The internet has existed for a mere 47 years, only being publicly accessible for the past 20. However, for those short 20 years, the internet has rapidly lead us to a threshold where the physical world coexists with a digital world; tangible meets intangible while analog meets digital. Entirely new means of communication, language, reasoning, and understanding have emerged as the world has taken on this recent shift. It is no wonder artists have been fascinated by this complex digital culture and created a dialogue around it with their work. It has become the new medium for artists to express intimate topics while the audience is able to interpret them completely on their own. Challenging the audience’s thought process is both parts personal and interactive to the artist and the viewer. It leaves an unknown connection between the two with an impression that as technology evolves, we follow and adapt.

 

As the internet grew, new thought emerged on the topic of feminism. The foundational catalyst for the cyberfeminist movement can be attributed to Donna Haraway and her article titled, A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century. This was really the inspiration for cyberfeminism, before the term was even coined. The Manifesto uses the cyborg—half organism, half machine—as a metaphor. She writes, “The cyborg does not dream of community without the oedipal project. The cyborg would not recognize the Garden of Eden; it is not made of mud and cannot dream of returning to dust” (Haraway 1991). Haraway was calling out to feminists, urging them to see how they can surpass the restrictions of traditional gender, feminism, and politics during the end of the 20th century.

 

Haraway was successful and feminists heard her call. In the early 90s, a new term, cyberfeminism, began to circulate. The first use of the term came from a group called VNS Matrix, an artist collective concerned with "the gendered dominance and control of the new technologies" and exploring "the construction of social space, identity and sexuality in cyberspace” (Media Art Net). Their own manifesto had a huge impact and was integral in instilling the manifesto tradition into cyberfeminism while also helping to form a movement. At around the same time in Europe, The Old Boys Network was created by a group of women including Cornellia Solfrank, Faith Wilding, Yvonne Volkert, and Helene von Oldenburg. The Old Boys Network, still existing today, held the First Cyberfeminist International conference in Kassel, Germany, in 1997. This was a day where women who had begun to work in this new field could get together, share ideas, talk about the direction they wanted to take cyberfeminism, and address the question of finding a cohesive definition of cyberfeminism. Rather than defining cyberfeminism in a traditional sense, they chose to create 100 anti-theses to describe what cyberfeminism is not. The list ranges from playful statements like “cyberfeminism is not a fragrance” and “cyberfeminism is not about boring toys for boring boys”, to more profound and significant statements like “cyberfeminism is not without connectivity” and “cyberfeminism has not only one language.” There is not one singular definition of cyberfeminism. 

 

I believe cyberfeminism can do many things. While it embraces technology and cyberspace, it can examine feminist issues, examine the relationships between bodies and technology, and it can challenge the norms of society’s perception of feminism and sex. Cyberfeminist artists do all of this while engaging their audience and usually being playfully subversive to send a serious message. 

 

Shelly Jackson’s 1997 piece, My Body-A Wunderkammer, first drew my interest with her aesthetic and user interaction. She uses woodcuts in black and white to map out her body, highlighting specific body parts. The embedded links take you to personal stories or memories that involve the specific part. Jackson is allowing her audience into these very private memories. She gives us access to touch her body with our mouse, to click through her memories, and to scroll over her like we are analyzing her from top to bottom. In many ways, this directly reflects how the female body and mind can be negatively regarded in society, especially during the time she made this piece and lived in those memories. It seems very intimate, however both artist and user are distantly locked behind screens. In a modern sense, this reminds me of how the internet gives us up close and personal access to the lives of anyone from your neighbor or classmate to a celebrity or complete stranger. It has given users a shield so that they are able to lash out hateful and negative words on different social media sites and forums. Women specifically suffer from hate about their bodies, clothes, looks, status, ect. and I think Shelly Jackson was ahead of her time in addressing the dichotomy between intimacy and the public gaze.

 

Prema Murthy’s 1999 piece, Bindigirl is another early piece that explores intimacy. Murthy combines performance and new media to construct a “a girl born out of the ‘exotic’ and ‘erotic.’ She is the embodiment of desire for and of the ‘other' - the desire of wanting to be known or to know on an intimate level and at the same time finding safety, even power in distance, in being mysterious - liberation in not being easily categorized.” (Baudelaire 1999). Bindi playfully pokes fun at her Indian religion. Combined with technology, both of these subjects are used to her advantage to create a sexy internet girl who is also “exotic” because of her religion. The two contrast, but are still acceptable from the porn industry’s point of view. Bindi knows she is being looked at and watched and is also smart to ask for money in return and sell items to her viewers. Murthy describes her intention here, stating that “Bindigirl is the product of a colonialist mentality…[she] mimic[s] the symbiotic relationship that exists in the ‘real’ world between colonized and the colonizer” (Baudelaire 1999).

