Ⓥ 4.2 Eco/Techno Feminism
Tracks
Track 2
Tuesday, June 25, 2024 |
10:30 AM - 12:30 PM |
Plaza P6 |
Overview
This session will be livestreamed from Brisbane for virtual delegates
Speaker
Professor Cristin Millett
The Pennsylvania State University
P: Ectogenic Desire: Stories of Placentas, Mothers, and Machines from the Past, Present, and Future
10:30 AM - 11:15 AMAbstract
A handful of scientists around the world are experimenting with animals in artificial wombs. In each study, the technological system is constructed slightly differently with the aim to provide an ex-vivo surrogate environment for infants born 22 to 28 weeks premature – a healthy gestation is 40 weeks. In September 2023 the US Food and Drug Administration met for two days to discuss the regulations, ethics and possibilities of creating an artificial womb for this purpose. To date, this is the most novel example of huMans’ endeavor to mimic, control, and “improve” on nature, continuing our aspiration to mechanize and automate the mysteries of “creation.” “Ectogenic Desire: Stories of Placentas, Mothers and Machines from the Past, Present, and Future” explores stories, biologies, and technologies of reproduction in humans and beyond. The presentations will consider placenta rituals practiced in different cultures over time; stories about biological and artificial wombs; the history of the Artificial Mothers and other ectogenic desires.
Biography
Straddling traditional disciplinary boundaries, Cristin Millett’s investigations of medicine and its history are integral to her artistic process. Her work examines the intersection of art and science, specifically sculptural processes and reproductive futures, and prompts a contemporary cultural critique of societal issues surrounding reproduction and gender identity. Millett is a Professor of Art in the School of Visual Art at the Pennsylvania State University. In 2020, she was a Fulbright Senior Scholar at SymbioticA.
Dr Ionat Zurr
Associate Professor
The University of Western Australia
Co-presenter
Biography
Dr. Ionat Zurr is the Chair of the Fine Arts Discipline at the School of Design at the University of Western Australia and SymbioticA’s Academic Coordinator. She is considered a pioneer in the field of Biological Arts and publishes and exhibits internationally. Her work was exhibited and collected by museums such as the Pompidou Centre in Paris, MoMA NY, Mori Art Museum, NGV, GoMA, Ars Electronica, National Art Museum of China and more.
Associate Professor Elizabeth Stephens
University of Queensland
Co-presenter
Biography
Dr. Elizabeth Stephens is an Associate Professor in Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland. She was previously an Australian Research Council Future Fellow in the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (UQ), Associate Dean Research at Southern Cross University, and an ARC Australian Research Fellow in the Centre for the History of European Discourses (UQ). She is author of over 100 publications, including three monographs. She is the founder and convenor of the Australasian Health and Medical Humanities Network.
Ms Cynthia White
Adjunct Research Associate
The Pennsylvania State University
Co-presenter
Biography
Cynthia White is a filmmaker and multimedia artist whose work has been presented at conferences and festivals in the US, Australia, Europe, and Latin America. In addition to festival awards, White has received funding and residencies in Australia and the US. Through visual narratives, she strives to elevate the collaborative work between arts researchers and the medical and biological sciences. White is an Adjunct Research Associate at the Pennsylvania State University.
Mr Raivo Kelomees
Estonian Academy of Arts
SP: Primal Experience: Works of Art as Artificial Wombs
11:15 AM - 11:30 AMAbstract
The exploration of technical artworks termed "artificial wombs" involves physically placing the viewer inside the work, incorporating touch, vibration, body position, and temperature experiences. This immersive approach aims to evoke primal sensations akin to being in a safe womb. Exam-ining projects like "Nemo Observatory," "Sound Capsule," and "Haptic Field," where participants encounter artificial environments, the study delves into psychological drivers of tactile and bodily immersion. While some projects aim for calming environments, others introduce surprising disturb-ances. Notably, these differ from VR experiences, emphasizing a physical separation from surroundings. Examples like "Optofonica Capsule," "Iso-phone," and "Waterwalk" engage kinesthetic and proprioceptive senses, challenging partici-pants physically and mentally. The study explores the genu-ine, sensory "inside" experience in these artworks, distinct from metaphorical immersion.
