June 10, 2003
Just as I’m scrambling around getting myself ready to go away on vacation with some friends next week (and at the same time frantically trying to make some headway on a free-lance writing job of which I am in the middle), Frank Paynter tells me that he’s about to come out with an interview with one of my favorite bloggers. Betsy Devine. I have a feeling he will birth it on his site when I’m away next week and I’ll be left out of all the ensuing conversation, since I won’t have access to a computer. I guess I’ll just have to catch up later.
Meanwhile, right now on Frank’s site is a link-rich piece about cyberfeminist hacker Cornelia Sollfrank. I should have been doing a dozen other things, but I’m glad I took the time to read and link around for a while. Just a few quotes to pique your interest:
This from an interview with Sollrank (by Florian Cramer) that Paynter repeats on his site:
FC: We're here at the annual convention of the Chaos Computer Club. Is hacking for you art and does hacking have something to do with art?
CS: Both. I've come increasingly to the conclusion over the last four, five years in which I have been involved in hacking, that hacking culture always has something bordering on a national...(laughter) flavor. That's why it is interesting for me to visit other countries and especially Italy, where it appears as if there does not exist the slightest fear of contact between artists, activists, philosophers etc. They coexist there naturally, dialogue with each other and create a common language in which they can communicate (laughter), which is something I haven't experienced in Germany. As a female artist in the Chaos Computer Club, I have come face to face with some of the worse preconceptions, accusations and verbal abuse of my life (unfortunately).
Now, you might think that I’m up on all this cyberfeminist stuff, but I’m not. So thanks, Frank, for pointing me toward some worthwhile info, including this from here:
A cyberfeminist's relationship to technology exists in this negotiated space between theory and practice. Cyberfeminism is aware of the gendered socialization that works against women wanting technology, and calls for a resistance to this manufactured identity. Simultaneously, cyberfeminism accepts the engendered reality of new information technologies at the end of the millenium, and works at an active level towards changing these tired old stereotypes. As a theory of resistance, pleasure, empowerment and practice, cyberfeminism offers society a radical new approach and shift in our ways of understanding the complex intersection of gender, technology and culture.
On the other hand, here’s what Sollrank says on her web site:
The First Cyberfeminist International agreed on not to define the term. The strategy of keeping the term as open as possible was consensual. As a substitute for a definition The First Cyberfeminist International formulated the "100 Anti-Theses"...
All of this is a little too complex for me to do too much more thinking about now, as I get my “life with mom” in order so that I can take a week off and re-create myself.
Meanwhile, I'll probably also miss the article on women and blogging by Gail Philbin that includes an interview with me and that's scheduled to come out in the Women's News section of the Chicago Tribune on June 18. On June 18, I'll be on the beach at York, Maine, where last year Halley Suitt and I sat our butts down on the wet sand and shared thoughts about men, boys, and rage.
Boy, how times change.
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Old Comments (2)
Betsy Devine on 12 Jun 2003
Elaine--what, you are just going on vacation and leaving me here in blogworld without your support? On, all right--have a great time in Maine--we will miss you!
dzwonki polifoniczne on 14 Jun 2004
Hmmmmm interesting
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