[-empyre-] Week 3 on empyre: Thinking and Tinkering

[Renate Terese Ferro]

Renate responded.  Thanks Ana!  How small our world is.  My apologies for
responding so late but I have been so overwhelmed since I arrived back in
town from NYC where the College Art Association was held.  Have you had
any other sightings of Stephanie Wuschitz.  I know she was writing her PHD
thesis on women and technology.  The cultural nuances in relation to
digital culture is one that we do need to consider and  reflect on a bit
more.  
Thank you so much for sharing these recollections with us especially in
our current political climate.
Renate

Ana wrote: 
Stefanie was a participant as well of our workshop in Damascus Syria
together with Palestinian girls using games as narrative of the diaspora
and trying to empower them to play a more active role in the society.
Syria was at that time a rather secularists society where women had
possibilities to study and work. The Sharia laws were not applicable and
both Christian and Moslem communities lived side by side, such different
than today's sectarism.
Ana
El feb 17, 2015 10:52 AM, "Renate Terese Ferro" <rferro at cornell.edu>
escribió:
...
> A few years ago at Harvestwork in New York City, Stefanie Wuschitz  from
> Vienna collaborated with Harvestwork¹s 2010 Artist In Residence Lesley
> Flanigan to
> host a two day workshop for  women artists on interactive tools.  I
> attended that event and though the mission of the workshop was to
> demystify the tools of technology, I recognized that to teach or share
> only the technology was not addressing the complicated and embedded
>layers
> of social, cultural and
> political values that are inscribed in these tools. Many of our
> technological innovations originated from our military industrial
>complex.
> Unless critically
> dissected and understood  these  patriarchal systems simply remain
> unchecked.  I have been a proponent since I began working in digital
> culture and technology to create and teach from a critical perspective,
> one that is cross-disciplinary where tools and technology do not exist in
> the void of the workshop or lab but where they were understood as a ways
> and means to be thought through via other disciplines and modes of
> communication.
>


Renate Ferro
Visiting Assistant Professor of Art,Cornell University
Department of Art, Tjaden Hall Office:  306
Ithaca, NY  14853
Email:   <rferro at cornell.edu <mailto:rtf9 at cornell.edu>>
URL:  http://www.renateferro.net <http://www.renateferro.net/>
      http://www.privatesecretspubliclies.net
<http://www.privatesecretspubliclies.net/>
Lab:  http://www.tinkerfactory.net <http://www.tinkerfactory.net/>

Managing Co-moderator of -empyre- soft skinned space
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