Biography
Raivo Kelomees, PhD (art history), is an artist, art historian and new media researcher. He studied psychology, art history and design in Tartu University and the Academy of Arts in Tallinn. He is senior researcher at the Fine Arts Faculty at the Estonian Academy of Arts and professor at the Pallas University of Applied Sciences. Kelomees is author of Surrealism (Kunst Publishers, 1993) and article collections Screen as a Membrane (Tartu Art College proceedings, 2007) and Social Games in Art Space (EAA, 2013). His doctoral thesis is Postmateriality in Art. Indeterministic Art Practices and Non-Material Art (Dissertationes Academiae Artium Estoniae 3, 2009). Together with Chris Hales he edited the collection of articles Constructing Narrative in Interactive Documentaries (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014). In collaboration with Varvara Guljajeva and Oliver Laas he edited the collection of articles The Meaning of Creativity in the Age of AI (EKA Press, 2022).
Dr Sojung Bahng
Assistant Professor
Queen's University
SP: Digital Flesh – Scar in Data: Remediating and Performing the Korean Female Body
11:30 AM - 11:45 AMAbstract
"Digital Flesh – Scar in Data" is a multimedia performance that combines live cinema, computer vision with reactive sound, and augmented reality (AR) to challenge and reimagine the representation of the female body, particularly the South Korean female body. This project reshapes the Korean female body as a dynamic interface and instrument, blurring the boundaries between physicality and virtuality. This practice-based research delves into questions about how digital technology objectifies and represents our bodies and explores methods for re-mediating corporeality within performative practice us-ing new media.
Biography
Sojung Bahng is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist, filmmaker and researcher. She is an Assistant Professor in Media and Performance Production in the Department of Film and Media and the DAN School of Drama and Music at Queen’s University in Canada. Sojung explores cinematic media via digital technologies to reflect aesthetic and narrative experiences in cultural and philosophical contexts.
Ms Kathy Rae Huffman
Independent
AT: Faces
11:45 AM - 12:00 PMAbstract
Faces is a network of female media artists that was founded in Austria in 1997. After a series of conversations on the fringes of the major European media art festivals, the question was raised: “Where are the women?”
Many informal meetings and dinners were arranged to discuss ideas and challenges. At one of these, the mailing list was inaugurated. The Faces list created a forum that marked a fundamental change in the practice of some women and the feeling of limitless communication has opened up new possibilities for creative online projects. In 1997, it served as the organizing platform for the Cyberfeminist International at the Documenta X. Since then, many Faces have self-organized informal and public meetings, dinners, presentations and exhibitions.
FACES at ISEA 2024 is the opportunity to share the diversity and variety of the international community. Using the platform UpStage, an online tool for real-time storytelling, allows for an online audience to join, observe and interact via live chat. Coordinated by Eva Ursprung and Kathy Rae Huffman in a live, online Open Mic session, members of the list will have short presentations of their works.
Faces is ‘moderated’ by list co-founders Valie Djordjevic, Diana McCarty and Kathy Rae Huffman. http://www.faces-l.net/
Many informal meetings and dinners were arranged to discuss ideas and challenges. At one of these, the mailing list was inaugurated. The Faces list created a forum that marked a fundamental change in the practice of some women and the feeling of limitless communication has opened up new possibilities for creative online projects. In 1997, it served as the organizing platform for the Cyberfeminist International at the Documenta X. Since then, many Faces have self-organized informal and public meetings, dinners, presentations and exhibitions.
FACES at ISEA 2024 is the opportunity to share the diversity and variety of the international community. Using the platform UpStage, an online tool for real-time storytelling, allows for an online audience to join, observe and interact via live chat. Coordinated by Eva Ursprung and Kathy Rae Huffman in a live, online Open Mic session, members of the list will have short presentations of their works.
