abstracts

At the opening reception OBN introduces itself in a performative way. All speakers of the conference as well as other additionally invited cyberfeminists present their personal approach to Cyberfeminism during a poster presentation. 20-30 presenters are standing in front of their individual posters and explain it to the audience. The single presentations do not exceed 10 minutes and will be &Mac226;looped‘. Everybody will be talking, playing and performing at the same time.

old boys network - networking – knot working – not working?

Due to the underlying dynamics of networks there is a permanent need to clarify the changing organizational structure and the way that individual members see the network and their roles within it. It is important that members express their divergent ideas of structure and networking and develop them into a common structure which only can be the basis for networked action and reality. Using an open format, the past, the present, and the future goals of obn will be discussed, and all kinds ot utopian visions for obn’s future will be aired. A next step will be to go beyond our own network, and to look at the condition and the potential of self-organized structures as an alternative to institutional forms within the art system, academia and politics, and discuss their relations and interdependencies.

ƒ(start) ƒ(shut) ƒ(stop) ƒ(open) = new border concepts

Mathematical functions are the core of algorithms that operate computers. Temporal and spatial borders can be written as interacting functions. Closings and beginnings, endings and openings combine and cross, thus modeling the experiences of borders we enjoy or suffer. Breakthrough, shelter, prison, invasion or escape are not neutral in terms of control. For: who is able to manipulate those functions? They are always political. Liberation was another word for a hack in the system's functions in operation, inserting the border of the real into the reality of the operating system. New border concepts perform the relations of power as well as the dynamics of variable temporal and spatial functions.

CYBERFEMINISM is no game without borders, but a playing with borders that takes them seriously, a work at the boundaries of that 'contested zone' in which the so-called real and virtual diverge, and which mines utopias of transgression, understanding them as a potential for transformation. If CYBERFEMINISM is also a utopia, then its utopian designs can be fictions as well as specific political options. In the field of CYBERFEMINISM utopias offer differentiated models for discussion which can invent new forms of communication, open up new articulations of space and time which do not only function in cyberspace, or suggest models based on genetic technologies, operating new life or gender models.

The borders between political utopia, science fiction, and technological innovations have always been fluid - beyond judgment as to value. CYBERFEMINISTs take an inventive, tactical part in furthering a perforation, diffusion, conversion, transgression, subversion etc. of cultural forms with new technological possibilities. Some points of critical and creative attitudes towards fluid borders and special concern are:
- new forms of global control and subversion through the electronic networking technology: how to obtain and secure privacy? how to react to the globalized economy and to the growing influence of global trusts on national governments?
- realities and utopian fantasies of leaving the limitations and rules of the known world behind, in outer space as in cyberspace
- manipulations of human consciousness with drugs/ pharmaceutials, psychological control, or media-related brainwashing
- incorporation of technology into the human body and genetic engineering, how to understand and invert, use and misuse the possibilities?
- new imaginations of gender with and without medical creations and redefinitions of sexual organs etc.

les Pénélopes - "the globalised economy - resistance and creation of alternative practices for information and communication"

In a time where the development of practices and technologies of communication have repercussions into every sphere social, political, economic, cultural with serious implications on the possibilities for democracy and citizenship, the politics and practices of communication is a core issue for all movements resisting and proposing alternatives to a neo-liberal globalisation process.

Concentration of resources, growing private monopolies and oligopoly in the sector of communication, going hand in hand with the dominate technological developments and the implementation of new technologies, has reduced information and communication to just another merchandise a universal, neutral and homogeneous logic, a logic making impossible any notion of public interest and citizenship, a logic where women are not allowed to define their own place or space.

In this context, alliances between feminists (and beyond) networks challenging the frontier between politics, art, the public, economy, the private, journalists, civil society, etc are strategically important in order to construct an alternative communication process resisting and challenging the logic of the neo-liberal communication industry.

Breaking with the dominant models and practices of communication also requires passing from reflection and discussion to action - creating new economic models for communication and developments of new technologies, creating alternatives allowing for feminist contents, to develop new forms of information treatment transversal, horizontal, a media nomad, without borders, where the bearers of contents are (part of) the media.

The seeking to develop new and more diverse forms of communication, of making space for new contents, of developing new software, .. must also be based on an alternative economic logic to the one and dominant that the neo-liberal model provides. Therefore, alternatives created on models of an economy of solidarity, together with a re-formulation of public-private partnership, are needed to ensure the sustainability and strength of our resistance. "

Panel: Irina Aristharkova (Moscow/Singapore), Maria Fernandez (Nicaragua/USA), Faith Wilding (Paraguay/USA), Margaret Tan (Singapore).

strategies and tactics for feminist/cyberfeminist collaborations, collective art practice, contestational cultural work, and building networks of solidarity and action.

Feminist consciousness and struggle are currently on the rise in many developing countries. Feminism has a strong history of direct action and cultural intervention. As feminists who are implicated in, and affected by the changing conditions for women in the global integrated circuit, we desire to create networks of solidarity and active support between women both locally and internationally. We believe that a politically engaged and activist feminism is one of the best hopes for our own work and lives, as well as for women world-wide who are struggling for survival in every sense under the new conditions of the global market economy. As (cyber)feminists we need to think about what tactics will be most effective in addressing these conditions. Since the majority of women worldwide are not wired or connected electronically, cyberfeminists need to adapt their strategies to encompass these conditions. We cannot work exclusively in cyberspace as it excludes too many women who do not have access to the technologies that are affecting their lives. On the other hand, many of us are widely scattered geographically and depend on electronic networking for sustaining our work and relationships between flesh meetings. Our strategies must have embodied components as well as combining technological skills and access with many other methods of networking, support, and resistance learned from feminist cultural and postcolonial theory and practice, and from past activist practices and net activism. Together we can initiate tactical models for direct action, subversion, contestation, and coalition building among different groups of women.

