 200 women in La Paz, El Alto, Cochabamba and Santa Cruz who told us about their struggles, fears and desires.

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We have witnessed these attacks that have eco­ nomic and social consequences. We have learned, through the experiences of these women, that personal attacks, coordi­ nated and planned in an attempt to censor, intimidate and attack other freedoms such as access to information and privacy. Those who attack them do so through hacking attempts, threats, hate speech, publication of personal information and infiltrations to apply social engi­ neering. The victims, most attacked, are women with a public profile: academics, artists, anar­ chists, journalists, abortionists, activists, women who defend themselves and write from conflict zones and, of course, cyberfeminists.

patory potentialities, as well as its participatory practice, and we come up with a conclusion that this form of expression can be seen as a means for creating fragments in the dominant system of power and forge spaces for rebellion against the contemporary networks of domination, oppres­ sion and exploitation. New forms of (political) communication have emerged in modern times. Cultural critics call it "postmodernism," sociol­ ogists and political theorists perceive it as the "post-industrial" era, whereas anthropologists focusing on the effects of anthropocentrism over the environment human inhabit refer to it as "posthumanism." No matter the term, it is indisputable that we are living in the era of in­ formation, which, thanks to digital technology, is operating at a very high speed and has reorga­ nized former spatiotemporal fixes, making the whol_e world a global community.

Data Feminism (683a)

@BeStMaker, ciberbrigadista, 2020. https:// sosdigital.noblogs.org/reflexiones-desde-el­ ciberfeminismo-boliviano/. (683b)

Catherine D'lgnazio and Lauren F. Klein (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2020); excerpt pp.14-19

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the in­ terconnections between new media art and politics, with a view to creating paths for social change. By focusing on cyberfeminist art, ®ID in particular, we explore its critical and emanci-

Data is a double-edged sword. In a very real sense, data has been used as a weapon by those in power to consolidate their control-over places and things, as well as people. Indeed, a central goal of this book is to show how gov­ ernments and corporations have long employed data and statistics as management techniques to preserve an unequal status quo. @ Working with data from a feminist perspective requires knowing and acknowledging this history. [ ... ] Data is part of the problem, to be sure. But they are also part of the solution. Another cen­ tral goal of this book is to show how the power of data can be wielded back. [ ...] Our claim, once again, is that data feminism is for every­ one. It's for people of all genders. It's by people

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Cyberfeminist Art as a Medium of Political Expression: Producing and Communicating a Post-cyberfeminist Artwork for Social Change Lydia Tranta (Master's thesis, International Hellenic University, 2020), excerpt p. 1

of all genders. And most importantly: it's about much more than gender. Data feminism is about power, about who has it and who doesn't, and about how those differentials of power can be challenged and changed using data. We invite you, the readers of this book, to join us on this journey toward justice and toward remaking our data-driven world.

DigitalFems Thais Ruiz de Alda, http://digitalfems.org Somos una entidad que disena proyectos para aumentar la presencia de mujeres en entornos tecnol6gicos [ ... ] Creemos que para el buen diseno de productos y servicios tecnol6gicos es necesario contar con equipos plurales y diver­ sos. La tecnologia que cuenta con perspectivas diferentes es mas justa y mas eficaz. Por eso, trabajamos en el diseno de servicios que in­ cluyan mas mujeres en entornos tech y en la creaci6n de productos que muestran el talento de mujeres tecn61oga We are an entity that designs projects to in­ crease the presence of women in technological environments.@[ ... ] We believe that for good design of technological products and ser­ vices it is necessary to have plural and diverse teams. Technology that has different perspec­ tives is fairer and more efficient. For this reason, we work on the design of services that include more women in tech environments and on the creation of products that show the talent of women technologists.

The Digital Lives of Black Women in Britain

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Francesca Sobande (London: Palgrave Mac­ millan, 2020); referred by Legacy Russell Shedding light on the structural omission and oppression of Black women in Britain, @ID Fran­ cesca Sobande explores the online challenges that Black women face. While navigating social media platforms, she argues it is difficult for a Black woman who is curious or even working in the media industry to find a community of other Black women because they are missing offline. The pivotal question that Sobande asks which helps unpack the implications of the digital ex­ perience of the Black women is: why are the Black women identified as "trendsetters" while being both erased and "hyper-visible as cre­ ators?" (p. 1) This question is the focus of the book as Sobande delves into the issues, ex­ periences and perspectives that are seldom addressed regarding the digital lives of Black women in Britain.

