Diana McCarty

Diana McCarty is an independent media producer and feminist media activist. Her work revolves around art, gender, politics, radical feminism, technology, and media. She is a co-founder of reboot.fm, the award winning free artists’ radio in Berlin; of the radio networks Radia.fm and 24/3 FM Berlin; of the FACES (faces-l) online community for women; and of the elsehere association.

In 2020, she co-curated Latitude on Air—Unsettling Power Relations, the Goethe Institut radio festival that was broadcast in Berlin. She co-initiated the exhibition Nervous Systems: Quantified Life and the Social Question (Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, 2016). McCarty actively collaborates with the experimental media project Luta ca caba inda. As a cyberpunk in the 1990s, she was active in independent internet culture with net art, nettime, the MetaForum conference series, and different hacking spaces. McCarty is a proud Chicana from Albuquerque, New Mexico. McCarty has taught at universities in Germany and Europe, including the Intermedia Department at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts, Budapest, the Kunsthochschule Köln, the UDK Berlin and the Kunsthochschule Copenhagen; and is Professor of Film and Video at the Merz Akademie, Stuttgart. She lives and works in Berlin. (2023)

Projects and initiatives

• reboot.fm, co-founder and editor of the award winning Berlin based artists radio that broadcasts art, discourse and electronic music from Berlin. Established 2004.

• Faces-l.net, co-founder and moderator of an ongoing mailing list for women in media. The project aims to develop and maintain networks for women artists, designers, and programmers. A website and database makes the extensive work of women visible to an international public. Established in 1997.

• Luta ca caba inda, collaborates with this loose-knit collective initiative has produced digital archives, short and feature films, publications, radio broadcasts and public events that address African liberation movements, experimental film and memory. The international group (Filipa Cesar and Sana N’Hada, ao.) has been working together since 2011.

• Radia.fm, co-founder of the award winning International radio art exchange network; Produces and syndicates radio art programs via more than 27 art radios around the world. Established in 2005.

• elsehere e.V., co-founder of a transnational feminist art collective armed with an inbuilt grain of indestructibility. We are committed to a policy of empowerment and an economy of care that shares approaches to knowledge.

• Radio Netzwerk Berlin e.V., co-founder of the non-profit that successfully lobbied the MABB for the first non-profit broadcasting licenses available in Berlin. The network includes reboot.fm & Cashmere radio, wearebornfree! Empowerment Radio, radiomobil and SAVVY funk.

• Red Forest Assembly, a collective that grounds together research, art, political imagination and social actions striving for transformative justice and ecological reparations. With David Muñoz Alcántara, Mijke van der Drift and Oleksiy Radynski. (2023)

Interviews

• Georgina Bruni, "Exclusive - Interview With An American Intelligence Agent", Hot Gossip UK, E-Zine, Dec 1997.

• Uschi Reiter, "Bootlab Story: Interview with Diana McCarty", 11 Jun 2002.

• "Interview with Diana McCarty", Digitales, Dec 2002, 8 min.

• Dušan Barok, "Interview with Diana McCarty", 3/4 27-28: "Remake", Bratislava: Atrakt Art, 2012.
  • "Rozhovor s Dianou McCarty", trans. Lucia Udvardyová, 3/4 27-28: "Remake", Bratislava: Atrakt Art, 2012. (Slovak)

• Vanja Budde, "Radiokunst für Nachtschwärmer. Diana McCarty hat das freie Kulturradio „reboot.fm“ mitbegründet", Deutschlandfunk Kultur, 29 Oct 2013. (German)

See also

• Reboot.fm
• Faces

Links

• Profile on Merz Academy
• Diana McCarty's talk at Nettime press conference, Vienna, May 1997. Video.