Old Boys Network

Last updated

The Old Boys Network was the first international Cyberfeminist alliance. It was founded in 1997 in Berlin and remained active until 2001. [1]

The group was founded by Susanne Ackers, Julianne Pierce, Valentina Djordjevic, Ellen Nonnenmacher and Cornelia Sollfrank in the spring of 1997. They organised the First Cyberfeminist International in September of that year as part of the Documenta X art event. OBN's philosophy was to keep the term "cyberfeminism" as open as possible, allowing for diverse and interdisciplinary approaches and they were an open network. They emphasized the importance of disagreement and debate within the movement. [2]

The group made three international conferences. After the second international conference held in Rotterdam in 1999, the organizational structure shifted again and replaced the “core group and network” model to an association of different working groups. In the five years OBN was active, three international conferences were organized in different constellations. [3]

"The Truth about Cyberfeminism" was a performance held at Die Höge, Högenhausen from October 22-24, 2000, as part of the international symposium "Dialoge und Debatten" on feminist positions in contemporary visual arts. [4] This event brought together various artists and theorists to explore and debate the intersections of feminism and digital culture. The symposium aimed to foster critical discussions and showcase innovative feminist art practices. [4]

In her essay, Cornelia Sollfrank explores the internal organizational dynamics and the micropolitical currents that shaped OBN, emphasizing the entanglement of art and politics, not just as a platform for organizing existing contexts but played a crucial role in creating new fields and imaginaries. [5] The group was brought together by the concept of "organizational aesthetics," where the process of getting organized and building relations is seen as an artistic and political practice. The network was brought together by the micropolitics: the spirit, the vibes and affects and not a consensus in macro-political topics. [5]

The creation of the OBN archive is [6] a dynamic repository of cyberfeminist activities. This archive preserves not just digital artifacts but also the relational and contextual aspects of OBN's work. [7]

The twentieth anniversary of the First Cyberfeminist International was marked by the Institute of Contemporary Art, London with a five-day event called the Post-Cyber Feminist International. [8]

Prior events

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Philip Pocock (artist)</span> Canadian artist

Philip Pocock is a Canadian artist, photographer and researcher. He was born in Ottawa, Ontario, in 1954. Since the early 1990s, his work has been collaborative, situational, time-, code-, net-based and participatory.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe</span> Cultural institution in Karlsruhe, Germany

The ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, a cultural institution, was founded in 1989 and, since 1997, is located in a former munitions factory in Karlsruhe, Germany. The ZKM organizes special exhibitions and thematic events, conducts research and produces works on the effects of media, digitization, and globalization, and offers public as well as individualized communications and educational programs.

Cyberfeminism is a feminist approach which foregrounds the relationship between cyberspace, the Internet, and technology. It can be used to refer to a philosophy, art practices, methodologies or community. The term was coined in the early 1990s to describe the work of feminists interested in theorizing, critiquing, exploring and re-making the Internet, cyberspace and new-media technologies in general.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ken Feingold</span> Artist

Kenneth Feingold is a contemporary American artist based in New York City. He has been exhibiting his work in video, drawing, film, sculpture, photography, and installations since 1974. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship (2004) and a Rockefeller Foundation Media Arts Fellowship (2003) and has taught at Princeton University and Cooper Union for the Advancement of Art and Science, among others. His works have been shown at the Museum of Modern Art, NY; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Tate Liverpool, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Herbert W. Franke</span> Austrian scientist and writer (1927–2022)

Herbert W. Franke was an Austrian scientist and writer. Die Zeit calls him "the most prominent German writing Science Fiction author". He is also one of the important early computer artists, creating computer graphics and early digital art since the late 1950s. Franke was also active in the fields of future research as well as speleology. He used his pen name Sergius Both as this Avatar name in Active Worlds and Opensimulator grids. The Sergius Both Award is given for creative scripting in Immersionskunst by Stiftung Kunstinformatik, first time issued at Amerika Art 2022.

Faith Wilding is a Paraguayan American multidisciplinary artist - which includes but is not limited to: watercolor, performance art, writing, crocheting, knitting, weaving, and digital art. She is also an author, educator, and activist widely known for her contribution to the progressive development of feminist art. She also fights for ecofeminism, genetics, cyberfeminism, and reproductive rights. Wilding is Professor Emerita of performance art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cornelia Sollfrank</span> German cyberfeminist artist

Cornelia Sollfrank is a German digital artist, she was an early pioneer of Net Art and Cyberfeminism in the 1990s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Goddy Leye</span> Cameroonian artist and intellectual

Goddy Leye was a Cameroonian artist and intellectual.

Ruth Sacks is a South African artist who lives and works in Johannesburg. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the South African Research Chair Initiative (SARChI) for Social Change at Fort Hare University. Sacks holds a PhD (Arts) from the University of the Witwatersrand where she was a fellow at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WiSER). Her third artist book, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under Seas, was launched in 2013. She is a laureate of the HISK in Ghent. She was one of the facilitators of the artist-run project space the Parking Gallery, hosted by the Visual Arts Network of South Africa (VANSA) in Johannesburg. Ruth Sacks' work has been presented internationally in venues such as the African Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennalein 2007, the ZKM Centre for Art and Media, Karlsruhe in 2011 and the National Museums of Kenya, Nairobi in 2017.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dieter Jung (artist)</span> German artist

Dieter Jung is a German artist working in the field of holography, painting and installation art. He lives and works in Berlin.

subRosa is a cyberfeminist organization led by artists Faith Wilding and Hyla Willis.