@ID Drag vs. Al Virtual Workshop Matisse DuPont (Monstera Delicious), https:// www.ajl.org/drag-vs-ai Get ready to drag the cistern! On Thursday, June 25, 2020, at 7pm EDT, the Algorithmic Jus­ tice League proudly presents the first ever Drag Vs. Al Virtual Workshop. Join gender schol­ ar and consultant Matisse DuPont (@matisse. dupont) a.k.a. Monstera Delicious (@mxmon­ stera) as they lead you through the pratfalls of Facial Recognition Technologies (yes, there are FRTs, plural!), and explore the ways that drag can be used to thwart algorithmic injustice. Mon­ stera Delicious will be joined by fellow drag performers Akira Oni (@akira.oni) and DWSK (@dvvsk_), who will teach you how to use drag to mess with facial recognition technologies @ using only objects you find around your house

2020

or a single makeup item. T his will be a lesson in drag @vs. Al, as well as in creativity and inge­ nuity as we fight for Algorithmic Justice!

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Matisse DuPont a.k.a. Monstera Delicious, Flyer for Algorithmic Justice League's Drag vs. Al Virtual Workshop, 2020. https://www.ajl.org/ drag-vs-ai. © the Algorithmic Justice League (AJL). Image courtesy of AJL.

@ID E-Viction Veil Machine (Niko Flux, Sybil Fury, and Empress Wu), https://www.veilmachine. com; excerpt from Samantha Cole, "Sex Workers to Host Self-Destructing Digital Variety Show Against EARN-IT," Vice, July 29, 2020, https://www.vice.com/en/article/ jgxbag/sex-workers-earn-it-virtual­ protest-e-viction; referred by Melanie Hoff Sex workers made the internet what it is today. But as the internet grew, and tech compa­ nies started to monopolize the modern world, they've been pushed to the margins and forced off platforms by private interests and harmful legislation. @) In response, a sex worker-led art collective is putting on a twelve-hour virtu­ al peepshow that will educate and titillate-and self-destruct at the stroke of midnight, to protest the proposed Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies Act. Free speech advocates say that the act, known as EARN-IT, could be devastating to speech, sexuality, and marginalized communities like sex workers online. Titled E-Viction, the event [will] begin on Friday, August 21 at noon and go until

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midnight, at which point, it'll disappear from the web. During the event, sex workers will come to­ gether to make art while nude, have sex on live cams, talk in early internet-style text chat rooms, and sell protest art. "We envisioned E-Viction as a protest platform," the producers of E-Viction, Niko Flux, Sybil Fury, and Empress Wu told me in an email. "Sex workers were pioneers of the digital realm, but are now being kicked off the same online spaces we built and inspired."

Feminist Futures Katrin Fritsch and Helene von Schwichow, https://feministfutures.net/; excerpt from Wajdi Filali, "June 2030," Feminist Futures, https://feministfutures.net/June-2030 Almost ten years ago I attended the RightsCon conference in Tunis in 2019. All that time I had a dream. A dream that every single person but es­ pecially every woman would have the choice of having access or not to the internet. Ten years ago it was as Katrin and Helene qualified it as "UTOPIAN," inaccessible, unrealistic. The demo­ cratization of the internet came thanks to world­ wide network coverage. It came also thanks to the devices that allow the safe use of the inter­ net. Thanks to the individuals, believers, NGOs and advocates pressure was made and satel­ lites were launched to cover every single square inch on the planet. ®v Nowadays, whistleblowers and feminists are still struggling, but come on, it's nothing compared to what it used to be ten years ago. We can con­ demn persons who are committing infections or crimes against women. No more internet blackouts are allowed. We've come from so far to let the gains off.

2020

Fellows, the fight for feminist rights is not over. And please dream. This is how humanity makes steps.

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Katrin Fritsch and Helene von Schwichow, Feminist Futures, 2020. https://feministfutures. net/. (690a)

@D Future Is TransFeminist: From Imagination to Action Joana Varon, Deep Dives, Medium, July 3, 2020, https://deepdives.in/the-future­ is-transfeminist-from-imagination-to-action6365e097eb22 For the last few years, inspired by creative ex­ changes with feminists from different spots around planet Earth, I've started to play with the idea of envisioning speculative transfeminist futures. What would the future look like if algo­ rithms that command our daily interactions were

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clarote, "Future is TransFeminist: From Imagination to Action," 2020. https://deepdives. in/the-future-is-transfeminist-from-imagination­ to-action-6365e097eb22. Made for Coding Rights.

developed based on feminist values? What if the technologies we cherish were developed to crash, instead of maintain, the matrix of dom­ ination of capitalism, hetero-patriarchy, white supremacy, and colonization?[...] Imagination is a tool for revolution. We cannot change unwanted trends if we do not envision alternatives. Feminist science fiction writer Ur­ sula Le Guin ® has, among other things, exposed how boring and limited is the world view in which gender is solely a binary concept. She once said: "The thing about science fiction is, it isn't about the future. It's about the present. But the future gives us great freedom of imagi­ nation. It's like a mirror. You can see the back of your own head."

Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto Legacy Russell (Brooklyn: Verso, 2020); excerpt pp. 8-9 We use "body" to give material form to an idea that has no form, an assemblage that is ab­ stract. The concept of a body houses within it social, political, and cultural discourses, which change based on where the body is situated and how it is read. When we gender a body, we are making assumptions about the body's func­ tion, its sociopolitical condition, its fixity. When the body is determined as a male or female in­ dividual, the body performs gender as its score, guided by a set of rules and requirements that validate and verify the humanity of that individ­ ual. A body that pushes back at the application of pronouns, or remains indecipherable within binary assignment, is a body that refuses to per­ form the score. This nonperformance is a glitch. G@ This glitch is a form of refusal.

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Within glitch feminism, glitch is celebrated as a vehicle of refusal, a strategy of nonperfor­ mance. [...] In glitch feminism, we look at the notion of glitch-as-error with its genesis in the realm of the machinic and the digital and con­ sider how it can be reapplied to inform the way we see the AFK world, shaping how we might participate in it toward greater agency for and by ourselves.

Hacking Diversity: The Politics of Inclusion in Open Technology Cultures Christina Dunbar-Hester (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020); excerpt pp. �; submitted by Christina Dunbar-Hester At the heart of this book lies the question: What happens when ordinary people try to define and tackle a large social problem? Tough open-tech­ nology communities possess features different from the culture at large, they nevertheless constitute a laboratory for the voluntaristic ad­ dress of social inequality. One special feature is, of course, their orientation around technology, which means they are beholden to the cultur­ al legacies of computing and engineering in important ways. Another is their level of com­ mitment to self-governance and autonomy. The hacker ethic ® includes a devotion to hands­ on problem solving, which, this book argues, has led to open-technology enthusiasts trying to hack their communities in real time. In other words, some have addressed their communi­ ties with an approach that can be characterized as, Hey, our culture is informal and constitut­ ed by shared interest in taking things apart and putting them back together again, so how hard could it be to change?

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Nos permitimos imaginar [We Allow Ourselves to Imagine] Paola Ricaurte Quijano, Nadia Cortes, Irene Soria Guzman, Amaranta Cornejo Flernandez, Vero Araiza, ValeVale, Anamhoo, Firuzeh Shokoo-Valle, Elyaneth, San Gayou, Stefania Acevedo, Alma Martinez (Rosaura Zapata}, Guiomar Rovira, Poulette Flernandez, March Bermudez, Monica Nepote, la jes, Mariel Zasso, Fera Briones (Chavela Goldman}, and Lili Ayuujk, https:l/ia801805.us.archive.org/32/ items/nos-permitimos-imaginar-web/ NosPermitimoslmaginar djvu.txt; submitted by Paola Ricaurte Las paginas que nos aguardan son a su modo una constelaci6n. Mas alla de la metafora, este es un libro que se sigue sentipensando. No esta fijo ni terminado porque es un tejido continua. Las reflexiones que aqui se comparten siguen tramandose y enfatizan pensamiento critico en torno a la tecnologfa pero tambien se pre­ guntan por lo que entendemos coma tal: i,Oue tan absoluta es la tecnologia? i,Oue tan ma­ leable? l Que tan susceptible a ser hacekada/ reconfigurada por nosotras, desde nuestras perspectivas, desde el ser mujeres de diversos paises, alejadas de los centros de producci6n hegem6nicos? [...] Los textos surgieron a partir del Encuentro hackfeministo tecnologia y afectos: i,C6mo bosquejar politicas de la ca-responsabilidad? y fueron compartidos, leidos y comentados por todas, anotados, sugeridos y encarnados. Fueron desplegados en diversas posibilidades de entramarse hasta cobrar esta forma, que debe entenderse tan solo coma una propuesta porque los caminos de este libro son tan varia­ dos, ricos y polimorfos coma sus escritoras.

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the obsolete hu dumped on the e the erythrocytes learn to compute . . . I hear the blo

@

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Shu Lea Cheang, "In Conversation: Shu Lea Cheang and Victoria Sin," 2016

anoids are -tr shscape ... programmed orgasm data; :)d running.

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The pages that await us are in their own way a constellation. Beyond the metaphor, this is a book you keep thinking about. It is neither fixed nor finished because it is a continuous fabric. The reflections shared here follow plotting and emphasize critical thinking around technology but they also wonder about what we understand as such: How absolute is the technology? How malleable? How susceptible to be hacked/re­ configured by us, @ from our perspective, from women from different countries, far from the he­ gemonic centers of production? The texts arose from Hackfeminist Technology: How do we draft co-responsibility policies? They were shared, read and commented on by all, an­ notated, suggested and embodied. They were deployed in various possibilities and woven into a collective form, which should be under­ stood only as a proposal through its paths. This book is as varied, rich, and polymorphous as its writers.

justice and dignity for the corporeal Black body, but what of the virtual world? What advances can we make to address issues of power and representation in digital realms? The Open Source Afro Hair Library (OSAHL) is a queer, feminist, antiracist 30 database for Black hair textures and styles. Functioning both as so­ cial practice and technological development, OSAHL is a necessary intervention in comput­ er graphics and digital media, ® building the material and community resources needed to fundamentally reimagine the construction and consumption of Black bodies in virtual space.

