<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 14px; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><div>Greetings Melinda!</div><div><br></div><div>I wanted to jump into this conversation because it has in fact surprised me that the text-only mailing list forums are still the most vital and dynamic space for dialogue, even though the Internet and the Web have advanced dramatically since the 1990s and early 2000s. I am not sure if it is the medium that is the problem, but rather the intent. The intense focus and seriousness of debate found in mailing list forums are simply not the purpose of social media, which reaches out to a broader audience and thus a more heterogenous group. That said, the tools available today are far more favorable for discussion revolving around new media art and theory, in which examples of work can be more integrated and woven into the discourse. Perhaps it is simply that the new technologies are far more complex to use, and thus are co-opted by institutions with commercial intent. However, if a group of artists and thinkers decided to create an online forum in say, Wordpress, as a multi-site or a network of RSS feeds, it could be revolutionary. Imagine a network of bloggers whose posts are aggregated and feed into a single site that also includes various social media feeds. Such tools are out there but they seem too “off the shelf” or corporate or commercially-driven for the kind of focused debate that is typical of the mailing list communities. </div><div><br></div><div>In sum, the Internet is no longer a domain dominated by the experimentalists, it is for the world, but I suspect that with the right intent and determination, that a new kind of forum and social space could emerge and become a force to reckon. </div><div><br></div><div>Randall</div><div><br></div><span id="OLK_SRC_BODY_SECTION"><div style="font-family:Calibri; font-size:11pt; text-align:left; color:black; BORDER-BOTTOM: medium none; BORDER-LEFT: medium none; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0in; PADDING-LEFT: 0in; PADDING-RIGHT: 0in; BORDER-TOP: #b5c4df 1pt solid; BORDER-RIGHT: medium none; PADDING-TOP: 3pt"><span style="font-weight:bold">From: </span> Murat Nemet-Nejat <<a href="mailto:muratnn@gmail.com">muratnn@gmail.com</a>><br><span style="font-weight:bold">Reply-To: </span> <<a href="mailto:muratnn1@yahoo.com">muratnn1@yahoo.com</a>>, soft_skinned_space <<a href="mailto:empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au</a>><br><span style="font-weight:bold">Date: </span> Wednesday, February 25, 2015 at 11:12 AM<br><span style="font-weight:bold">To: </span> soft_skinned_space <<a href="mailto:empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au</a>><br><span style="font-weight:bold">Subject: </span> Re: [-empyre-] on feminism and the cyclical nature of tools and technologies<br></div><div><br></div>----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<div dir="ltr"><div><div>Melinda, I share your feelings that early forms such as listserves and chatrooms--for me they were listserves--were better media for creating communities and for the in-depth exchange and discussion of ideas than later forms. For instance, I developed lasting friendships with poets I first met in the Buffalo Poetics list during its early years. It led to the legendary Carboro poetry festival near Chapel Hill, North Carolina, organized by the equally legendary Patrick Herron where he brought a number of the poets on the list together for four days. Some of us fought, argued; but developed our ideas in these discussions, created forms based on them. To me, blogs that originally replaced lists are a more solipsistic form, disguised as advances, progress in the web world. As for Facebook, chat rooms became chitchat.<br><br></div>Ciao,<br><br></div>Murat<br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Feb 25, 2015 at 9:34 AM, Melinda Rackham <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:melinda@subtle.net" target="_blank">melinda@subtle.net</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<br>
hello again..<br><br>
Of FemTechNet Anne wrote “Our mantra became: “WHO you learn with is as important as what you learn.” What a wonderful initiative. Tracey posted many great project links as well. Reality creates Reality - the world is still owned by a few men who maintain the privilege of themselves and other men. Feminism has been using tools and technologies for 150 years with some good success, however we saw it at the Academy Awards: 70% of the stories we see are stories of men where women do not speak to each other except to talk about men, and women still only earn 40% of male wages in the entertainment industry.<br><br>
Writing is a tool. I recall years ago Australian video/performance art pioneer Jill Scott impressing on me the importance of writing on and citing other women. I particularly like the simple cut and paste tools of Elvis Richardson.. she cuts names out of art magazine with scissors and pastes them on boxboard monuments with glue to graphically illustrate the inequalities in writing on women artists. <a href="http://www.elvisrichardson.com/Versus.html" target="_blank">http://www.elvisrichardson.com/Versus.html</a><br><br>
