Cyberfeminist Art as a
Medium of Political
Expression: Producing andCommunicating a Postcyberfeminist Artwork forSocial Change
Lydia Tranta
SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS, BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION & LEGAL STUDIES
A thesis submitted for the degree ofMaster of Arts (MA) in Art, Law and Arts Management

January 2020, Thessaloniki – GreeceStudent Name:

Lydia Tranta

SID:
Supervisor:

2202180013
Themis Veleni

I hereby declare that the work submitted is mine and that where I have made use ofanother’s work, I have attributed the source(s) according to the Regulations set in theStudent’s Handbook.

January 2020
Thessaloniki - Greece

Abstract
This dissertation was written as part of the MSc in Arts Law and Arts Management at
the International Hellenic University.
Oriented towards a reinvention of the collective self, the thesis explores theappropriate interconnections between digital art and politics that promote theredefinition process of the collective demands and desires. To that direction, an effort
has been made so as the contemporary collective experience of oppression to be
critically examined. An interdisciplinary approach that creates ruptures in thedominant “situated knowledges” of sciences is adopted, as it appears to be quiteconsistent with the complex and multi-fragmented character of postmodernity.
Intersectional feminism, cyberfeminism and xenofeminism have offered the tools for a
critical examination of digital culture and its intersection with the contemporarysociopolitical milieu.
Inspired by the political and cultural cyberfeminist content of Francesca da Ramini’s(aka dollyoko’s) artwork ‘dollspace’, as well as by the critiques of Xenofeminists inrelation to the current universal digital infrastructure, an initiative was taken to
produce and communicate a post-cyberfeminist internet artwork. The use of the prefix‘post’ is connoting the adoption of cyberfeminism's theoretical and artistic context in arevised edition, which is aligned to the current sociopolitical and technomaterial
conditions. The techniques and digital tools that have the potentials to promote thepost-cyberfeminist content of the artwork are explored, as well as the proper
communication form so as to be in accordance with its critical character.
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor Ms Themis Veleni for all
the priceless knowledge she conveyed to me during the lectures, as well as for theadvice and appropriate theoretical tools she equipped me with, so as to write thisthesis. Her trust and support constituted a strong motivation during this academic
journey. I would also like to express my deepest appreciation to the cyberfeminist
artist Francesca da Rimini (dollyoko) for her sincere generosity to share with me her
experiences and knowledge on cyberfeminism, as well as for the warm conversation
we had on Skype. Her feministic energy empowered me to conduct with passion thewriting process of the thesis.
Keywords: digital culture, embodiment, interactivity, xenofeminism, collective self

Lydia Tranta
January 31st 2020

Preface
This thesis was written with the passion of someone who follows the trajectory of
herstory so as to examine the oppressive experiences which constructed her as a subject
and which also link her with the other parts of her collective self. The ultimate purposeof my journey was to explore the emancipatory discourses and the cultural and politicalpractices that were applied in former struggles of the collective self so as to adjust themto the current sociopolitical and technomaterial conditions. My research was conducted
through an experiential process, as I positioned at the threshold of the process myexperience of living in a patriarchal world as a female subjectivity, applying it as a filter
while searching for the appropriate bibliography. What also made the writing processexperiential was the fact that in parallel with the writing process I was running the‘Fragmented Subjectivities’ project. In this way, I had the opportunity to bring into
practice my theoretical presuppositions.

-i-Contents
ABSTRACT ...................................................................................................................... III
PREFACE ............................................................................................................................ I
CONTENTS...................................................................................................................... III
INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................1
PART A ..............................................................................................................................5
I. THE NEW MEDIA OF POSTMODERNITY ..............................................................................5
II. THE INTERSECTION OF NEW MEDIA WITH THE CONTEMPORARY SOCIOPOLITICAL MILIEU AND
CURRENT ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES .......................................................................................9III. CYBERFEMINISM.........................................................................................................14

III.1. THE WEB-BASED NARRATIVE ARCHITECTURE ‘DOLLSPACE’ AS A CYBERFEMINIST ARTWORK ..19
III.1.A. HYPERTEXT’S FRAGMENTED STRUCTURE AS FORM OF NARRATION .................................21
III.1.B. CYBERFEMINIST CONTENT .......................................................................................25
IV. CYBERFEMINISM AFTER THE FUTURE ...............................................................................27

PART B.............................................................................................................................29
I. PRODUCING AND COMMUNICATING A POST-CYBERFEMINIST ARTWORK ..................................29
I.1. PRODUCTION ...........................................................................................................31
I.2. COMMUNICATION.....................................................................................................32
II. THE ‘FRAGMENTED SUBJECTIVITIES’ PROJECT ....................................................................34
CONCLUSIONS ................................................................................................................39
BIBLIOGRAPHY ...............................................................................................................41
APPENDIX .........................................................................................................................1-iii-

Introduction
The purpose of this thesis is to examine the interconnections between new media art
and politics, with a view to creating paths for social change. By focusing on
cyberfeminist art, in particular, we explore its critical and emancipatory potentialities,
as well as its participatory practice, and we come up with a conclusion that this form of
expression can be seen as a means for creating fragments in the dominant system ofpower and forge spaces for rebellion against the contemporary networks ofdomination, oppression and exploitation. New forms of (political) communication haveemerged in modern times. Cultural critics call it ‘postmodernism’, sociologists andpolitical theorists perceive it as the ‘post-industrial’ era, whereas anthropologists
focusing on the effects of anthropocentrism over the environment human inhabitsrefer to it as ‘posthumanism’. No matter the term, it is indisputable that we are livingin the era of information, which, thanks to digital technology, is operating in a very
high speed and has re-organized former spatiotemporal fixes, making the whole world
a global community.
If, with a help of a time machine, had the chance to bring into the present a
subjectivity living in a past society, it is possible that s/he would consider new media
technologies as magic. Nevertheless, as it is elaborated in the first chapter of the firstpart of the thesis, in the postmodernist era, the symbolic, the imaginary and the real
are situated and co-exist in the same hyper-real level. Thus, sometimes it is difficult forpostmodern subjectivities to believe in magic as “a supernatural energy”. What
mythology teaches us is that myths were invented so as to explain phenomena thathumanity could not explain, bounding at the same time the notions of good and evil.
These notions are simultaneously embedded in human constructions, either material
or cognitive. Like the spells, inventions may enhance human abilities but they may also
have side effects. Technological media, consequently, can be parallelized with themagic wand that gives powers to the witch, whereas the manner in which she utilizes
the wand depends on the values and ethics of her community that provide meaning,give content and regulate the social organization.
The second chapter of the first part of the thesis focuses on the effects of digitaltechnology in the post-industrial era and its intersection with the contemporarysociopolitical context. Due attention is given to the networks of oppression, whichintersectional feminism has defined as most compact, namely the class, the race andthe gender. In addition, because of the ecological disasters and the severe problems
that the climate change has brought forward throughout the planet, an attempt wasmade to include in the discussion the environmental situation in the epoch of‘Chthulucene’.1
1