(695c)

Malika Mutombo, Transfixion #2, 2021. 3D model. C695a) C695b)

Open Source Afro Hair Library

Origins

A.M. Darke, https://afrohairlibrary.org/; referred by Xin Xin

Justyna G6rowska, https://justyna gorowska.com/ORIGINS; excerpt from Jonna Ruszczyk, "Wirtualny Frankenstein," Newsweek Polska, June 14, 2020, https:// www.newsweek.pl/kultura/recenzja­ justyna-gorowska-origins-lokal 30-www theoriginssite/1cqrplg: submitted by Justyna G6rowska

Across digital media, Black people are por­ trayed in ways that are derogatory, inaccurate, stereotypical, demeaning, and otherwise harm­ ful-if we are depicted at all. The representation of afro-textured Black hair is noticeably limited, with options ranging from comically large afros, unstyled "dread" lacs, and misshapen cornrows. In real life, natural Black hair is considered a lia­ bility in academic and professional settings, with Black people being subject to loss of employ­ ment, school suspension, and even having our hair forcibly removed before being allowed in athletic competitions. Laws such as the Crown Act in California are making headway toward

418

Ta wystawa Justyny G6rowskiej wystartowafa 30 kwietnia, ale po zab6jstwie George'a Floy­ da, podczas antyrasistowskich protest6w, ma mocniejszy wydzwi�k. ,,Origins" jest o sk6rze i jej politycznym wymiarze, szczeg61nie w konteks cie rozwoju technologii, sztucznej inteligencji i inwigilacji w sieci. G6rowska zabiera widz6w do wirtualnego krajobrazu, po kt6rym chodzi si� jak

2020

w prostej grze komputerowej. Piasek po hory­ zont, niebo, chmury. Pusto, apokaliptycznie. W chmurach zawieszone Sq abstrakcyjne obrazy, instalacje. Jedna z nich jest rekonstrukcjq sceny teatralnej zaprojektowanej przez Henryka Wic­ inskiego, artysty z awangardowej Grupy Kra­ kowskiej z lat 20. XX wieku. Obrazy Sq w geometryczne wzory, majq faktur� sk6ry i Sq w r6znych jej odcieniach-od bladej po ciem­ nobrqzowq. Powstaty na postawie skan6w sk6ry konkretnych os6b.Tworzq wsp6lnq sk6r�. kolektywne ciato, kt6re moze symbolicznie chronic przed identyfikacjq, kontrolq. Jest tez ekran odsytajqcy do strony, na kt6rej mozna sobie zaprojektowac mask� AR.

The paintings are geometrically patterned, have the texture of the skin and come in a variety of shades-from pale to dark brown. Created on the basis of skin scans of specific people, they form a common skin, a collective body that can symbolically protect against identification and control.

Really Fake

Alexandra Juhasz, Ganaele Langois, Nishant Shah (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2020); excerpt p. 12; This exhibition by Justyna G6rowska started on submitted by Alexandra Juhasz April 30, but after the murder of George Floyd, it has a stronger tone during anti-racist pro­ tests. Origins is about skin @ and its political dimension, especially in terms of technology development, artificial intelligence and web sur­ veillance. G6rowska takes viewers to a virtual landscape that is walked on like in a simple com­ puter game. Sand to the horizon, sky, clouds. Empty, apocalyptic. Abstract paintings and in­ stallations are suspended in the clouds. One of them is a reconstruction of the theater stage de­ signed by Henryk Wicinski, an artist from the avant-garde Krakow Group from the 1920s.

(696a)

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Justyna G6rowska, Origins, 2020. www. theoriqins.site.

Unlike critical internet studies writ large or its burgeoning· set of digital methods, cyberfemi­ nism, like many feminisms (and there are many), puts our goals, processes, and bodies first: re­ search in service of making and changing the world, and the internet, for ourselves, feminists, and others. Learned from those before and with me (Sayers 2018; Zarzycka and Olivieri 2017), my cyberfeminism is first and foremost a meth­ od of doing well and for the better (Ahmed 2016; Gajjala 2019). It is hard to do (well) but easy enough to name (Fernandez 2002 ®; Dan­ iels 2009), and naming it up front is part of its best practices (@riotmango; Subrosa). Mine is situated: attending to the specificity of its place, time, and author(s) (Carpio 2019; Harpold and Philip 201O); and in this way committed: serv­ ing and driven by self- and world-changing goals (Losh and Wernimont 2018); connected and in­ teractive: rooted in what humans and machines can build and do collectively (Braidotti 2012; Cardenas 2012); and ethical: while always at­ tending to intensity and control between people and techn9logies (Laurel 2003; Nelson 2016); and thus rooted in care (McLeod, Rault, and Cowan 2014; Fotopoulou, Juhasz, and O'Ri­ ordan 2014), given all the attendant violence

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(Malkowski and Russworm 2017; FemTechNet @ID).

