Night Sweats: Cyberfeminist Practices

Beschreibung

Night Sweats: Cyberfeminist Practices intervenes in this moment of rapid biotechnological development and international political turmoil with thought-provoking, creative, and justice-oriented essays on art and life: opting out of the sludge and consent theatre presented by standard “terms and conditions”; creating plant-assisted reproductive technologies (pARTs) such as indecision trees; practicing compassionate inquiry; and becoming a cyborg-elder. Refusing the authoritarian turn and backlash against reproductive, LGBTQIA+, and racial justice movements, its authors and contributors—artists, writers, scholars, designers, activists, and educators—draw on the twenty-five years of cyberfeminist art work from the subRosa art collective, as well as Black, postcolonial, and environmental feminisms. 

The overall motto of the book is “we will save ourselves,” with examples taken from critical and revisionist histories of alchemy, the automation of writing systems, and reproductive mutual aid. In doing so, the authors develop new analyses of (cyber)feminist contributions to bioart, tactical media, gender, women’s, and sexuality studies, media studies and communication, technoscience studies and STS, durational art, and performance studies. 

Hyla Willis is an interdisciplinary artist and graphic designer, known for her work as a longtime member of the subRosa cyberfeminist art collective. She is a Professor of Media Arts at Robert Morris University in Pennsylvania, USA.

Irina Aristarkhova is a scholar, writer, and Professor in the Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design and the Digital Studies Institute at the University of Michigan, USA. She is author of Hospitality of the Matrix: Philosophy, Biomedicine, and Culture, among other titles. 

Nathanael Elias Mengist is currently a PhD student in Learning Sciences at the University of Washington, USA. His collaborative artwork DIY Homunculi, featured on the animated video podcast "Life Touching Life," appropriates the politics of alchemy to expand how we imagine both environmental and reproductive justice.

Faith Wilding is a co-founder of subRosa, independent artist, Professor Emerita and former Chair of Performance Art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, USA.  

Night Sweats: Cyberfeminist Practices intervenes in this moment of rapid biotechnological development and international political turmoil with thought-provoking, creative, and justice-oriented essays on art and life: opting out of the sludge and consent theatre presented by standard “terms and conditions”; creating plant-assisted reproductive technologies (pARTs) such as indecision trees; practicing compassionate inquiry; and becoming a cyborg-elder. Refusing the authoritarian turn and backlash against reproductive, LGBTQIA+, and racial justice movements, its authors and contributors—artists, writers, scholars, designers, activists, and educators—draw on the twenty-five years of cyberfeminist art work from the subRosa art collective, as well as Black, postcolonial, and environmental feminisms. 

The overall motto of the book is “we will save ourselves,” with examples taken from critical and revisionist histories of alchemy, the automation of writing systems, and reproductive mutual aid. In doing so, the authors develop new analyses of (cyber)feminist contributions to bioart, tactical media, gender, women’s, and sexuality studies, media studies and communication, technoscience studies and STS, durational art, and performance studies. 

Autor*in

Hyla Willis

Themen in »Night Sweats: Cyberfeminist Practices«

biotechnology feminist art performance art bio art technoscience biomedical sciences subRosa cyberfeminism

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“Night Sweats offers an important archival contribution to subRosa’s cyberfeminist artworks, many of which seem eerily prescient a quarter century on. But Night Sweats offers more than a look back. With thoughtful nuance and measured realism, subRosa members and collaborators bring their current projects and perspectives to bear on today’s urgent matters, and reflect on changes that have transpired politically, culturally, technologically in the interim. The authors reenergize core concepts vital to ethical feminist engagements with technology, to show how subRosa is—and must be—more than a legacy: it is an ongoing project for thoughtful cyberfeminists now, and in the future. Night Sweats delivers a subRosa capsule that will be indispensable medicine for our relational health, both technological and bodily.” (Katherine Behar, Baruch College and The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, USA)

“Synthesizing more than two decades of artistic activism, Night Sweats: Cyberfeminist Practices captures the innovative work of the subRosa art collective, particularly its sharp criticism of technologies’ omnipresent drive to capture and privatize women’s bodies and life itself. The artistic interventions in tandem with theoretical commentaries reveal the hidden premises of reproductive and computational bioengineering that remain urgently relevant to current debates on reproductive justice, and feminist technoscience. Night Sweats manifests a conversational mode of compassionate inquiry that is radically generative, always open to revision, and responsive to current political and technological conditions. Cyberfeminism and tactical media are amended and updated in dialogue with postcolonial and critical race theories centered on embodiment and reproductive justice. Night Sweats is a vital resource for artists and designers, activists and educators, theorists and practitioners grappling with the complex terrain of technology and social justice.” (Nassim Parvin, Professor and Associate Dean, Information School, University of Washington, USA)

“Seminal cyberfeminists Hyla Willis, Irina Aristarkhova, Nathanael Elias Mengist, and Faith Wilding have come together to create Night Sweats, bridging early inquiry with the urgent conditions of contemporary technoscience. Revisiting foundational questions of embodied technologies, the volume expands cyberfeminism into the terrains of bioart, AI, reproductive technologies, and wetware at large. It stands as both a continuation and a necessary reimagining of cyberfeminism for a moment defined by new forms of technological intimacy and inequality.” (Mindy Seu, author of “Cyberfeminism Index”, Associate Professor of Design Media Arts at UCLA)

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