The geological epoch (the start date of which is controversial, extending to a range between the
Agricultural Revolution 12.000-15.000 years ago and the 1960’s) that is signified as the era in which
earth undergoes crucial anthropogenic impact is, in a yet informal context, scientifically acknowledged
as the epoch of the ‘Anthropocene’. However, the feminist scientist and theorist Donna Haraway
perceives that the term implicates anthropocentric connotations, naturalizing human dominance overearth. Adopting instead the term ‘Capitalocene’, coined by Andreas Malm and Jason Moore, she points-1-

The thesis aims to showcase ways in which art can serve as a liberating medium in theinterests of the subordinate social groups. That is why the other chapters of the firstpart of the thesis are devoted in cyberfeminism as a postmodern cultural movement.
Cyberfeminism was selected because it is one of the most important and radical
movements that used digital technology so as to produce art in a period when new
media technologies had just started to grow. Its contribution to the criticalexamination of new media is very important. Cyberfeminists combined feminisms withdigital technology, engaging new media theory in criticizing many of the current
systems of oppression. Since cyberfeminist views are still relevant, a thorough analysisof their strengths and weaknesses can bring about new paths for updated criticaltheories.
The artwork that I chose to analyze, so as to examine in practice the contribution of
cyberfeminists in new media and feminist theory, is Francesca da Rimini’s (akadollyoko’s) web based narrative architecture ‘dollspace’. It is an exemplary case of
cyberfeminist artwork, with strong political overtones. It expresses the rage of the
oppressed subjectivity, its being blasphemous and it reflects dollyoko’s position
against the networks of oppression. I met dollyoko through Skype and after theconversations we had (attached in the Appendix) and the e-mails we exchanged, I
concluded that dollyoko as an internet persona shares the same feministic energy withFrancesca in person. What I appreciated most in our communication, was the fact that
it was based on a common feministic experience, which helped us make a warm
discussion, overcoming the formalities that social conventions demand.
The common feministic experience was also what triggered my attention when I
discovered cyberfeminism. This thesis was written with the passion of someone who isfollowing step by step the trajectory of her history (herstory). As part of the collective
female subjectivity that is still oppressed along with other groups of people, in the lastchapter on of the first part of the thesis, I try to detect in what terms cyberfeminism
could be revised, in order to be consistent with the current sociopolitical andtechnomaterial conditions. Thus, I chose to elaborate on Xenofeminists’manifestations, as they combine the anti-theses of cyberfeminism, the intersectional
feminism’s identity politics and the post-structural feminisms, which I also perceive as
out that all species participate in the transformation of the planet and affect the other species.
Nevertheless, the networks of sociopolitical domination, such as capitalism, and the “situated” uponthem dominant scientific discourses that promote the dualistic model of the dominant self who isbounded by the oppressed alien, are liable for the earth’s ecological devastation. She, in accordance,
proposes the acceptance of the fact that we try to survive in what she calls the ‘Chthulucene’, namely
the epoch in which all the species, while they are “inextricably linked in tentacular practices”, are living
in a damaged planet. Thus, the building of a sustainable future does not require self-oriented practices(“auto-poiesis”). In contrast, actions shall be taken with a view to the equal and collective living(symbiosis) of all the species, the genders, the races et al. (“sym-poieses”). See Haraway, Donna J,
Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, Durham, Duke University Press, 2016. In
conjunction with Haraway, Donna J, ‘Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene:
Making Kin,
Environmental Humanities,
website, vol. 6, 2015, p.
159165,https://environmentalhumanities.org/arch/vol6/6.7.pdf (accessed 27 November 2019). In conjunction
with ‘Anthropocene’, Wikipedia, website, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocene (accessed 27
November 2019).

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fundamental to the postmodern radical political thought. Xenofeminism revised
cyberfeminist’s theses in terms of how collective demands could be synthesized andoriented to gender, race and class abolition.
Inspired by the political and cultural cyberfeminist content of dollspace, as well as by
the critiques of Xenofeminists in relation to the current universal digital infrastructure,
I took the initiative to produce and communicate a post-cyberfeminist internet
artwork. The use of the prefix ‘post’ is connoting the adoption of cyberfeminism's
theoretical and artistic context in a revised edition, which is aligned to the current
sociopolitical and technomaterial conditions. Thus, in the first chapter of the second
part of the thesis I try to explore the techniques and the digital tools that have thepotentials to promote the post-cyberfeminist content of the artwork, as well as theproper communication form so as to be in accordance with its critical character.
In the last chapter I try to place the theoretical context of the thesis into a businessplan that will help the team I assembled around the aforementioned project, in theprocess of producing and communicating it in accordance with the said values andpolitical content. I named the project ‘Fragmented Subjectivities’ as my intention was
to focus on the different and multiple oppressive experiences each of us embody. The
same oppressive experiences are what also interconnect us to the struggle foremancipation, forming us as a collective postmodern subjectivity. Recognizing thevalue of an efficiently organized strategic plan in economizing time and assets during
the processes of production and communication, I searched for a business plan modelthat would promote the critical character of our artwork. Thus, I chose to implementthe ‘Arts Council England’2 ‘Business Planning Guidance for the Arts and Cultural
Sector’.3 In 2016, Arts Council England commissioned the ‘Alchemy’s’4 consultants
Dawn Langley and Susan Royce, so as to develop, based on their experiences, abusiness planning guidance that would be appropriate for non-profit arts and culturalorganizations. As the Arts Council England points out in the Guidance Preface, whileduring 2015-2018 “there was a lot of guidance available online, very little of this was
felt appropriate for non-profit arts and cultural organizations”.5 Accordingly, the 2016
Business Planning Guidance for the Arts and Cultural Sector seemed to be the mostconvenient in promoting the non-tradable character of our artwork.