Rock Repo: Trans*feminist Scanning Practices for Geocomputation The Underground Division (Helen Pritchard, Jara Rocha, and Femke Snelling), http:// ddivision.xyz/rockrepo/#more; submitted by The Under-ground Division

C69Ba)

Helen Pritchard, Jara Rocha, and Femke Snelting, Rock Repo, 2020. http://ddivision.xyz/ rockrepo/. (69Bb) (69Bc)

With this collection of computational ROCKS, The Underground Division gets closer to the unstable stories of particular ROCKS as told through scientific, poetic, public and technolog­ ical discourse. Recognizing that ROCKS have their own lively forces and relationalities, the Division studies ROCKS' 3D imaginings, the softwares and hardwares that ROCKS inter­ vene on and builds new glossaries on the go. [ ...] As an ongoing inquiry into what ROCK is, the REPO asks what ROCKS could be and in which ways ROCK is seen or considered as an entity separate from its environment.[ ...] Sharp­ ened by queer and anticolonial sensibilities, the Division investigates the way undergrounds are quarried, measured, quantified, historicized, visualized, circulated, predicted, classified, re­ membered and modelled.[...] The ROCK REPO is a device built by a team of trans****feminist @D post-normal scientists for thinking with ROCK.[... ] The REPO inquires into these banal, exquisite, violent, static, carbonivourous figura-

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tions to fracture the normative 3D processes of geocomputation and their crushing exploitations and extractions.

Taking Sides: Theories, Practices, and Cultures of Participation in Dissent Elke Bippus, Anne Ganzert, and Isabell Otto, eds. (Bielefeld, Germany: Transcript Verlag, 2020); referred by Cornelia Sollfrank Is there an option to oppose without automati­ cally participating in the opposed? This volume explores different perspectives on dissent, @ understanding practices, cultures, and theo­ ries of resistance, dispute, and opposition as inherently participative. It discusses aspects of the body as a political instance, the identity and subjectivity building of individuals and groups (micro-)practices of dissent, and theories of cri­ tique from different disciplinary perspectives. This collection thus touches upon contemporary issues, recent protests and movements, artistic subversion and dissent, online activism as well as historic developments and elemental theo­ ries of dissent.

Tecnoafecciones: Por una politica de la co-responsabilidad [Techno-Affections: For a Policy of Co-responsibility] Nadia K. Cortes Lagunas, Paola Ricaurte Quijano, lajes, Poulette Hernandez, and Liliana Heber Perez-Diaz (Mexico: lnstituto de Liderazgo Simone de Beauvoir A.C., 2020); excerpt p. 5; submitted by Paola Ricaurte

2020

Para nosotras, las tecnologias no son artefac­ to su objetos. Las tecnologias son dispositivos relacionales. Nos tejen y las tejemos. Se con­ struyen y se incorporan desde la matriz de la afectividad. Par eso queremos pensar la tec­ nologia indisociable de nuestras emociones, nuestros afectos, las cuidados, la vida en comu­ nidad y la vida en el planeta.

✓

Asumiendo una postura responsable, busca mosser sensibles a las afectaciones que provocamos en nuestros cuerpos, en las cuerpos de otras y en la corporeidad de lo que denomina­ mos naturaleza. Si despolitizar es desafectar las relaciones, nuestro prop6sito es politizar a traves de las afectos y las afectaciones.

systems as a continuity of the experience incar­ nate and situated in the effects, the bodies and the territories.

TRANS FUTURES: Plant Transgenesis and DNA Design Rian Ciela Hammond, http://www.rian hammond.com/tf.html; referred by Rian Hammond

Asi, proponemos vivir la tecnologia coma una trama de relaciones tejidas par las afectaciones y las afectos. Creemos que es necesario re­ plantearnos la naturaleza ontol6gica de las sistemas socio-tecnicos coma una continuidad de la experiencia encarnada y situada en las afectos, las cuerpos y las territorios. Queremos interpelar las preconceptos que incorpora­ mos en nuestras practicas y micro-decisiones cotidianas.

This workshop is an introduction to Synthetic Biology and plant transgenesis from a queer perspective. We will go over the basic con­ cepts of cell biology and learn techniques for in-silica (on a computer) DNA design.@ We will also do an in-vivo (in a living plant) genet­ ic modification procedure called Agroinfiltration. Together we will look at the violent colonial pa­ triarchal structures that have produced these technologies and ask if and how it's possible to, "repurpose technologies for progressive gen­ der political ends ..." as challenged by the 2016 Xenofeminist Manifesto.

For us, technologies are not artifacts or objects. Technologies are relational devices. They weave us and we weave them.@ They are built and incorporated from the matrix of affectivity. But we will think about the inseparable technology of our emotions, our affects, care, community life and life on the planet.

