Dear Verina,

I realized that I posed this on another thread, not on this gender,
art and new media thread. Just in case, I am posting it here as well.
All the best, Irina

To follow up with a few points on how this discussion on aesthetic
judgment and criteria for selecting works is connected to other
issues, like gender, institutions, West / East divide, history of art,
etc:

- I discussed "the tyranny of the possible" in contemporary and new
media art in my editorial in Leonardo (Vol. 38,No. 1, February 2005,
P. 1) - as a problem of "choice" in art, especially in relation to the
medium. The link to that text is here (reprinted in LEA):

http://leoalmanac.org/journal/Vol_13/lea_v13_n02.txt

 - In my recent research on Varvara Stepanova, who was a member of
Russian/Soviet avant-garde and a 'multi-media' artist herself, I found
a couple of curious citations in her diary that I think would be
relevant for our discussion on how choices are made what to buy /
exhibit, and what art departments are left to exist:

Stepanova writes: "I receive a lot of opposition [from established
artists and critics] for my new left art, and was asked to resign from
the new art organizations. Of course, it is difficult to start
something new, especially so new. Only Vasilich [Vassilii Kandinsky]
tells everyone (though he might think otherwise) that we are talented,
and to leave us alone. I am very surprised that he defends works that
he can poorly understand, obviously, cannot like and that are so
opposite to his own 'intuitive' art principle." (from Stepanova's
diary, March 11, 1920).

"We had Americans over. One was boring, dry, wearing specs, professor
Alfred Barr; another one - young and happy, Jere Abbott... Barr was
interested only in painting and drawing, though we [Stepanova and her
husband Rodchenko] showed them everything we had." (January 10, 1928).

Alfred Barr was the first director of Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in
New York, and famously not very interested in Soviet experiments in
'art and technology' for his new MOMA collection. Ironically, when
Guggenheim decided to profile women-artists prominent in Russian /
Soviet avant-garde (in a 2001 exhibition), curators also chose only
paintings, though Stepanova, for example, or Exter, are more known for
multi-media, textile and experimental performance / graphic design
work:
http://www.guggenheim.org/exhibitions/past_exhibitions/amazons_of_the_avant_garde/


Opportunities to make and to show, generosity with such opportunities,
politics of funding, larger politics of art practice in a given
society, respect and reputation from peers-artists, theorists and
curators, this is what Stepanova documents as major factors in making
or breaking an artist, or an art movement. She documents brutality
with which she was personally attacked both as a woman artist and as a
"left" artist, long before the so-called Russian constructivism was
attacked as an art movement. These attacks would not mean as much, if
they did not lead to people losing their jobs and sometimes their
lives. It was more difficult for her as she did not make a distinction
between her art making and what was happening in society (she worked
in a factory, in a design studio, was also an educator and a
researcher). Stepanova also had no illusions about difficulties of
being a 'woman' who is trying to re-think and re-make entire art
history in the early 1920s, not from the point of view of 'individual
hero artist' (she documented how her better known male colleagues had
problems with collective, anonymous and socially-aware art practice,
as well as with changing position of women in early Soviet life). And
it was Kandunsky in 1920 who supported her employment and art making,
together with Lunacharsky and few others. At that time this support
often meant not to go hungry and continue practicing. May be, in
today's financial crisis it is not about going hungry, but it still
seems to be about continuing one's artistic and curatorial practice.
Do we have enough "Kandinskys and Lunacharskys" today, to support
something that does not look like their own practice or even values in
art?

