Legacies of Cyberfeminism is a series of reading-groups and events, based on the Kathy Rae Huffman collection, the Media Art library donated to Goldsmiths Library by the Curator and launching in Spring 2017.

With this series of reading groups we wish to facilitate a dialogue based on a selection of books and articles found in the KRH collection, materials which present modes and forms of imagining futures and of engaging with fictions. The reading group specifically aims to address how these writings from the late 1990s and mid-2000s (some of which are rare prints and limited copies in circulation) and their legacies can be set in conversation with contemporary exaltations and exhaustions of discourses on feminism, artistic practices, and activism.

Reading groups are organised by Dimitra Gkitsa and Mihaela Brebenel, in collaboration with Res Gallery and Stephanie Moran.

I. LEGACIES OF CYBERFEMINISM, 19 April 2016.

In this first session, we will focus on the publication produced on the occasion of The First Cyberfeminist International (1997) and on the edited collection The Spectralization of Technology: From Elsewhere to Cyberfeminsm and Back. Institutional modes of the Cyberworld, Marina Gržinić (ed.), in collaboration with Adele Eisenstein, MKC Project, Festival of Computer Arts, Maribor, Slovenia 1999.

Close Readings:
– Cornelia Sollfrank, The truth about Cyberfeminism
– Helen von Oldenburg, From Spider – to Cyberfeminism and Back
– Faith Wilding and CAE (Critical Art Ensemble), Notes on the Political Condition of Cyberfeminism
– Verena Kuni, The Future is Femail: some thoughts on the aesthetics and politics of Cyberfeminism

Further Readings:
– Eva Ursprung, Cyberfeminist Healing Methods I: Akupunkturpunkte (Acupuncture Points)
– Margarete Jahrmann, Superfem SuperUsers Browsers

All the reading groups will take place in the Prokofiev Room, 2nd floor, Goldsmiths Library from 5.30-8.00 pm.
Free. All welcome. Registration required
https://revisiting-cyberfeminist-genealogies.eventbrite.com/

II. FEMINIST FUTURES & FICTIONS FROM SOUTH EAST OF EUROPE, 24 May 2016.

Image copyright: Sanja Iveković, ‘Chanoyu’, videotape, 11 min, 1983, film still.

In this second session, we will have a close look at two publications: “Zones of Disturbance” (associated with the steirischer herbst festival, Graz, 1997) and “The Last Futurist Show” (part of the Fiction Reconstructed project, Slovenia, 2001). These are edited collections that include texts by women artists, theorists and curators, which in their own ways converse with the politics of digital and screen technologies, the body, imagination and fiction.

Close readings:
-Rosi Braidotti, “Cyber Feminism with a Difference”, Zones of Disturbance, steirischer herbst: Graz, 1997, pp. 121-129.
-Ekaterina Dyogot, “The Revenge of the Background”, Zones of Disturbance, steirischer herbst: Graz, 1997, pp. 43-48.
-Hito Steyerl, “The (W)hole of Babel” in The Last Futurist Show, Ljubljana, 2001, pp. 34-41.
–0100101110101101.org, “An Interview with 0100101110101101.org ” in The Last Futurist Show, Ljubljana, 2001, 63-65.

Further readings:
-Kathy Rae Huffman, “The Disturbed Zones of Internet Art”, Zones of Disturbance, steirischer herbst: Graz, 1997, pp.146- 152.
-Tanja Ostojić, “Crossing Borders: Development of Different Artistic Strategies” in ‘Integration Impossible? The Politics of Migration in the Artwork of Tanja Ostojić’, Kunstpavilion: Innsbruck, 2009, pp. 161-170.

To get access to the readings, please email m.brebenel@gold.ac.uk &/or d.gkitsa@gold.ac.uk.

This reading group will take place in the Prokofiev Room, 2nd floor, Goldsmiths Library from 5.30-8.00 pm.
Free. All welcome.

III. NETWORKS, COLLABORATIONS & FORMS OF LABOUR, 30 June 2016.

For this session, we will be reading a selection of short texts from edited collections and catalogues brought together by concerns with how to build and sustain (cyber)feminist collaborations and networks, and how to use these to interogate forms of artistic, domestic or other types of labour.
– Kathy Rae Huffman and Margarete Jahrman, “Fem Networks” in The Spectralization of Technology: From Elsewhere to Cyberfeminsm and Back. Institutional modes of the Cyberworld, Marina Gržinić (ed.), in collaboration with Adele Eisenstein, MKC Project, Festival of Computer Arts, Maribor, Slovenia 1999.
– Kathy Rae Huffman and Eva Wohlgemuth, “Face Settings” in The First Cyberfeminist International (1997).
– Corrine Petrus, “Webgrrls” in The First Cyberfeminist International (1997).
– Margarete Jahrman, “Superfeminisme” in The First Cyberfeminist International (1997).
– Excerpts from “City of Women” International Festival of Contemporary Arts catalogues from 2004 and 2006.

We will hold this third session of the Legacies of Cyberfeminism reading group at Res gallery in Deptford, where a Reading Room with materials from the Kathy Rae Huffman collection will be on display (more detailshttp://beingres.org/2016/06/15/kathy-rae-huffman-archive-reading-room/).

IV. CRITICAL INTERROGATIONS, 29 July 2016.

On this last reading group, we will focus on the collaborations of subRosa collective (http://cyberfeminism.net/) and particularly on one text:
– Maria Fernandez, ‘Cyberfeminism, Racism, Embodiment’,
(http://www.refugia.net/domainerrors/DE1b_cyber.pdf ) in ‘Domain Errors! Cyberfeminist Practices’, A subRosa project, edited by Maria Fernandez, Faith Whilding, and Michelle M. Wright, Autonomedia: New York, 2002, available in full: http://home.refugia.net/portfolio/domain-errors/

The hope is that we will be able to discuss the text at length and issues around intersectionality in relation to cyberfeminist practices which it raises. Perhaps we can even produce a series of questions and further articulations of what the legacies of cyberfemisnism might be and mean in the contemporary, and how can they be further interrogated.

This is the closing event in a series of reading groups based on the Kathy Rae Huffman collection, the Media Art library donated to Goldsmiths Library by the Curator and launching in Spring 2017.

We will hold this BRING-a-DISH final session of the reading group at Res gallery in Deptford, where a Reading Room with materials from the Kathy Rae Huffman collection will be on display (more detailshttp://beingres.org/2016/06/15/kathy-rae-huffman-archive-reading-room/).