(701b)

Assuming a responsible posture, we seek to be sensitive to the effects that we provoke on our bodies, on the bodies of others, and on the body of what we call nature. Thus, we propose to live technology as a net­ work of relationships woven by the affects and the effects. We believe that it is necessary to re­ think the ethical nature of the socio-technical

421

Terike Haapoja and Rian Hammond, still from Beyond Binaries, 2018. Standard-definition video (color, sound), 2:57 min. A symposium organized by Terike Haapoja and Rian Hammond and co-produced by the Finnish Cultural Institute in New York and ISCP, January 27, 2018. Speakers: Rian Hammond, Heath Fogg Davis, Syl Ko, Terike Haapoja. (701a) (701c)

2020

43, no. 6 (2021): pp. 1158-67; excerpt from abstract Underneath and on the Sidelines: Sustaining Feminist Infrastructures Using Speculative Fiction Spideralex (Alex Hache), https://iterations. space/uploads/iterations-spider alex-underneath-and-on-the-sidelines. pdf; excerpt p. 6 By feminist infrastructures we mean feminist struggles-everything that is sustained and shored up by more or less stable resources­ so they can develop and move forward. By resources we mean techniques, technologies and processes (analogue, digital, social) includ­ ing safe spaces, shelters, libraries, trustworthy sister-hood networks, @ servers, yellow pages, repositories, bots, @ documentation and memory tools, encyclopedias, HerStories, techniques for life, spells, rituals and exorcisms. They also include the mobile, ephemeral and transitional that can be found in the temporary infrastructure of meetings, workshops and par­ ties that nurture the trust, affection and well­ being of our fellow feminists.

"A Cyborg Manifesto" G) is a required reading in many graduate programs to explore technofem­ inism, transhumanism, and studies of science and technology to explore notions of gender, race, and other minoritized identities. However, in this essay, I note the ways that Haraway's piece still exacerbates categories of difference, and my own difficulties and critiques of the cy­ borg identity. I encourage readers to not only consider its importance, but also the limits of the cyborg identity, and how the concept of cy­ borg itself is fraught with a Western, patriarchal violence that cannot be ignored in the greater context of technology and technological inno­ vation. Although useful in imagining a departure from traditional categories of difference, I inquire as to whether it upholds the very things it pur­ ported to dismantle, and explore other scholars' works in challenging the concept. Ultimate­ ly, "cyborgs" @ are not outside of the politics within which they exist, and must be interpret­ ed in relation to other identity categories without upholding whiteness and Western epistemolo­ gies as the center.

We believe that the feminist infrastructure, which is found underneath and on the sidelines, is often precarious and sometimes difficult to see. But it is widespread and disseminated, and at its core is the value and affection that the peo­ ple, machines and ecosystems that constitute it offer each other:

A [White] Cyborg's Manifesto: The Overwhelmingly Western Ideology Driving Technofeminist Theory Julia R. Decook, Media, Culture & Society

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Index:

Titles

@ 00000000111111111100000000011 111110000000011111111 @ 0s+1s ® 100 Anti-Theses ® 4 Survival 4 Pleasure CID) "a", not "I" / #cevtarperform #deprogram ® A la recherche de !'information perdue (In Search of Lost Information) ® a:active, a:hover { or position: unavoidable; @ Aboriginal Narratives in Cyberspace ® Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace (AbTeC) @ Abortion Drone @ About Feminism ® Ada X (Studio XX) � Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media & Technology @ The Adventures of Josie True @ Affective Computing @ Affixing Ceremony: Four Movements for Essex G@ African Cyberfeminism in the 21st Century @ African Declaration on Internet Rights and Freedoms @D Africanfuturism Defined @ Afro Cyber Resistance @ AfroCROWD @ Afrocyberfeminismes @ afrofuturism and #blackspring @ Afrofuturism listserv @ Afrofuturist Affair (ill) Afronautic Research Lab ®) Afrotech Fest ®I> Afrotectopia @) Afrotopia @ After the Future: n Hypotheses of PostCyber Feminism GID Agent Ruby ® Akelarre Cyborg a® AkiraChix @ Alembic @ID Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism @ AII New Gen

426

GID All Too Real: The Tale of an On-Line Black Sale: Coco Fusco Interviews Keith Townsend Obadike @ Alternative Energy @ Ama_zon@s @ An Individual Note - of Music, Sound and Electronics @ An Interrupted Postcolonial/Feminist Cyberethnography: Complicity and Resistance in the "Cyberfield" @ An Interview with Legacy Russell: Wandering/WILDING ® An Interview with Sadie Plant and Linda Dement ® Anarcha, Lucy, Betsey @ Anarchaserver @ AnArchy PARTYCAM @ID #AncestralTech @ID Another Science is Possible: A Manifesto for Slow Science C§W Appropriating the Alien: A Critique of Xenofeminism @ Arab Women Cyberfeminism @ The Architectures of Online Harassment @ Art+Feminism ® ArtFem.TV @ Artificial Intelligence in the Age of Sexual Reproduction: Sketches for Xenofeminism @ Artificial Knowing: Gender and the Thinking Machine @ Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World @ Artinjun @ Asian America.Net: Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Cyberspace @ Asian Pacific Women's Information Network Center (APWINC) @ Asikana Network illID At Your Service @ Attack of the CyberFeminists @ Automating Gender: Postmodern Feminisms in the Age of the Intelligent Machine @ Avatar Body Collision @) Bad Code