2

Arts Council England, website, https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/about-us/our-organisation-0(accessed 27 November 2019).
3
Langley, D, Royse, S, Commissioned by Arts Council England, Business Planning Guidance for theArts and Cultural Sector, 2016. Available from https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/document/businessplanning-guidance-arts-and-cultural-organisations (accessed 27 November 2019).
4
Alchemy Research & Consultancy, website, https://alchemyresearch-consultancy.com/about-us/(accessed 27 November 2019).
5
Business Planning Guidance for the Arts and Cultural Sector, 2016, p. 3.

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PART A
In the first part, the theoretical context of the thesis is discussed, namely the elements
which attribute cultural and sociopolitical value to a cyberfeminist artwork.
I. The New Media of Postmodernity
What has changed in art production since digital technology started to mediate ourcontemporary world, influencing the scale and form of social relationships,6 is that
artists have now the option to use computational tools so as to convey information
instead of painting with brushes and playing music with guitar strings. 7 Information
nevertheless has always been expressed with symbols in human societies, whilst therole of technology is to give shape to symbols, to create representations, to materialize
the information and bring it to the “real world”. Technology, consequently, brings an
idea to life, making it simultaneously communicable8 and thus inspirational for othersymbols to be constructed. Paintings, photographs and music are media objects,
namely symbols; signs that represent an idea, a particular perception and perspective.
All media thereof, share a single common characteristic; they are information carriers.9
Media and technology, accordingly, constitute two different disciplines with separate
trajectories, which are yet constantly intersected and influence one another.10 The
invention of the printing press in the fourteenth century, for example, brought radical
changes in the dissemination of information, resulting in the redefinition of the values
and ethics in the back then societies.11 Daguerreotype, the first photographic process,6

According to Marshall McLuhan’s formal analysis of the role of technological breakthroughs inhuman societies, it is in the nature of the medium (the railway, the telephone, the Internet) to shapeand control human associations. The content that is conveyed through the medium therefore, is definedby the latter. However, this analysis has been accused for technological determinism by some cultural
theorists, who support that “technologies are embedded in and take their significance from a culturaland economic matrix”. My thesis adopts a position between these two theories, in the sense that
culture and technology are interrelated, defining one another. This position is adopted by new media
theorists such as Lev Manovich. See McLuhan, Marshall, Understanding Media. The extensions of man,
MIT Press, 1994. In conjunction with Botler, Jay David, ‘Formal Analysis and Cultural Critique in DigitalMedia Theory’, Convergence: the International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, vol. 8,
no. 4, 2002, p. 77. Available from SAGE journals (accessed 2 July 2019).
7
Manovich, Lev, The language of new media, Cambridge, MIT Press, 2001, p. 256.
8
Kuni, Verena, ‘Mythical Bodies I; Cyborg configurations as formations of (self-) creation in the
fantasy space of technological creation (I): Old and new mythologies of ‹artificial humans›’, Media Art
Net,
website,p.
1/para.
2,
http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/themes/cyborg_bodies/mythical_bodies_I/1/ (accessed 2 July 2019).
9
Manovich, Lev, The language of new media, Cambridge, MIT Press, 2001, p. 48.
10Ibid, p.43.
11
The most prominent analysis on the effects of the mechanical reproduction of the artwork in thefields of Art History, Cultural Studies and Media Theory, is Benjamin’s ‘Work of Art in the Age of
Mechanical Reproduction’. As Benjamin observes, due to the invention of the mechanical reproduction,
the authenticity, the –“here and now”- of the work of art has been devalued. The work of art can beperceived out of its original context since its reproduction becomes autonomous, enabling more
recipients to have access to it and therefore democratizing art and culture. In contrast, Benjamin’s
associate in Frankfurt School Theodor Adorno, is more pessimistic about the artwork’s mass production.
Coining the term ‘Culture Industry’, he advocates that mass media are being employed inside the-5-altered respectively, in the nineteenth century, the way that images are produced,
affecting the world’s perception of reality.12 In a similar way, the computer media
revolution of the twentieth century compose the contemporary culture’s milestone,
introducing the adjustment to digital forms of production, distribution andcommunication13 of the information as well as the shift from old to new types of
media14. What is also distinctive about the twenty first century mass media societies isthe fact that computer machines, formerly functioning as calculators, control
mechanisms or communication devices, became media processors.15
The universal computer machine and the new media consequently, perform as themirror of a global culture. Computer’s procedural,16 participatory (interactivity),
encyclopedic and spatial17 properties reflect the complexity of our thinking, often
parallelized with a network comprised by countless anti-hierarchical structured
connections.18 We are immersed19 in the symbolic places we have constructed, but yet
released from the spatial restrictions of the material world.20 Simulation21 andcapitalistic context, so as to manipulate the masses towards consumerism. See Benjamin, Walter The
Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility and Other Writings on Media, edited byMichael W. Jennings, Brigid Doherty, and Thomas Y. Levin; translated by Edmund Jephcott ... [et al.], The
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, London, 2008. In conjunction with: Adorno, Theodor W,
Gesammelte Schriften, edited by Rolf Tiedmann, vol. 8 & 10, Surhkamp Verlag, 1972, 1976; vol.3,
Surhkamp Verlag, 1981, Eng. trans, Culture Industry, Routlege, 1991. Available from Monoskop(accessed 7 November 2019).
12
The 1821 Gericault’s painting ‘Derby at Epsom’, or ‘Horse Race’, constitutes a testament of themedium’s ability to define our perceptions and perspectives. In particular, the painting, created before
the invention of the photograph, is depicting some horses racing whilst their legs are represented as if
they fly. After the invention of photography, it was realized that real horses move their legs differently.
13
Including acquisition, storage and manipulation. See Manovich, Lev, The language of new media,
Cambridge, MIT Press, 2001, p. 43.
14“All existing media are translated into numerical data accessible from the computer; Text, still
images, moving images, sound and spatial constructions”. See Ibid, p.43, 48.
15
Ibid, p. 48.
16“It allows us to specify procedures which will be not merely recorded but executed”. See
Montfort N, Wardrip-Fruin N, The New Media Reader, Cambridge, MIT Press, 2003, p.6.
17
Computer’s “capability of embodying dimensionality”. “The creation of the illusion o space,which can be achieved with only a text-based display, is the result of its capacity for accepting
navigational commands from us and then responding according to its programming in a consistentmanner that reinforces our notion of space. See Ibid.
18
The word ‘network’ (resau) was used by Diderot so as to connote matter and bodies, avoiding
the Cartesian split between matter and spirit. In the 1980s, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari suggested
the form of a ‘rhizome’, a potato root system, as a new form of textual organization which “has no
beginning no end and grows outward and inward at the same time”. The latter labyrinth structure
represented an intellectual discourse liberated from the hierarchies of the old print-based world. See
Latour, Bruno, ‘On Actor-Network Theory. A Few Clarifications’, Soziale Welt, 1996, p. 370. Available
from JSTOR (accessed 7 November 2019). In conjunction with Montfort N, Wardrip-Fruin N, The New
Media Reader, Cambridge, MIT Press, 2003, p.8-9.
19
The term ‘immersion’ is used to describe the contemporary technoculture, connoting inter alia
the navigation in cyberspace and the transition to a simulated world. What is characteristic about
immersion is the passage through technology from “the immediate physical reality of tangible objects
and direct sensory data to somewhere else”. See Huhtamo, Erkki, ‘Encapsulated Bodies in Motion:
Simulators and the Quest for Total Immersion’, Critical Issues in Electronic Media, edited by Simon
Penny, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1995, p. 159.
20
Latour, Bruno, ‘On Actor-Network Theory. A Few Clarifications’, Soziale Welt, 1996, p. 371.
Available from JSTOR (accessed 7 November 2019).