Warm regards,
Irina

On Thu, Oct 23, 2008 at 3:54 AM, Verina Gfader
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Hi everyone
>
> Thank you Marcia for returning to the theme of the month - it would be
> great if you would like to contribute / respond to some of the previous
> posts on 'gender', to expand certain threads. The discussion has started
> of quite interestingly including aspects of: the value of transgender
> politics in relation to articulating 'crossing borders'; the lack
> (denial or resistance) of thematising 'gender' in todays cultural
> environments; how diversity and heterogeneity manifest in relation to
> gender and curating; the question of the 'neutral' in being a node in a
> network.
>
> Please do continue the lines that emerged. It would be great to hear
> also from the invited respondents on their particular experiences. .
>
> Best
> Verina
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: marcialart <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Thursday, October 23, 2008 8:27 am
> Subject: Re: [NEW-MEDIA-CURATING]  Gender, art and new media . . . Theme
> for  October 08?
>
>> Hi, CRUMBers,
>>
>> The discussions of the past two weeks have been fascinating,
>> illuminating and obviously to be continued indefinitely.
>>
>> Please, though, could we return to the original October 08 theme of
>> Gender, Art and New Media?  The gender discussion was really
>> interesting, to me at least.  I'd like to contribute and respond to
>> others' comments if we can take it up again.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Marcia
>>
>> On Oct 1, 2008, at 2:52:07 AM, "Verina Gfader"
>> <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> From:   "Verina Gfader" <[log in to unmask]>
>> Subject:    [NEW-MEDIA-CURATING] Gender, art and new media . . .
>> Theme October 08
>> Date:   October 1, 2008 2:52:07 AM PDT
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Theme of the Month October/November 08
>> Gender, art and new media: Organising, negotiating, participating, and
>> acting in events
>>
>>
>> This theme explores ideas around gender and its status in art and
>> technology, more specifically, in current media events such as
>> conferences and symposia, or, on a smaller scale, workshops and other
>> sites of temporary cultural interventions. In response to CRUMB list
>> spontaneous debates, this theme solicits further debate based on the
>> experiences of those working in new media and contemporary art in
>> general.
>> Is gender ex- and inclusion in new media events still a live subject?
>> Now that technological art histories are being mapped, who has their
>> hands on the map and the territories? Is the fluidity and
>> performativityof gender in technologically informed environments a
>> whole new ball
>> game? If we are nodes in a network, then do nodes have a gender,
>> and why
>> are some 'paranodal', 'subsystems', or 'outsystems'? If we have A
>> Thousand Plateaus, then are some plateaus higher than others? If women
>> are so good at non-hierarchical, multi-vocal social networking,
>> then how
>> come the most famous 'Relational Aesthetics' artists are men?
>>
>>
>> References:
>>
>> Gender diversity at web conferences:
>> http://www.kottke.org/07/02/gender-diversity-at-web-conferences
>>
>> CRUMB discussion list in September 2008 following the Cybernetics
>> Serendipity Redux:
>> http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=new-media-curating
>>
>> Cyberfeminist fora such as Locating Cyberfeminism in Singapore: A
>> Dialogue: http://www.refugia.net/irina/.
>>
>>
>>
>> Invited respondents include:
>>
>> Janis Jefferies is an artist, writer and curator, Professor of Visual
>> Arts at the Department of Computing, Goldsmiths University of London,
>> Director of the Constance Howard Resource and Research Centre in
>> Textiles and Artistic Director of Goldsmiths Digital Studios. She
>> is an
>> associate researcher with Hexagram (Institute of Media, Arts and
>> Technologies, Montreal, Canada) on two projects, electronic
>> textiles and
>> new forms of media communication in cloth.
>>
>> Susan Kennard is the Director of The Banff New Media Institute and
>> previously worked in the not-for profit volunteer radio sector. Susan
>> has a master's degree in Communication for Development from the
>> University of Malmo, Sweden, is a Governor of the Canadian
>> Conference of
>> the Arts and a board member of the Banff YWCA.
>>