A-B

@ Beautiful Warriors: Technofeminist Practice in the 21st Century @ Becoming Machine-Witch-Plant: Gynaecological TransHackFeminism and Joyful Dystopia C® Behind the White Shadows of Image Processing: Shirley, Lena, Jennifer, and the Angel of History @) Betraying Big Brother: The Feminist Awakening in China @ Big Bad Chinese Mama @.v Bina48: Gender, Race, and Queer Artificial Life ® Binary Sexes, Binary Codes @ Bindigrl ® Bitch Mutant Manifesto ® Black Cyberfeminism: lntersectionality, Institutions and Digital Sociology @) Black Feminism and Post-Cyber Feminism @ Black Girls Code @D Black Meme @ Black Quantum Futurism @ Black to the Future: Interviews with Samuel R. Delany, Greg Tate, and Tricia Rose @ Black Trans Archive @ Black Womxn Temporal (ill) Blackchain @ID Blackgirl.tech @ID Blackness for Sale @ Blessed Bandwidth ® Bodies INCorporated @ The Body and the Screen: Theories of Internet Spectatorship ® Brandon @ A Brief (Media) History of the Indigenous Future @ Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet ® Brutal Myths @ BUFU @ Buttplug.io @ Buy Me Offline @ Buy One Get One @ Canadian Women's Internet Association

GID @D ® @ID @

427

8-C

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Carrier T he Center for Afrofuturist Studies Charting the Currents of the Third Wave Chicana/a Cyberpunk after el Movimiento Chicas en Tecnologia [Girls in Technology] Chicas Poderosas [Powerful Girls] Ciberbrigadistas contra violencias en internet [Cyberbrigadistas against Violence on the Internet] CiberFeminismo Ciberfeminismo: Bases y Propuestas en un Mundo Global [Cyberfeminism: Bases and Proposals in a Global World] Ciberfeminismo y apropiaci6n tecnol6gica en America Latina [Cyberfeminism and technological appropriation in Latin America] Ciberfeminismos 2.017... Ciberfeministas GT Ciberseguras Cl4ndestina Clicking In: Hot Links to a Digital Culture CN:FM (Commoning the Networks: A feminist Methodology II) Code Ecologies Code Liberation Code Societies Coded Territories: Tracing Indigenous Pathways in New Media Art Codetalkers Recounting Signals of Survival Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking Coding Rights: Translating Human Rights into Codes Collected Visions Collection and the Cloud Colnodo: Uso estrategico de Internet para el desarrollo [Colnodo: Strategic Use of the Internet for Development] Colonial Ventures in Cyberspace Colonizing Virtual Reality: Construction of the Discourse of Virtual Reality, 1984-1992 Color Coded

®ID Computer Grrrls Timeline @ Computers as Theatre @D Computing, Climate Change, and All of Our Relationships ® Conceiving Ada @ Confessions of a Webback ® Contested Zone @ The Contested Zone: Cybernetics, Feminism and Representation Gm Conversations with Bina48 @ Cooking Up a Storm: Women, Activism and Cyberspace ® Correspondence @ Cosmosapiens: Imagining Trans-Digital Pandrogenous Futures Gill Council on Gender Sensitivity and Behavioral Awareness in World of Warcraft @ Courageous Cunts @ID CODE: A Feminist Manifestx of Code-ing @D Crear mundos nuevos con imaginarios y practicas ciberfeministas [Create New Worlds with Imaginary and Cyberfeminist Practices] @ CREE++ @ Cuerpos mujeres en campos de batalla digitales: redes de informaci6n y apoyo de activistas par el derecho a decidir en America Latina [Women's Bodies on the Digital Battlefield: Information Exchange and Networks of Support and Solidarity of Pro-Choice Activists in Latin America] ® Cultural Appropriations of Technical Capital: Black Women, Weblogs, and the Digital Divide @ Cyber Femin Club @> Cyber Nails Network @ Cyber Rag @) Cyber Selves: Feminist Ethnographies of South Asian Women (ill) Cyberbodies 2-Or More Stories about the Political of the Cyberspace @ Cyberculture and the Subaltern: Weavings of the Virtual and Real ® Cyberfeminism

428

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JiunKwon@ Jo Sutton @ JoanKorenman (ill) Joana Varon@@@D@D JoAnn Gillerman CID Joanna Prieto@ JoannaWalsh @ Joanne McNeil@@ Jodey Castricano@ ® Joe Lockard@ Joella Vera Bril ®ID Johanna Burai ® Johanna Castell@ Johanna Thompson @ John Cheng@ Jolene Rickard GIB Jonathan Sterne@ Joni Cohen@Q)