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interactivity have re-conceptualized the geographical notion of space as a threedimensional physical entity to an artificially constructed net of symbols, which has “asmany dimensions as it has connections”.22 New media in other words, are immaterial
objects which are capable of representing materiality in such a realistic manner that isdifficult to distinguish between the actual and the symbolic. The tangibility of old
analogue media in contrast, was confirming until recently, the Cartesian split between
the two separate worlds of the observing spirit (subject) and the observed matter(object), of the preceded reality which is followed by the imaginary.23
The latter dualism has been eroded by many postmodern critics, inspired by semiotics
and Michel Foucault’s post-structural theory of the “discursive practice”.24 Pursuant to
Judith Butler’s concept of “performativity” for example, it is impossible to distinguishbetween the action and the will, as they are simultaneously effectuated when an
individual perform her role in society. 25 These theories, by demonstrating thatknowledge is always produced inside a specific sociopolitical context, which defines
what we appreciate as preexisting natural and objective facts, validate the necessity
for an interdisciplinary approach26 of science. As Donna Haraway points out, coining
the term “situated knowledges”, the recognition of science as a rhetorical practice andby extension as “a contestable text and a power field”, could lead to a more objective
approach of epistemology.27
One of the first scientists who combined in his work sciences and social studies was themathematician and philosopher Norbert Wiener. During World War II, Wiener
formulated his theory on ‘cybernetics’, an interdisciplinary approach associating the
behavior of biological, mechanical and social systems.28 The first time that the English
21

The term refers to technologies which aim to completely “immerse” the viewer within the virtual
universe. See Manovich, Lev, The language of new media, Cambridge, MIT Press, 2001, p. 41.
22
In Latour’s Actor-Network Theory (ANT), those connections are perceived as the assemblage ofheterogeneous entities, such as the natural entities of science and the material entities of technologythat produce meaning. Latour, Bruno, ‘On Actor-Network Theory. A Few Clarifications’, Soziale Welt,
1996, p. 371, 374. Available from JSTOR (accessed 7 November 2019).
23
Latour, Bruno, ‘On Actor-Network Theory. A Few Clarifications’, Soziale Welt, 1996, p. 370.
Available from JSTOR (accessed 7 November 2019).
24“Discourse” is comprised by an entity of signs which are structured in compliance with specificrules and limitations, demonstrating specific connotations that define inevitably the thoughts and theactions of the subjectivity, in accordance with the spatiotemporal context. Those rules and limitations
are the values and the institutions of each society. See: Foucault, Michel, L’ Archeologie du Savoir,
Editions Gallimard, 1969, Greek trans, Η Αρχαιολογία της Γνώσης, Εκδόσεις Εξάντας, 1987.
25
Butler, Judith, Bodies that Matter: On the discursive limits of sex, Routledge USA, 1993.
26“Rowland (2002) identifies two stories of interdisciplinarity. One is the bringing together ofdifferent kinds of knowledge and skill, to expand knowledge or to solve a practical problem. Rowland
refers to this as transdisciplinarity. A second story is that, far from collapsing the boundaries between
disciplines, these boundary areas represent sites of contestation between different “regimes of truth”.
He calls this more radical approach “critical interdisciplinarity”.” See Triscott, Nicola, ‘Art andIntervention in the Stewardship of the Planetary Commons: Towards a Curatorial Model of Co-inquiry’,
PhD, University of Westminster, 2017, p. 18. Available from Academia (accessed 7 November 2019).
27
Haraway, Donna J, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women. The Reinvention of Nature, Routledge USA/Free Association Books UK, 1991, Greek trans, Ανθρωποειδή Κυβόργια και Γυναίκες: Η Επανεπινόησητης Φύσης, Εκδόσεις Αλεξάνδρεια, 2014, σ. 274.
28
In 1943 Norbert Wiener co-authored with Julian Bigelow and Arturo Rosenblueth the ‘cybernetic
manifesto’. See Montfort N, Wardrip-Fruin N, The New Media Reader, Cambridge, MIT Press, 2003, p.65.