After giving brief individual presentations addressing issues detailed above, panel participants will initiate a general discussion to address such questions as:

What contestational strategies, theories, and activist tactics seem most useful and effective now? How can we get the means, time, and money to do what we care about?
Can we adapt past feminist tactics of consciousness-raising, refusal, boycott, sabotage, direct action, information campaigns, passive and active resistance, to current conditions of the electronic and digital environment?
How are we working collectively and collaboratively as feminists to develop interdisciplinary, local and transnational projects?
What feminist power-sharing and leader-ship strategies can we develop?
Who is our audience?
How can we form networks of solidarity and activism based on concepts of female autonomy and embodiment?

susanna paasonen — on the limits of play

Around the mid-1990s, a certain consensus was produced within Internet studies concerning the Net as site for play with identity and gender, of rendering "the meat" unimportant, and of freeing the self from the confines of embodiment and everyday life. Research on virtual communities was central to these formulations, and studies by Sherry Turkle and Rosanne Allucquère (Sandy) Stone in particular were quickly canonised as the fundamental research on identity construction in online environments.

I am interested in the implications that this discourse of freedom and play with gender has, and the kinds of questions concerning power and everyday practices of Internet usage that it leaves untouched: the conditions and limits of play. Here, analysis of the forms and meanings of performativity in particular is needed, along with a more nuanced use of the categories of identity, persona and character. Such critical dialogue with "cyberstudies", and analysis of their understandings of the Internet and embodied differences alike enables a rethinking of gender and identity in online communications.

ariane brenssell and waltraud schwab — no accomplices

The correlation between war and gender-relations is complex. To reduce it to the slogan 'war is masculine„ doesn't pay tribute to the chance which an analysis of the current political situation under consideration of gender-related aspects does offer. A profound gender-biased perspective provides a discriminating view on the dominant argumentative context that professes that war is the only solution when it comes to responding to the terror of September 11th . Alternatives to this thinking however should be what is asked for.

cindy gabriela flores — the female seat in the mexican underground network

The compulsory gender border, caused by the sexual harassment that women receive in a subway network architecture, which transmits a cumulus of genetic information of the mexican techno culture and grass-roots.

In this underground system we find a plural and heterogenous space with all the social classes represented, where the mexican on-line population is daily remixed, but where, as on the internet, the women have to create our "own room" to keep safe from the uncivilized who don't know how to coexist respecting the otherly femaleness.

genderchangers — GCA Manual to Participatory Cyberfeminism

The speech covers three compontents in modern participation of news making. First, the use of second hand computer hardware and free software products. Second, examples of active participation in news with self-made contributions in different formats, and third, we work towards a participatory cyberfeminism. We will join the squats of the black block anarcho feminists, participants of non governmental movements, street gnurls and geek grrrls. We present the children of domestic and mutal learning of digital media. Other issues will be the distrust in corporate media, an awareness of the power and possibilities of computer technology, as agents for publishing, communication, and exploration. While covering the issues and finding their link with cyberfeminism we will actively participate in broadcasting subversive news and discover its paths.

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Welcome to....
TECHNO-TRICKSTER-TANK™

Good old cyberfeminism is dead. Long live cyberfeminism!
What cyberfeminism?

Upgrade dusty old cyberfeminism. Cyberfeminism 10.0.
There's more to life than this: social constructivism, deconstructionism (no more French boys, please), fear of the technosphere, your fancy website, endless powerpoint animation, watery gender mainstreaming..

We have statements, rhetorics, stutterings, headaches, inputs that are questioning good old fashioned cyberfeminism.

So many questions, so many answers. Curious? *
Get involved in a new dimension of tinkering theory and practice in the techno-trickster-tank.
We are matchmakers.
Join the TECHNO-TRICKSTER-TANK™ !

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* Is P=NP???


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And make sure not to miss the Techno-Trickster-Show at the opening reception!!!

Nasya Bahfen — Keeping the Faith

How September 11 Contributed to the Cyberjihad

The media tells us the world changed after September 11. They&Mac226;re right. Jihad &Mac246; that much aligned word that has come to symbolize everything misunderstood about the Islamic religion &Mac246; was never meant to involve hijacked planes. Closer in definition to „struggle‰ than holy war, the (very personal) jihad of Muslims suddenly took on increased importance in the wake of September 11. The quest to find self-identity in the postmodern world had always been integral to the life of a Muslim but never had it gained the importance it did after the attacks on New York. It was the Internet and email that Muslims turned to in droves in the days following the events &Mac246; seeking information, answers, comfort and substantiation. Used to explaining the finer points of their way of life to outsiders, the need to spread the word &Mac246; dakhwah &Mac246; among both fellow believers and non-Muslims was suddenly all the more pressing and urgent. This process solidified and even (for some) defined what jihad meant for a twenty first century Muslim. As the procedure of dakwhah unraveled with the Net&Mac226;s breakneck speed, so too did a paradigm shift in the greater world&Mac226;s comprehension of the word „terror‰. The validation of the self by members of the Islamic religion, curiously, could also be seen in the sudden need by world leaders to stress the differences between the teachings of the faith and the actions of some of those who claimed to be acting in its name. How did Muslims view what happened that day and express their views on the internet? What were their actions and reactions with regards to the flurry of email forwards that spread to cyberspace&Mac226;s residents with mindnumbing speed? How did this process contribute to jihad &Mac246; not the jihad of the suicide bomber but that which occurs every minute of every day in the lives of the billion or so individuals who profess to following the Islamic faith? And how has the Islam/West equation changed for the good or the worse in the wake of the attacks in the US?