444

Jordynn Jack@ Joseph Naytowhow@@ Joseph Tekaroniake Lazare (ill) Josephine Bosma@ GID Josephine Starrs@ Josie Arnold (ill) Josie Young @ JoyKMT@ Joy Lisi Rankin ®) Judy Harrison @ Judy Malloy@@ JudyWajcman ®@ @ID Gill JuliaKaganskiy@ Julia RDecook@ Julia Scher@ Julian Bleecker@ Julian Casasbuenas G. @ JulianDibbell ® Juliana Guerra@ Juliana Huxtable @ID@ @D Julianne Pierce@ GID@ JulieDoyle@@ JulieWolfram Cox@ JulietDavis @ID JulietDdungu@ JulietWere@ Jun Eung Hwi (���I)@ JureKodzoman @ Justyna G6rowska@@ JuttaWeber@ Jyanni Steffensen GID@ Jyotsna Maskay@ K. Soraya Batmanghelichi @ Kamilia Manaf@ KaraKeeling@@ Kara Moloney@ Karen Har-yen Chow@ Karen Hossfeld @ KarenKeifer-Boyd GID Kari Oakes@ Karim A. Remtulla ® Karla Ptacek@!) Kat Li@ Kate Boyer@

Kate Crawford@ Kate Hollenbach @ Kate O'Riordan@@ Katerine Romero ®ID Kateruna Fialova@ Katharina Pelosi@ Katherine Tom@ Kathleen Torrens@ Kathy High@ Kathy Mueller (ill) Kathy Rae Huffman @@ GID KatiaDamianova @ID KatieWendt@ Katrin Fritsch@ Katrina Burch @ Katy Gero (ill) Kay Schaffer ® Kayla Hales@ KC Adams® Keith Obadike@ GID@ (ill)@

Kelani Nichole@ Kelli Moore@ KerryDoran ®ID Kerry O'Neill ® Kerry Swanson@ KerstinWeiberg@ Kevin McCoy Gill KevinWalby@ Kim Tallbear@ Kim-An Lieberman@ Kimberlianne Podlas GID Kimberly Bryant@ Kiran Mirchandani G:® Kirsten Cooke @ Kishonna L. Gray@ Kiyemis Sobande@ Klau Chinche (KlauKinky) ® a@@@ Koen Leurs Gill Kris Nesbitt@ KristinaWong @ Kristine Blair®@@ KTDuffy@Q)

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Kutoma J Wakunuma @ Kylie Thomas @ la jes@D@@ Laboria Cuboniks @@ID Laleh Mehran Gill@ Laura Forlano @ Laura Hyun Yi Kang @) Laura J. Mixon @ Laura L. Sullivan @ Laura Pautassi @ Laura Sanchez @ Laura Taalman@ Laurel Gilbert@ Laurel Guymer (ill) Laurel Ptak Gill@ Lauren Angelone Gill Lauren Cornell @ Lauren F. Klein @ Lauren McCarthy@@ @)

Lauren Slowik@ Laurence Rassel @ Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun @

Leah Horgan @ Lee Blalock @ID@) Lee Crowchild GID Leena Saarinen @ Legacy Russell @�@ @@@D@@D @?) Leil-Zahra Mortada @ Leila Mouri @

Leonor Domingos @ Les Carr@ID Les Penelopes @ Leta Hong Fincher @D Libertad Figueroa @ Lika Kareva @D Lili Ayuujk@ Lilian Cooper@ Liliana Zaragoza Cano @ @ @ID

Lilly Nguyen @ID Lilyan Kris @

445

Lina Dzuverovic-Russell @ Linda Dement®® Linda Kamau Gill> Linda L. Layne@ Linda Leung @ Linda Stupart @ Lindsay Dye @ Lindsay Howard@ Linta Verghese @ Lisa Jean Moore @ Lisa Nakamura®@@ (ill)@@) G@@) @@)

Ljiljana Perkovic@ Logan Hill@ Lola Castro @ Lola Odelola @ID Loretta Todd @@ Lori Blondeau GID Lorie Novak® Loritz Zbigniew@ Lornah Murage @ Lorrie Cranor@ Lotta Stover @ Louise Lawlor@ Lucas LaRochelle @ Lucas Mason-Brown @ Lucca Fraser@@ Lucia Benitez-Eyzaguirre@ Lucia Grossberger-Morales GID Lucia Sommer Gill@ Cm) Luciana Parisi GID Lucile Olympe Haute @ Lucy A. Sames @ Lucy Samantha Martin @ Lucy Suchman CID) Lulu V. Barrera @ Lydia Tranta @D Lynette Kvasny@ Lynn Cherny @ Lynn Hershman Leeson @ @@®GID@ @@I) Lynne Vallone ®

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