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prefix cyber29 was used connoting human associations except from mechanicalproblems, was in his book ‘Cybernetics: or Communication and Control in the Animal
and the Machine’.30 Resembling with the post-structural theories about the social
construction of subjectivity, the idea that people, like the other animals and themachines, are just part of a system, contradicted the liberal perceptions of the western
Enlightenment about the nature of self as an autonomous and sufficient entity.31
As it is elaborated above, the fundamental difference between modernity andpostmodernity is evident both in the fields of science and social theories. What we areexperiencing in our postmodern world with the appearance of digital technology andby extension “the emergence of the new medium- the metamedium”,32 is thedeconstruction of the relation between the real, the symbolic (sign) and the imaginary(signified). New media elements33 are numerical representations,34 namely signifierswith fractal structure,35 which enables them to be embodied to other signifiers without
losing their independence.36 It is impossible consequently, to distinguish the original of
the copy, since each signifier can be multiplied and placed in different positions
without losing its integrity.37 Our world of “simulacra”, as Baudrillard poses, issaturated by the aforementioned signifiers, such as representations of events, subjects
and objects, which mediate our experience, resulting in the end of reality and the riseof the hyper-real.38
The aforementioned philosophical, scientific and technological tendencies are also
evident in the popular narratives of each era. Mythologies of western anthropocentricsocieties narrate about creatures which are human-alike whilst at the same time they
incorporate alien, magical, either evil or divine characteristics. In an attempt toovercome mortality humans were always making representations of their selves.39
Witches, gods, aliens and cyborgs40 are human’s “simulacra”. According to Baudrillard,
29

The prefix ‘cyber’, deriving from the Greek word ‘κυβερνητικός’, is also used in words describing
the internet culture, such as ‘cyberspace’, ‘cyber bulling’, ‘cyber terrorism’, ‘cybersex’.
30
Montfort N, Wardrip-Fruin N, The New Media Reader, Cambridge, MIT Press, 2003, p.65.
31
Perceptions that are based on the aforementioned Cartesian split between matter and spirit.
32
Manovich, Lev, The language of new media, Cambridge, MIT Press, 2001, p. 33.
33
Such as digital images, mp3 files, electronic books and databases.
34‘Digitalization’ is the process of converting data into numerical representations. See: ibid, p. 49.
35
They are comprised of independent units (pixels, polygons, voxels, characters, scripts), which areassembled without losing their separate identities. See: Manovich, Lev, The language of new media,
Cambridge, MIT Press, 2001, p. 51.
36
For example, World Wide Web is comprised of numerous Web pages, each in its turn consistingfrom separate media elements that can be used separately. See: Ibid, p. 52.
37
After we have copied for example an archive, we can’t tell which the original is.
38
Baudrillard, Jean, Simulacres and simulation, Paris, Editions Galillee, 1981, Greek trans,Ομοιώματα και Προσομοίωση, εκδόσεις Πλέθρον , 2019, p. 27-28.
39
Kuni, Verena, ‘Mythical Bodies I; Cyborg configurations as formations of (self-) creation in the
fantasy space of technological creation (I): Old and new mythologies of ‹artificial humans›’, Media Art
Net, website, p. 3, http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/themes/cyborg_bodies/mythical_bodies_I/1/,(accessed 2 July 2019).
40
Cyborg: Cyb-ernetic org-anism. The English term was firstly introduced in 1960 by Manfred
Clynes and Nathan Kines (both activated in the domains of music, neurophysiology, pharmacology andcybernetics) in order to connote a new type of constructed organism, which is comprised by bothorganic and mechanic parts and is automatically functioning, as integrated homeostatic system. The-8-there are three types of simulacra: those that are based on the image and aim to an
ideal or in god’s image natural reconstruction (gods and witches), those that are
related to science fiction in a literal meaning (aliens) and those that are “simulation’s
simulacra” (cyborgs) and are based on the information; the model, the cyber game,the creatures of hyper-reality.41 The latter category of simulacra does not come fromthe imaginary as opposed to reality, but from a world where reality has been replaced
by information and thus there is nothing left for mythology to copy, to reflect
anymore. 42
Computerization, nevertheless, like the steam-power engines in the industrial
revolution, brought radical societal and cultural changes. Whereas industrial society
was based on material goods, information society is based on knowledge.43 Since“knowledge is power”, many computer enthusiasts believed that the launch anddistribution of new media to the masses would make the world more democratic andegalitarian.44 A position, however, that situates the invention of a medium as the only
parameter that leads to social change is characterized by technological determinism.
What is more, in the age of hyper-reality information has lost its value, since “weunderstood how human beings constructed meaning better than we have ever done
before but we no longer can believe in anything that we asserted”. 45 For a criticalanalysis of the contemporary mass media society therefore, it is essential to examine
the interconnections between new media and the contemporary sociopolitical milieu.
II. The Intersection of New Media with the Contemporary Sociopolitical Milieu andCurrent Environmental Issues
The information revolution of post-industrial society, namely the revolution inorganizing and processing the knowledge by computer machines, was rapidly
paralleled, with social revolutions. Prominent techno-utopian theories of the 20th
century proclaimed that the emergence of the new medium, the personal computer,
would emancipate the world from income and wealth inequalities of Fordist or
Postfordist capitalism. Computer enthusiasts believed that relationships of social
power and control would erode as more and more people would gain access to
information. However, although new media technologies have been characterized as“disruptive”, 46 the above argument obviously suffers from technological reductionism.
world originates from the science fiction literature and especially from the cyber punk culture. See:
Haraway, Donna J, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women. The Reinvention of Nature, Routledge USA/ Free
Association Books UK, 1991, Greek trans, Ανθρωποειδή Κυβόργια και Γυναίκες: Η Επανεπινόηση τηςΦύσης, Εκδόσεις Αλεξάνδρεια, 2014, p. 15 (note of the translator).
41
Baudrillard, supports that “mythology does not exist anymore”. See: Baudrillard Jean, Simulacresand simulation, Paris, Editions Galillee, 1981, Greek trans, Ομοιώματα και Προσομοίωση, εκδόσεις
Πλέθρον , 2019, p. 187.
42
Ibid, p. 189.
43
Montfort N, Wardrip-Fruin N, The New Media Reader, Cambridge, MIT Press, 2003, p. 590.
44
Ibid.
45
Ibid, p. 8.
46
As ‘disruptive technologies’ are characterized the robots, internet of things, augmented reality,
virtual reality, block chain, artificial intelligence, drones etc. See Data, Anusuya, ‘Top eight disruptive
technologies and how they are relevant to geospatial’, Geospatial World, website,
https://www.geospatialworld.net/blogs/top-disruptive-technologies-relevant-geospatial/ (accessed 27-9-

