[-empyre-] www.ggg.cc - games/gender/girls

[Julianne Pierce <jules@autonomous.org>]

Hi empyreans, and thanks to Melinda for asking me to lead some 
discussion on cyberfeminism (and some other spin-off topics) with 
co-host Mary Flanagan.

The eympure discussion of the last few weeks on (dis)embodiment, 
virtual identities, the abject leads in well to a discussion of early 
cyberfeminism. I am interested in looking at shifts in cyberfeminism 
over the last 10 - 12 years, and particularly from my own perspective 
as an artist involved in the early cyberfeminist movement. Perhaps to 
give you some of my background - I was a founding member of the 
Australian artists collective VNS Matrix, who began making 
collaborative digital artworks in the early 1990's. The group was 
formed in part as a response to ideas and theories emerging at the 
time, ranging from the 'cyberpunk' of William Gibson's 'Neuromancer' 
to Haraway's 'Cyborg Manifesto'. The group was also strongly 
influenced by French feminist theory and in particular our 
interpretations of Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray - notions of a 
body exisiting in liminal or abject space - a body with no end or 
beginning, a sort of ecstatic body which existed outside of a 
predetermined physical 'patriarchal' space.

Our first major artwork was Cyberfeminist Manifesto for the 21st 
Century...a text piece which also became the graphic centrepiece of a 
6 metre x 2 metre billboard, which was exhibited quite extensively in 
Australia with smaller versions exhibited internationally. Our 
manifesto combined elements of French feminist theory with references 
to the body...and situated the female body as a direct link to the 
computer...a sort of wet tactile interface to the matrix. Our work is 
very much tongue in cheek, we wanted to create a space for playful 
imaginative intervention into computer culture and to create a space 
for female dialogue into a predominantly male sphere.

Cyberfeminist Manifesto for the 21st Century

we are the modern cunt
positive anti reason
unbounded unleashed unforgiving
we see art with out cunt we make art with our cunt
we believe in jouissance madness holiness and poetry
we are the virus of the new world disorder
rupturing the symbolic from within
saboteurs of big daddy mainframe
the clitoris is a direct line to the matrix
VNS MATRIX
terminators of the moral code
mercenaries of slime
go down on the altar of abjection
seeking the visceral temple we speak in tongues
infiltrating disrupting disseminating
corrupting the discourse
we are the future cunt

During the early 1990's English theorist Sadie Plant had also coined 
the term 'cyberfeminism'. By pure serendipity, both VNS Matrix and 
Plant were thinking about the body in cyberspace, and the potential 
for virtual identities to create a rupture in gender identity...was 
it possible to leave your gender behind in cyberspace...and what is 
the potential for other sorts of identities to emerge. For VNS Matrix 
and Plant, these ideas were liberating, and enabled a positive and 
critical engagement with cybertheory of the time. Other key figures 
around this time included Allucquere Rosanne/Sandy Stone and Linda 
Dement, who were very much challenging ideas of online identity and 
flesh in cyberspace.

These first manifestations of cyberfeminism were imbued with a sense 
of idealism, with an attitude that 'cyberspace' was a new kind of 
frontier. I am interested in the next month to look at some questions 
concerning the trajectory of cyberfeminism, and indeed the sense of 
play within technoculture. To what extent has new media art practice 
overcome the fascination with technology and embarked on an 
engagement with issues of identity, sexuality and political change? 
What sort of spaces has cyberfeminism created for women to engage 
with technology, or has cyberfeminism been irrelevent in this? One of 
the VNS Matrix projects was to investigate the potential of 
developing games for girls. The prototype of the game project BAD 
CODE was an attempt at this, but unfortunately has never made it on 
to the shelves of gaming stores. Is there a market for girl gaming 
and who are the developers?

I hope that these questions spark some interest and I look forward to 
comments from the list and from Mary Flanagan a bit later in the 
month,

cheers Julianne