Cyberfeminism

VNS Matrix, A Cyberfeminist Manifesto for the 21st Century, 1991.

A resource on the art and cultural movement and its historisation. Associated notions: technofeminism, xenofeminism.

Pages

• Susanne Ackers
• Irina Aktuganova
• Anarchaserver
• Virginia Barratt
• Diann Bauer
• Mez Breeze
• Ren Loren Britton
• Shu Lea Cheang
• Constant
• Cyber-Femin-Club
• Linda Dement
• Marthe Van Dessel
• Valie Djordjevic
• Donestech
• Eclectic Tech Carnival
• Faces
• FemHack
• Flossie
• Lucca Fraser
• Genderchangers
• Girl Geek Dinners
• Marina Gržinić
• Helen Hester
• The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest
• Amy Ireland
• Verena Kuni
• Laboria Cuboniks
• Nathalie Magnan
• Ana Martínez-Collado
• Diana McCarty
• Alla Mitrofanova
• Netzfeminismus
• Ellen Nonnenmacher
• Old Boys Network
• Steffania Paola
• Julianne Pierce
• Sadie Plant
• Purple Noise
• Patricia Reed
• Francesca da Rimini
• Anne Roth
• Mindy Seu
• Femke Snelting
• Cornelia Sollfrank
• SubRosa
• Systerserver
• The living
• TransHACKfeminist! camp
• Varia
• Verbindingen / Jonctions
• VNS Matrix
• Yvonne Volkart
• Faith Wilding

Events

• "Replicunts: The Future of Cyberfeminism", Virtual Futures, 28 May 1995. [1]
• 1. Cyberfeminist International, Documenta X, Kassel, 20-28 Sep 1997.
• Eclectic Tech Carnival, internationally, since 2002.
• Cyberfem. Feminisms on the Electronic Landscape, EACC/Espai d´art contemporani de Castelló, Spain, Oct 2006 - Jan 2007. Curated by Ana Martínez-Collado.
• The Very First Year, Eyebeam, New York, 27 Jul 2013. Facilitated by Laurel Ptak and inspired by her research at Eyebeam into cyberfeminist art practices since the 1990s. Featuring installations and activities by Feminist Economics Department (the FED), Miki Foster, Jen Kennedy + Liz Linden, Queer Technologies, Cassie Thornton, Caroline Woolard, and Eyebeam Alumnae.
• TransHACKfeminist! camp, Calafou, Barcelona, 2014.
• Hacking Feminism symposium, Center for Transformative Media (CTM), Parsons/The New School for Design, New York, 9-10 May 2015. Co-organised by Patricia Clough (CUNY), Nandita Biswas Mellamphy (Western), Dan Mellamphy (Western), Svitlana Matviyenko (Western), and Ed Keller (CTM). Participants: Anne Balsamo, Shannon Bell, Nandita Biswas Mellamphy, Zach Blas, Sarah Choukah, Patricia Ticineto Clough, Lucca Fraser, Alexander Galloway, Nancy Gillespie, Thyrza Nichols Goodeve, Margret Grebowicz, Karen Gregory, Eileen Joy, Ed Keller, Svitlana Matviyenko, Dan Mellamphy, Luciana Parisi, Jasbir Puar, Joshua Scannell, Oyku Tekten, McKenzie Wark.
• Technofeminism Now, Institute of Contemporary Art, London, 17 Jun 2015. Panel discussion chaired by Helen Hester revisiting the contributions of technofeminism, in light of recent developments in leftist critical thinking and on the occasion of release of Laboria Cuboniks’s Xenofeminism: a Politics for Alienation. Speakers included Sarah Kember, Laboria Cuboniks and Legacy Russell.
• Femflix exhibition, Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney, 11 Aug-3 Sep 2016. Curated by Jacqueline Millner, Jane Schneider and Deborah Szapiro. Presented 1990s feminist films from Australia, including the works of cyberfeminists.
• Post-Cyber Feminist International, Institute of Contemporary Art, London, 15-19 Nov 2017. Conceived by Rosalie Doubal and Helen Hester on the occasion of twenty years since The First Cyberfeminist International. Participants: Salome Asega, Ain Bailey, Siana Bangura, Cibelle Cavalli Bastos, Diann Bauer, BBZ London, The Church of Expanded Telepathy, Shu Lea Cheang, Joni Cohen, Laboria Cuboniks, Tamar Clarke-Brown, Anaïs Duplan, Akwugo Emejulu, Annie Goh, Caspar Heinemann, Helen Hester, shawné michaelain holloway, Eleni Ikoniadou, E. Jane, Shira Jeczmien, Helen Kaplinsky, Kiyémis, Mary Maggic, Diana McCarty, Zarina Muhammad, Jenn Nkiru, Eleanor Penny, Stina Puotinen, Tabita Rezaire, Legacy Russell, Res., SCRAAATCH, Victoria Sin, Francesca Sobande, Cornelia Sollfrank, Marie Thompson, Demelza Toy Toy, Faith Wilding, Zadie Xa and Anicka Yi. Programme booklet. Review: Judah (Guardian).