>> Björn Norberg, currently curator at Mejan Labs in Stockholm,
>> Sweden. He
>> has been working as curator since mid 1990's, both in traditional
>> museums and in net art and media art organisations, in Europe, North
>> America and Asia. http://www.mejanlabs.se
>>
>> Michelle Teran
>> Born in Canada, Michelle Teran is a media artist currently based in
>> Berlin. Within her practice she is interested in the relation of the
>> body, physical space and media. She uses participatory performance,
>> live installation and outdoor projection as interventionist strategies
>> that explore the ontologies of hybrid space created through the
>> overlapsof communication and audiovisual networks with the built
>> spaces of the
>> city. These projects involve working within different locations,
>> socialand cultural contexts and are the direct results of occupying
>> thesespaces and cultivating these exchanges.
>>
>> Cornelia Sollfrank, hacker, cyberfeminist, conceptual and net.artist,
>> co-editor of thing-hamburg.de; since 2004 practical and theoretical
>> contributions to the discourse on Intellectual Property; PhD candidate
>> at Dundee University, Scotland. http://artwarez.org
>>
>> Johnny, Professor Johnny Golding, Chair of Philosophy in the Visual
>> Artsand Communication Technologies and Head of the MA-PHD in Media
>> ArtsPhilosophy Practice Programme at the Univ of Greenwich London.
>> Her most
>> recent work: Dirty Theory: Art and Philosophy after Metaphysics
>> (Routledge). Video and sound compositions include: Games of Truth (a
>> blood poetic in 7 part harmony) and God is a Lobster (and other
>> forbidden bodies).
>>
>> Irina Aristarkhova is writing and teaching on comparative feminist
>> theory, contemporary aesthetics, gender and technology. She is
>> AssistantProfessor of Women's Studies and Visual Art at
>> Pennsylvania State
>> University. http://www.personal.psu.edu/ixa10
>>
>> Sabine Himmelsbach studied Art History, Medieval History and Cultural
>> Anthropology at the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, Germany.
>> From 1999 to 2005, she was Exhibition Director at the ZKM | Center for
>> Art and Media in Karlsruhe, responsible for exhibitions such as FUTURE
>> CINEMA and her own curatorial projects Fast Forward or Coolhunters. In
>> October 2005 she took up the position of Artistic Director of the
>> EdithRuss Site for Media Art in Oldenburg. There, she curated
>> exhibitionslike Ecomedia or currently JUST PLAY: Music as a Social
>> Practice.
>> Deborah Lawler-Dormer has been the Executive Director of MIC Toi
>> Rerehiko (formally the Moving Image Centre) since 1995. In that
>> time she
>> has worked to promote and support a dynamic and growing culture of
>> media-arts practice in Auckland and New Zealand. She has programmed,
>> curated, staged and managed numerous film, video and digital media
>> showsto support environments of innovation in which the fusion of
>> art and
>> technology are developed and nurtured. http://www.mic.org.nz
>>
>> Judith Rodenbeck, Professor of Art History, Sarah Lawrence College;
>> Editor-in-Chief, Art Journal; author, Radical Prototypes: Allan Kaprow
>> and the Invention of Happenings (forthcoming, 2009).
>> http://pages.slc.edu/~jrodenbe
>>
>> Lina Dzuverovic is the co-founder and Director of ELECTRA, a London
>> based contemporary art agency established in 2003. She is also
>> currentlyone of the two curators (with Stina Høgkvist) of Momentum,
>> the Nordic
>> Biennial (which will take place in 2009 in Moss, Norway).
>> http://www.electra-productions.com
>>
>> Mare Tralla, Estonian media artist and organizer. She was programme
>> chair of ISEA2004, Tallinn. Currently PhD student at University of
>> Westminster.
>>
>> Rosi Braidotti, Professor in the Humanities, Arts Faculty, Utrecht
>> University. Author of e.g. 'Patterns of Dissonance. A study of
>> women in
>> contemporary philosophy' (1991) and 'Nomadic subjects: embodiment and
>> sexual difference in contemporary feminist theory' (1994).
>> http://www.let.uu.nl/~rosi.braidotti/personal/
>>
>> Eva URSPRUNG lives and works in graz/ austria. Studies of
>> psychology and
>> linguistics. Since 1986 freelancing artist. Installations,
>> performances,art in the public, electronic and social space.
>> Working with video,
>> conceptual photography and sound. Bass-guitar and sax with ZLAN, sax
>> with wavegroom, jamika ajalon, nina wurz, annette giesriegl, laptop
>> withelectronic orquestra. http://ursprung.mur.at/
>>
>>
>>
>