[-empyre-] on working queerly with media

[pedro]

> For me, engaging queerly with technology is about tinkering, hacking,
> modding - working around the system to create our own circuits of meaning.

yes, totally ! i think its important to make the parallel between
hackers of gender and hackers of machines & computers. The same
principles of autonomy and self-determination, anti-hierarchical,
humoristic, and, as you say so well "create our own circuits of
meaning".

however, often (usually) these worlds (queer / hacker) are very
seperate and (generally) organised along gender lines (boys with
machines and girls with bodies) - last summer in Gijón we experienced
a meeting of these worlds - especially in the area of hardware. We
call it transhackerfeminism ! The transfeminist block soldering and
making their own instruments and performing all together, often the
instruments worn on the body, ciborg stye. The boys drifting into the
Install Party, a game devised by the Mery and her friends. Using the
metaphor of the operating system (OS) for gender constructions, a
group proposed to install concepts like postporno, s&m, or desinstall
machismo etc. Individuals wore a logo on their sleeve indicating their
speciality and participants would ask them to carry out the
installation or desinstallation. At the same time another install
party, Linux Ubuntu in Asturian, was going on alongside ... (as well
as a lot of other things :  good report on the event - in spanish -
here http://susanaserrano.cc/2011/09/02/reboot-al-sistema-del-arte/
and here a text - in english - situating the summerlab in the context
of collective emergency http://word.root.ps/?p=109 )

bzzz