Susanna Paasonen is a Finnish feminist scholar. She is a Professor of Media Studies at the University of Turku, and was a visiting scholar at MIT in 2016. She gained her PhD from the University of Turku in 2002; her dissertation was on gender and the popularization of the internet, which was later published through Peter Lang. After holding positions at the universities of Tampere, Jyväskylä and Helsinki, Paasonen was appointed Professor of Media Studies at the University of Turku on 1 August 2011, and publishes on internet research, media theory, sexuality, pornography and affect.

Julianne Pierce is an Australian new media artist, curator, art critic, writer, and arts administrator. She was a member of the groundbreaking group VNS Matrix. She went on to become a founding member of the Old Boys Network, another important cyberfeminist organisation. She has served as executive director of the Australian Dance Theatre and is Chair of the Emerging and Experimental Arts Strategy Panel for the Australia Council. Pierce was executive director of the Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT) from 2000 to 2005, based in Adelaide, and was Executive Producer of Blast Theory from 2007 to 2012, based in Brighton in the UK.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ulrike Rosenbach</span> German artist

Ulrike Rosenbach is a video artist from Germany. Rose Bach works with videotapes, installations and performances. She was one of the first artists from Germany to use video for experiments with electronic images. Her videotapes critique the traditional representation of women and help formulate the identity of women from a feminist perspective.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Constant Dullaart</span> Dutch artist and curator

Constant Dullaart is a Dutch conceptual artist, media artist, internet artist, and curator. His work is deeply connected to the Internet.

Kathy Rae Huffman is an American curator, writer, producer, researcher, lecturer and expert for video and media art. Since the early 1980s, Huffman is said to have helped establish video and new media art, online and interactive art, installation and performance art in the visual arts world. She has curated, written about, and coordinated events for numerous international art institutes, consulted and juried for festivals and alternative arts organisations. Huffman not only introduced video and digital computer art to museum exhibitions, she also pioneered tirelessly to bring television channels and video artists together, in order to show video artworks on TV. From the early 1990s until 2014, Huffman was based in Europe, and embraced early net art and interactive online environments, a curatorial practice that continues. In 1997, she co-founded the Faces mailing list and online community for women working with art, gender and technology. Till today, Huffman is working in the US, in Canada and in Europe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nathalie Magnan</span>

Nathalie Magnan was a media theoretician and activist, a cyber-feminist, and a film director. She taught at both universities and art schools, and is known for initiating projects linking Internet activism and sailing with the Sailing for Geeks project. She also co-organised the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Film Festival in 1984. She died at home of breast cancer.

Faces is an international online community of women who share an interest in digital media arts. They communicate via an email list and organize events both online and off. Founded in 1997, this informal network includes activists, artists, critics, theoreticians, technicians, journalists, researchers, programmers, networkers, web designers, and educators.

Prema Murthy is an American, multi-disciplinary artist based in New York. Employing aesthetics, gesture, geometry and algorithmic processes, Murthy's work explores the boundaries between embodiment and abstraction, while engaging in issues of culture and politics. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at MoMA PS1, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, the Reina Sofia Museum, the Generali Foundation in Vienna, and the India Habitat Center-New Delhi.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stephan von Huene</span> American artist (1932–2000)

Stephan von Huene was an American artist with German origins. His kinetic and sound sculptures bring together art and science, amalgamating image, tones and motion synesthetically.

References

  1. ↑ "What Is Post-Cyberfeminism? Here's a Primer on the Latest Big Idea to Storm Contemporary Art". artnet News. 2017-11-30. Retrieved 2021-02-08. Berlin-based artist Cornelia Sollfrank—a founding member of the Old Boys Network
  2. ↑ Old Boys Network (1997). Old Boys Network, 100 Anti-Theses of Cyberfeminism, HTML.
  3. ↑ Zhang, Ziyue (July 2024). "Cyberfeminist art: empowering women through body, identity, and technology". Feminist Media Studies: 1–7. doi:10.1080/14680777.2024.2374809. ISSN   1468-0777.
  4. 1 2 Lamprecht, Natalie. Re-Visioning Cyberfeminism: Die Cyborg als Möglichkeit einer queeren Lektürestrategie. Master’s thesis, University of Vienna, January 2013.
  5. 1 2 Fadranski, Jenny (2022-12-01). "Helena Reckitt and Dorothee Richter (Eds.): Instituting Feminism. On Curating Journal Issue, 52, November 2021". Journal of Cultural Management and Cultural Policy / Zeitschrift für Kulturmanagement und Kulturpolitik. 8 (2): 223–227. doi:10.14361/zkmm-2022-0211. ISSN   2701-9276.
  6. ↑ Hartung, Elisabeth; Biebl, Anton; Schuler, Friederike; d’Atri, Dawn Michelle; Backmeister-Collacott, Ilka, eds. (2023-12-13). Kunst und Gesellschaft 1972–2022–2072. Hatje Cantz Publishers. ISBN   978-3-7757-5491-0.
  7. ↑ "[obn_a – a situated archive of the old boys network]". obn-archive.multiplace.org. Retrieved 2024-12-07.
  8. ↑ "Post-Cyber Feminist International". archive.ica.art. Institute of Contemporary Art. Retrieved 29 November 2019.
  9. ↑ "net_condition | ZKM". zkm.de (in German). 1999-09-23. Retrieved 2024-12-07.
  10. ↑ "Verena Kuni: old boys networking - Projekte / projects". web.archive.org. 2001-04-27. Retrieved 2024-12-07.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.