Peer groups are a tool. Womens networked groups provided access to technologies and sistas - dinners, in person meet ups, mentoring, introductions, and practicalities of art practice like travel and residences sublets and house swaps etc. Old Boys Network OBN - a cyberfeminist alliance initiated by Cornelia Sollfrank in 1997 in Berlin, <a href="http://www.obn.org" target="_blank">http://www.obn.org</a> ; and the international FACES - "an international mailing list that connects women activists, artists, critics, theoreticians, technicians, journalists, researchers, programmers, networkers, web designers and educators: women who share an interest in the media and communication arts" have done this for many years. <a href="http://faces-l.net/" target="_blank">http://faces-l.net/</a><br><br>
Mentoring and nurturing are tools. Which takes me back to early learning spaces on the internet. Before user friendly software interfaces or university courses it was all about shared quests in localised (but geographically global) communities - you learnt from like minded strangers on BBS or IRC chat or list-serve. And in turn you taught others. Miss Despoinas Hackspace has been home-brewed in Hobart (at the bottom of Australia) by Nancy Mauro-Flude since 2008. Its a " salon for experimental research, radical aesthetics, media design, production and exchange underlined by modes of maker culture. " Teaching others to make it and break it. <a href="http://miss-hack.org/" target="_blank">http://miss-hack.org/</a><br><br>
I've just hookedup via crackbook with some women I went to University with 20 years ago. It was 1995 and we taught ourselves to hand code HTML and curated an online show - Wollongong World Women Online WWWO, and taught 30 other women how to make a web page which was in the show. Our Australian site was part of The World’s Women Online! a project developed by Muriel Magenta at Arizona State University for presentation at the 1995 the Fourth United Nations World Conference on Women in Beijing. At that time when women made up less than 10% of internet users, just introducing the internet on a computer to another woman was a massive technological tool for art and change. The web site is dead, but we think we can put about 20% of it back together form our bit of files. Archiving, leaving a legacy, is a tool.<br><br>
One of the reasons I've strayed away from online culture over the past years is that apart from small pockets it sometimes seems like a soma delivery system. Where I've strayed to is back into local geographical communities, learning from peer environments and in turn sharing my technical and knowledge skills to strengthen networks and allow more advocacy reach. I won't post any links here as they are private communities, but they involve basic human needs like Shelter in affordable housing; identity and dignity in addressing the ongoing physical and psychological trauma of market driven forced Adoptions practices; and the rights of children in the era of "rent a 3rd world womb" surrogacy. I use off the shelf space like <a href="http://groupspaces.com" target="_blank">groupspaces.com</a> - easy to modify, easy to maintain by anyone with minimal technical knowledge, and have all the basics a group needs for sharing communication in both imagery and texts. It could be something better, faster, slicker, free, open source, but thats not the important aspect of this tool.<br><br>
A tool is context specific. I am writing my memoir which explores the gulf created when a child and mother are forcibly separated at birth. I was removed from my 20-year-old unmarried mother at birth, and then lost my only child to forced adoption aged 15. In writing it I use the same Nuance Dragon voice recognition software that Simon uses in his Crosstalk project. It works for me as I need to speak from my belly - engaging my emotions freely in this highly personal project. If i'm typing with my critical editorial fingers on keyboard the flow is different.I like the jaw/skull bone pick ups you describe Simon, sounds particularly good for gnashing of teeth...<br><br>
So tools and technologies don't need to be new, specialised, expensive or complex, and often the more straight fwd the longer lasting and more far reaching their outcomes. Thats why I used the rather daggy list serv format for -empyre- with plain text messages. It was, and still is, easy to use, easy to contain, easy to search, and has no distractions. In 2002 I was hoping -empyre- would a space were it was "safe" to make propositions which left one a little giddy or vulnerable - but I guess the reality is text based interaction becomes performative in a knowledge based economy and status anxiety precludes these sorts of risks. Maybe I'm wrong?<br><br>
Melinda<br>
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