The new media have indeed radically altered all sectors of our everyday lives, but they
could not by themselves change the relations of power. Thus, instead of promoting amore equal distribution of wealth, participatory democracy and horizontally structured
institutions as some would imagine, we now have more power concentrated intransnational business corporations, new media barons, the military, publicbureaucracies and intelligence agencies. In other worlds, those who already had power
they are now more powerful. 47
Since the last quarter of the 20th century, the capitalist mode of production hasentered a “post Fordist” phase, in juxtaposition to Fordism (a system based on Henry
Ford’s production lines and Frederic Taylor’s scientific management).48 The ‘digital
discourse’,49 namely the intersection of new advanced capitalism with network
technologies, enabled the emergence of a new globalised society, based on the valueof information.50 Corporations like Google and Facebook constitute the contemporary
epitomized business models that offer knowledge, free of economic charge, but
receiving in return valuable information on everyone’s personal data. Digitaltechnology, alongside the material transformations that brought, introduced somefundamental ideological differences in comparison with the industrial era. Whereas
during Fordism technology legitimized “the oppressive nature of the administeredstate and the bureaucratic corporation, the loss of personal authenticity and thealienation of the working class”,51 the post-fordist society is characterized by thedeconstruction of the relation between capital, labor and the state, privileging
individualism and private transnational enterprises.52
Concerning the “means of production”, the emergence of ‘immaterial labor’, which ischaracterized as “the labor that produces the informational and cultural content of thecommodity”,53 led to the dominance of a professional technocratic elite over theformer manual labor working class.54 The post-industrial working class is required to
not only have specialized skills in information technologies and even cybernetics, butalso the appropriate managerial, communicative and creative abilities so as to“activate and manage the productive cooperation”.55 The “intellectual proletarian”
therefore, is demanded to give her very personality and subjectivity for the sake ofNovember 2019). In conjunction with Montfort N, Wardrip-Fruin N, The New Media Reader, Cambridge,
MIT Press, 2003, p.588.
47 Montfort N, Wardrip-Fruin N, The New Media Reader, Cambridge, MIT Press, 2003, p.592.
48
The bibliography on (post) fordism is immense. See, among others, Amin, Ash, Post- Fordism: A
reader, London, Blackwell Publishing, 1994.
49
Fisher, Eran, Media and New Capitalism in the Digital Era, New York, NY, Palgrave Macmilllan,
2010, p.2
50
Ibid, p.1.
51
Ibid, p.3.
52
Ibid, p.4.
53
Lazzarato, Maurizio, ‘Immaterial Labor’ in Virno Paolo and Hardy Michael (ed.), Radical Thought
in Italy: A Potential Politics, Minneapolis, Minn, University of Minnesota Press, 1996, p. 1. Available frome-flux (accessed 27 November 2019).
54
Montfort N, Wardrip-Fruin N, The New Media Reader, Cambridge, MIT Press, 2003, p.588.
55
Lazzarato, Maurizio, ‘Immaterial Labor’ in Virno Paolo and Hardy Michael (ed.), Radical Thought
in Italy: A Potential Politics, Minneapolis, Minn, University of Minnesota Press, 1996, p. 3. Available frome-flux (accessed 27 November 2019).

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production. Hence, it has become difficult to distinguish work from leisure, whereas
antagonism and individualism are re-positioned at a higher level. “Precariousness,
hyperexploitation, mobility, and hierarchy are the most obvious characteristics ofmetropolitan immaterial labor”.56
Workers in the major industrial centers of China, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore,
Hong Kong, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia and India, offer material labor toelectronic corporations, like ‘Apple’ and ‘Foxconn’, in such a low cost that is cheaper
than automated production in New York.57 Historically, the working force in the
aforementioned global factories was comprised of young migrant women.58 Α researchthat was conducted in ‘Foxconn’, however, showed that due to the deficiency of young
women in recent years, the average employee is a migrant male between 16 and 29
years old. The modern proletarians are working under extremely oppressive
management regimes so as to produce hardware components such as iPhone
casings,59 whilst they are even penalized by the security guards with physicalviolence.60 It should be noted, nevertheless, that the working class in transnational
northern central and south-western Chinese industries is protesting collectively every
time one of their colleagues is treated unfairly.61
Except from the rise of class inequalities, the tendency of neoliberal capitalism to
produce commodities that exceed real societal needs, has also have a grave impact on
the stare of environment. The first eight months of 2019 were register in Brazil’s
Amazon rainforest 87.000 fires.62 Most of the forest fires are deemed to beintentionally set up by the owners of the large ranches in the area, whose purpose is totransform it into fertile land so as to feed the animals that are keeping in theirproperties.63 Brazil’s far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, although he promised to56