Writings, talks

First Cyberfeminist International: Old Boys Network Reader 1, 1998, Log, PDF.

Sadie Plant, Zeros + Ones: Digital Women and the New Technoculture, 1998, Log, PDF.

• VNS Matrix, A Cyberfeminist Manifesto for the 21st Century, Adelaide & Sydney, 1991, HTML. [2] [3] [4]
• Sadie Plant, "The Feminine Cyberspace", London, Mar 1994, 44 min. Video of a talk presented at Seduced & Abandoned: The Body in the Virtual World conference at ICA, London.
• Anne Balsamo, Technologies of the Gendered Body: Reading Cyborg Women, Duke University Press, 1995.
• Sadie Plant, "The Future Looms: Weaving Women and Cybernetics", Body & Society 1:3-4, Sage, 1995, pp 45-64.
• Rosi Braidotti, "Cyberfeminism with a Difference", New Formations 29, London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1996.
• Sadie Plant, Zeroes and Ones: Digital Women and the New Technoculture, London: Fourth Estate, 1997, 305 pp, ARG.
  • translations
• Old_Boys_Network, "100 Anti-Theses of Cyberfeminism", 1997.
• First Cyberfeminist International: Old Boys Network Reader 1, eds. Cornelia Sollfrank and Old Boys Network, obn, 1998, 88 pp. Documentation of the September 1997 conference as part of Hybrid Workspace at Documenta X, Kassel.
• Next Cyberfeminist International: Old Boys Network Reader 2, eds. Cornelia Sollfrank and Old Boys Network, obn, 1999, 104 pp. Extended documentation of the March 1999 conference in Rotterdam.
• Marina Gržinić, Adele Eisenstein (eds.), The Spectralization of Technology: From Elsewhere to Cyberfeminism and Back: Institutional Modes of the Cyberworld, Maribor: MKC, 1999, 128 pp. TOC. With texts by Cornelia Sollfrank, Helene von Oldenburg, Claudia Reiche, Kathy Rae Huffman, Eva Ursprung, Margarete Jahrmann and Marina Gržinić. (English)/(Slovenian)
• Susan Hawthorne, Renate Klein (eds.), Cyberfeminism: Connectivity, Critique and Creativity, Melbourne: Spinifex Press, 1999, 434 pp. Review: Wise (Media Intl AU). [5]
• Verena Kuni, "Cyberfeministische Vernetzung und die schöne Kunst, Karriere zu machen", in Musen, Mythen, Markt. Jahrbuch VIII der Frauenbeauftragten der Hochschule der Künste Berlin, ed. Sigrid Haase, Berlin: Hochschule der Künste Berlin, 2000, pp 41-49. (German)
• Ulrike Bergermann, "Intelligente Lebensformen. Das 'Old Boys Network' promoted den Cyberfeminismus", Frauen Kunst Wissenschaft 29, 2000, pp 21-37. (German)
• Andrea Hapke, Andrea Jana Korb, "Russische" cyberfeministische Strategien zwischen Realität, Virtualität und Fiktion, Berlin: Freie Universität Berlin, 2001. (German)
• Very Cyberfeminist International: Old Boys Network Reader 3, eds. Helene von Oldenburg and Claudia Reiche, Berlin: b_books, 2002, 132 pp. Extended documentation of the December 2001 conference in Hamburg.
• Maria Fernandez, Faith Wilding, Michelle M. Wright (eds.), Domain Errors: Cyberfeminist Practices!, New York: Autonomedia, 2002.
• Bulletin Texte 24(13): "Cyberfeminismus: feministische Visionen mit Netz und ohne Boden?", Berlin: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 2002. [6] (German)
• subRosa, James Pei-Mun Tsang, Yes Species: A Performative Tableau / Yes Species: ein performatives Tableau, trans. Nanna Heidenreich, Pittsburgh and Chicago: Sabrosa Books, 2005, 79 pp. (English)/(German)
  • 2nd ed., rev., as Yes Species: A Performative Tableau / Yes Species: un tableau performativo, trans. Carlos García Aranda and Lambe & Nieto, Castelló: Espai d ́art contemporani de Castelló (EACC), 2006, 78 pp. (English)/(Spanish)
• Sarah Kember, Cyberfeminism and Artificial Life, Routledge, 2003.
• Alexandra Pirici, Raluca Voinea, "Manifesto for the Gynecene: Sketch of a New Geological Era", Bucharest and Bologna, Jan 2015.
• Laboria Cuboniks, "Xenofeminism. A Politics for Alienation", Jun 2015.
• Armen Avanessian, Helen Hester (eds.), dea ex machina, trans. Stephan Geene, Gesine Strempel and Jennifer Sophia Theodor, Berlin: Merve, 2015, 160 pp. Texts by Rosi Braidotti, Shulamith Firestone, Donna Haraway, Laboria Cuboniks, Lisa Nakamura, Alexandra Pirici, Nina Power, Paul B. Preciado, Raluca Voinea. Introduction, Publisher, Book launch. Commentary: Fox (2015). (German)
• Armen Avanessian, Suhail Malik, "Laboria Cuboniks in Conversation", DIS Magazine, 23 Jul 2016.
• Cornelia Sollfrank, Rachel Baker, "Revisiting the Future with Laboria Cuboniks. A Conversation", Furtherfield, 27 Jul 2016.
• Francis Tseng, "Particular Universals", The New Inquiry, 22 Dec 2016. Interview with Helen Hester.
• Helen Hester, "After the Future: n Hypotheses of Post-Cyber Feminism", 30 Jun 2017.
• Helen Hester, Xenofeminism, Wiley, 2018, 140 pp. [7]