Faces is ‘moderated’ by list co-founders Valie Djordjevic, Diana McCarty and Kathy Rae Huffman. http://www.faces-l.net/
Biography
Kathy Rae Huffman is an American curator, networker, and writer. Since the early 1980s, she has curated media exhibitions, juried competitions, lectured and coordinated events for international media art festivals and arts initiatives, including AFI, CAA, ISEA, D.E.A.F., V2, SCCA, Ars Electronica, and EMAF. Huffman co-founded FACES: Gender/Technology/Art, an online community for women (1997); VRML Art (later Web3D Art) with Van Gogh TV (1998-2003); and she co-authored Pop~Tarts, the multi-media column for the Telepolis Journal (1996-2000). She curated Digital Power: Activism, Advocacy and the Influence of Women Online for ACM SIGGRAPH (2020). Huffman currently resides in Southern California.
Ms Eva Ursprung
Speaker
FACES
Co-presenter
Biography
Eva Ursprung lives and works as free lancing artist and curator in Austria. Her art practice includes sound, video, conceptual photography, installation and performance, often expanding into the public, electronic and social spaces.
In 1982, she was founding member of the feminist art magazine EVA & CO, in 1993 she founded Kunstverein W.A.S. (Womyn´s Art Support), and many art organisations since then. She is board member of IMA – Institute of Media Archeology.
Mx Angelique Joy
Phd Candidate - School Of Art
RMIT University
AT: THE MOTHER IMAGESoft-Cyborgs & Neuroqueer, Postmother Speculations
12:00 PM - 12:15 PMAbstract
From Lilith to Mary, the monstrous to the virtuous; the mother image is an enduring cultural artifact that reifies heteronormative systems of care and mothering. Many within, and without, these systems- namely the non-compliant, are rendered alien-other and in-turn denied interdependent modes of care. This creative practice research project offers sci-fi speculations of care that neuroqueer the mother image, imagining collective care and kin making, beyond the mother.
A photographic (expanded) research method that begins with material/textural soft sculptures and moves through to virtual, experiential outcomes will be used to imagine, propose, and speculate. This creative research defines and explores the mother image and the cyborg-mother; specifically, as represented in contemporary science-fiction film. In response, creative outputs propose divergent soft-cyborg speculations for systemic multi-species care; postmother.
Working with an autoethnographic approach, as a neuroqueer mother/child and underpinned by a crip/queer/feminist manifesto-as-method, this research and resultant soft-cyborg imaginings reclaim the cyborg as a neuroqueer site of generative speculation. Beginning with Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto, this research aims to propose technologically mediated modes of care for non-compliant bodes; meaningfully holding our othered, alien bodies and our more-than-human kin.
A photographic (expanded) research method that begins with material/textural soft sculptures and moves through to virtual, experiential outcomes will be used to imagine, propose, and speculate. This creative research defines and explores the mother image and the cyborg-mother; specifically, as represented in contemporary science-fiction film. In response, creative outputs propose divergent soft-cyborg speculations for systemic multi-species care; postmother.
Working with an autoethnographic approach, as a neuroqueer mother/child and underpinned by a crip/queer/feminist manifesto-as-method, this research and resultant soft-cyborg imaginings reclaim the cyborg as a neuroqueer site of generative speculation. Beginning with Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto, this research aims to propose technologically mediated modes of care for non-compliant bodes; meaningfully holding our othered, alien bodies and our more-than-human kin.
Biography
Angelique Joy is a Neuroqueer, visual artist working with photography and the expanded nature of the digital image. Angelique’s practice is informed by their Neuroqueer lived experience and through the intersecting frameworks of posthumanism, queer and xenofeminism.
Their practice has emerged out of a concern with identity, otherness and space. They are interested in the cultural and material spaces we all unfold within. Increasingly their practice is interrogating the digital spaces we populate and how the technologically mediated bodymind is contributing
to new worlds.
They are particularly interested in exploring how each being, both human and non, unfolds, is constructed and performed within the spaces we inhabit, the spaces we claim, and the spaces we are kept from.
Angelique is currently a PHD candidate at RMIT, School of Art.
Session chair
Jill Scott
Zurich University of the Arts
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