Ibid, p.5
Chan, J, Pun, N, Selden, M, ‘The Politics of Global Production: Apple, Foxconn and China’s New
Working Class’, New Technology Work and Employment, vol. 28, no. 2, 2018, p. 103. Available from
Research Gate (accessed 27 November 2019).
58
Ibid.
59
“In 2012, the subtle shift in production requirements from iPhone 4S to iPhone 5 and the
speedup to meet Apple’s delivery time placed workers under intense pressure”, ibid, p. 108.
60
“At about 11 p.m. on 23 September 2012, a 20-year-old worker reported, ‘a number of security
officers severely beat two workers for failing to show their staff IDs. They kicked them until they fell’(Interview, 26 September 2012). At the male dormitory, workers passing by were alerted by screams inthe darkness. An eyewitness said, ‘We cursed the security officers and demanded that they stop. There
were more than thirty of us so they ran away” See Ibid.
61“At midnight tens of thousands of workers smashed security offices, production facilities,
shuttle buses, motorbikes, cars, shops and canteens in the factory complex. Others broke windows,
demolished company fences and pillaged factory supermarkets and convenience stores. Workers also
overturned police cars and set them ablaze. The company security chief used a patrol car public address
system to order the workers to end their ‘illegal activities’. The situation was getting out of control as
more workers joined the roaring crowd.” See Ibid.
62
The Visual and Data Team of BBC News, ‘The Amazon in Brazil is on Fire- How Bad Is It?’, BBC
News, 30 August 2019, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-49433767 (accessed 6 January2020).
63
Clifford, Krauss, ‘In the Amazon Fires Steal Breath, but Smoke Smells of Money’, The New YorkTimes, 2 November 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/02/world/americas/brazil-amazon-firescowboys.html (accessed 6 January 2020).
57

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protect the forests and the indigenous communities,64 expelled the outside of nation
forces that wanted to help in the suppression of the fires, invoking Brazil’s sovereignty
in the Amazon forest.65 He also blamed without evidence, the environmental NGOs ofsetting up the fires so as to undermine him.66 The collaboration of private capital andthe state resulted, only in 2019, in the deforestation of 7, 747 sq km of the Brazilian
Amazon rainforest.67
At the end of the same year, Australia also witnessed extreme ecological disaster due
to wildfires.68 Thousands of people were compelled to abandon their homes, whilst it
was estimated that until the 4th of January 2020, 480.000 animals were affected.69
Once again, the powers of the state and capital are intersected, resulting in thedomination over non-human nature. On the second of January, I had an interview withthe author of the cyberfeminist artwork ‘dollspace’, Francesca da Rimini. 70 Da Rimini
lives in Adelaide and so I asked her about the emergency situation in Australia. She
believes that the Australian government is at a great scale responsible for the
bushfires, due to the strong fossil fuel interests in the area.71 As da Rimini points out,
whilst Aboriginal people have built an indigenous culture in Australia for over 60.000
years, that embraces unity with nature, Australian colonialists are strategicallypromoting the human privilege over species. Aboriginals, however, have played an
important role in the environmental struggles and especially in the struggles against
the extinction of species that is at a high rate in Australia. Pursuant to da Rimini,
aboriginal indigenous culture should be combined with the scientific andenvironmental knowledge against the discourse of human superiority.
The domination of new media has had important consequences on the way noncapitalist relations of power, per se, are constituted. The human privilege, along withthe white privilege and the man privilege constitute fundamental discourses uponwhich western colonialists have based their dominance. As Ariel Salleh points out,
“domination over nonhuman nature, black devils and white witches has been crucial toWestern colonization, each group facing inclusion yet exclusion from the rational social
64

Hughes, Roland, ‘Amazon Fires: What’s the Latest in Brazil?’, BBC News, 12 October 2019,https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-49971563 (accessed 6 January 2020).
65
Grant, Will, ‘Amazon Rainforest Belongs to Brazil, says Jair Bolsonaro’, BBC News, 24 September
2019, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-49815731 (accessed 6 January 2020). In
conjunction with Simoes, Mariana, ‘Brazil’s Bolsonaro on the Environment, in His Own Words’, The New
York Times, 27 August 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/27/world/americas/bolsonaro-brazilenvironment.html (accessed 6 January 2020).
66
Ibid.
67
Hughes, Roland, ‘Amazon Fires: What’s the Latest in Brazil?’, BBC News, 12 October 2019,https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-49971563 (accessed 6 January 2020).
68
Kwai, Isabella, ‘Apocalyptic Scenes in Australia as Fires Turn Skies Blood Red’, The New YorkTimes, 31 December 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/31/world/australia/fires-red-skiesMallacoota.html?searchResultPosition=3 (accessed 6 January 2020).
69
The Reality Check Team, ‘Australia fires: How Do We Know How Many Animals Have Died?’, BBC
News, 4 January 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/50986293 (accessed 6 January 2020).
70
See the appendix.
71“Australia is third largest exporter of fossil fuels behind Russia and Saudi Arabia” See Morton,
Adams, ‘Australia Is Third Largest Exporter of Fossil Fuels Behind Russia and Saudi Arabia’, The
Guardian,18 August 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/aug/19/australia-is-thirdlargest-exporter-of-fossil-fuels-behind-russia-and-saudi-arabia (accessed 6 January 2020).