See also

• Reading Room at OBN
• Publications on cyberfeminism at Monoskop Log
• VNS Matrix#Writings and interviews.

Primary references

• Faith Wilding, Our Own Hands, Double X, 1977.
• Donna Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto, 1985.

Historisation

• Alex Galloway, "A Report on Cyberfeminism: Sadie Plant relative to VNS Matrix", Switch 4:1 (2003).
• Carolyn Guertin, Quantum Feminist Mnemotechnics: The Archival Text, Digital Narrative and The Limits of Memory, University of Alberta, 2003. Ph.D. dissertation. [8]
• Susanna Paasonen, "Revisiting Cyberfeminism", Communications 36, 2011, pp 335-352.
• Laurel Ptak, When the Future Was Femail: Remembering 1990s Cyberfeminism, Bard College, 2014. Master's thesis. [9]
• Claire L. Evans, "'We Are the Future Cunt': CyberFeminism in the 90s", Motherboard, 20 Nov 2014.
• Claire L. Evans, "An Oral History of the First Cyberfeminists", Motherboard, 11 Dec 2014.
• History of Cyberfeminism, n.d.
• Sonja Peteranderl, "Die Pionierinnen des Cyberfeminismus sagen den Tech-Cowboys den Kampf an", WIRED Germany, 2 Jun 2015. (German)
• Cornelia Sollfrank, "Revisiting the Future: Cyberfeminism in the 21st Century", in across & beyond – A transmediale Reader on Post-digital Practices, Concepts and Institutions, eds. Ryan Bishop, Kristoffer Gansing, Jussi Parikka, and Elvia Wilk, Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2016, pp 228-247, HTML.

Resources

• Cyberfeminism Resources, Bibliography, Discussion Lists compiled by Monica Vasilescu, 2003.
• http://twitter.com/Bobcluness/lists/xenofemisn
• http://cyberfeminisme.org/
• Cyberfeminismus / Kiberfeminizm / Cyberfeminismen, a resource by Jana Korb. (German)/(Russian)/(English)