 

Molly Soda and Contessa Stuto are two modern day artists who have recently risen in the net art world. Although, Contessa Stuto probably would not consider herself a net artist in the same realm of Molly Soda, I think her music videos are directly centered around female identity while also using artistic elements and the web as an outlet to display this work. Stuto created Cunt Mafia, her own label developed from her involvement in the Queer, Goth, Punk, Hip-hop, Underground music and Nightlife scenes in New York City, where she grew up. One of her earlier music videos, Horny Lil’ Slut  explores dimensions of female power and dominance as well as traditionally submissive female roles that cater to heteronormative fantasies. Stuto’s vision of the internet appeals to me when she discusses the new “aesthetic” that drives in internet culture right now. In an interview she states, “Right now, our society is so vapid and aesthetically driven that it has no inner emotion. I couldn’t imagine growing up now and being force fed alternative-ism through these colorful pop music videos that promote lowbrow shock value. In reality, it’s all just female degradation—another form of sexual exploitation. Hipsters are going to coffee shops and organic markets, believing they are a part of something underground, when it’s like going to a patriarchal music label’s showcase and thinking that trap rappers are punk and cutting edge. In reality, they’re selling consumerism and sexism through verbal illiteracy and ignorance” (Moran 2014). The more I read her words, the more I begin to think about how easily my generation became entranced with the idea of having an aesthetic. This has become a problem because it feeds back into consumerism and sexual exploitation, which people think they have avoided, but have just become blinded by or even ignorant to. Stuto’s works satirize these people and their “aesthetic” in very vivid, loud, and captivating ways.

 

Molly Soda addresses feminist issues in her piece Should I Send This? The electronic zine combines nude photos of Soda and unsent text messages from her phone. The first issue she is addressing comes from the content of her photos. Soda proudly displays her natural breasts, body hair, and skin in order to show that she does not care whether men find her body attractive or not, all that matters is that the owner of the body is content with it. She is sending this message out to others as well, making a statement about self-love and acceptance. The other topic she addresses is one I’ve already discussed, constructing intimacy behind a screen. “I want people to be able to relate and feel connected to it,” says Soda. “This piece isn’t about me, it’s about everyone who has ever tried to achieve validation/intimacy via sending a text message, a nude… anything vulnerable using digital communication” (Mosey 2015). Soda has taken charge of her femininity and her sexuality by releasing these photos and messages on her own, before falling victim to a man putting them out on the internet in a form of revenge, disrespect, or humiliation. By claiming this, she takes away that patriarchal sense of power that often appears in the form of sexual intimacy. I think that this relates to what Stuto is trying to say in her music video Horny Lil’ Slut because both speak out about having female power and dominance while still under a submissive female role.

 

 

"Bindigirl--Interview with Prema Murthy." Interview by Eric Baudelaire. Rhizome. Rhizome.com, 2 June 1999. Web. 19 Oct. 2016. <http://rhizome.org/community/41433/>.

 

"Cunt Mafia's Don Contessa Stuto on Her New Video 'Horny Lil' Slut'" Interview by Justin Moran. Bulleit. BulleitMedia.com, 17 Dec. 2014. Web. 19 Oct. 2016. <http://bullettmedia.com/ article/cunt-mafia-slut/>.

 

Haraway, Donna. "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late 20th Century." The International Handbook of Virtual Learning Environments (n.d.): 117-58. Web. 21 Oct. 2016. <http://faculty.georgetown.edu/irvinem/theory/Haraway- CyborgManifesto-1.pdf>.

 

"Media Art Net | VNS Matrix: Biography." Media Art Net. Media Art Net, n.d. Web. 23 Oct. 2016. <http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/artist/vns-matrix/biography/>.

 

"The Cyber Feminist Leaking Her Own Nudes." Interview by Alice Mosey. Dazed. DazedDigital.com, 9 June 2015. Web. 19 Oct. 2016. <http://www.dazeddigital.com/ artsandculture/article/24945/1/the-cyber-feminist-leaking-her-own-nudes>.