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contract”.72 Even though new media technologies have the potential of creating
ruptures in the patriarchal norms,73 gender inequalities (as well as racism andspeceisism) still exist and are even embedded in the bodies of humanoid robots.74
Robots do not have genitalia that serve reproduction but are still assigned as womenor men. The process of gendering robots proves that there is no such distinction as
between sex and gender, but on the contrary, what we perceive as feminine or
masculine is by and large matter of social convention.75 In Japan, robots are already
employed so as to execute the household and other jobs, 76 whilst the householdrobots are conceived as housewives’ substitutes.77 What is also worth noticing is thathousehold robots are preferable than migrant caretakers, due to their capacity ofadjusting in the cultural environment.78 Robots, in any case, do not have a history ofwars that might conflict with the history of their employees. In parallel, it has been
predicted that over one half of future robots will be females and they will bepositioned in posts that traditionally are conceived as feminine: nurses, employees atcoffee shops or in museums so as to greed customers, secretaries and so forth.79 It is,therefore, unfortunate the fact that although roboticists have the opportunity to reinvent social conventions, they abide by traditionalism, legitimizing a post-humansexism and ethnocentrism.80
In a nutshell, any evolution in technology and unleashing of the “productive forces” isnot translated in an improvement in the state of social equality and justice. The role ofhumanities and social sciences is exactly to analyze and criticize the ‘situatedknowledges’ that are embedded in new media. Different stands of feminism havecontributed to this task and have also provided some political tools so as to change thepowers that be. In a world where capitalism, sexism, racism and speceisism dominate
human and non-human interaction, art as a tool of constructing different andimaginative worlds, may well have a political content, by offering ways foremancipation. In an attempt of defining contemporary radical political art, thefollowing chapters discuss about how cyberfeminist artists, utilize digital technologies
so as to provoke their positions, which criticize the “technopatriarchal order” as well as
the other networks of oppression that are embedded in new media.

72

Salleh, Ariel, Ecofeminism As Politics: Nature Marx and the Postmodern, London, Zed Books Ltd,
1997, 2017, p. 67.
73
See p.
74
Robertson, Jennifer, ‘Gendering Humanoid Robots: Robo-Sexism in Japan, Body & society, vol.
16, issue 2, 2010, p. 1. Available from Sage Journals (accessed 27 November 2019).
75
Ibid, p. 24
76“Already in Japan there is a market for intelligent, autonomous humanoid robots that can pushor carry heavy loads (Hitachi’s Emiew); patrol premises and extinguish fires (Alsok’s Reeborg Q); replace
human service sector employees (Kokoro’s Actroid, ATR’s Robovie, Honda’s Asimo); babysit and tutor
children (NEC’s PaPeRo, Mitsubishi Heavy Industry’s Wakamaru); house-sit (ZMP’s Nuvo); nurse theinfirm and elderly (Riken’s Ri-man); provide companionship and entertainment (Business Design andFutaba Industries’ ifbot, Flower Robotics’ Posy and Pino); and perform as a fashion model. Althoughsome of these, like Riman, are still prototypes, of the 60 or more household robots now commerciallyavailable” See Ibid, p. 8.
77
Ibid, p. 10.
78
Ibid, p. 9.
79
Ibid, p. 24.
80
Ibid, p. 28.

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III. Cyberfeminism
Cyberfeminism as a term was firstly introduced in 1991 by the Australian new media
art collective VNS Matrix.81 It was a collective composed of Josephine Starrs, Julianne
Pierce, Franscesca da Rimini and Virginia Barratt,82 aiming to explore the social
relationships of technology and in particular, the way that women, gender andsexuality are represented in technoculture.83 Inspired by Donna Haraway’s 1991 essay‘A Cyborg Manifesto’, VNS Matrix, as a first project, drafted and distributed "A
Cyberfeminist Manifesto for the 21st Century"84 in hard copies and on websites.85 The

81“VNS Matrix (articulated as V.N.S. a fauxcronym) was a cyberfeminist media art collective formed
in Adelaide (South Australia) in 1991. From 1991to 1997 they presented installations and public art
works in Australia and overseas, working with new media, photography, sound and video. Their works
include installations, events, imagery and propaganda distributed through the Internet, zines, andbillboards. Taking their point of departure in a sexualised and socially provocative relationship between
women and technology the works subversively questioned discourses of domination and control in the
expanding cyber space.” ‘VNS Matrix’, Monoskop, website, https://monoskop.org/VNS_Matrix (accessed
2 July 2019).
82
Burrows, D, O'Sullivan, S, ‘Section III. Mythotechnesis to Machine Fictioning: 22.
Technofeminisms: The Future Cunt’, Fictioning: The Myth-Functions of Contemporary Art andPhilosophy, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, 2019, p. 426-429. Available fromhttps://vnsmatrix.net/publications/technofeminisms-the-future-cunt (accessed 27 November 2019).
83“VNS Matrix was on a mission to hijack the toys from technocowboys and remap cyberculture
with a feminist bent.” See: VNS matrix, ‘VNS Matrix: A Cyberfeminist Manifesto for the 21st Century,
1991’, The Art Happens Here: Net Art Anthology, Rhizome, New York, NY, USA, 2019, p. 30-33. Available
from https://vnsmatrix.net/publications/vns-matrix (accessed 27 November 2019).
84
VNS Matrix:

CYBERFEMINIST MANIFESTO FOR THE 21ST CENTURY
We are the modern cuntpositive anti reason
unbounded unleashed unforgiving
we see art with our cunt we make art with our cunt
we believe in jouissance madness holiness and poetry
we are the virus of the new world disorderrupturing the symbolic from withinsaboteurs of big daddy mainframe
the clitoris is a direct line to the matrix
VNS MATRIX
terminators of the moral codes
mercenaries of slime
go down on the altar of abjection
probing the visceral temple we speak in tongues
infiltrating disrupting disseminating
corrupting the discourse
we are the future cunt
Manifesto first declared by VNS Matrix
1991, Adelaide & Sydney, Australia‘VNS Matrix: Cyberfeminist Manifesto for the 21st century’,
http://www.sterneck.net/cyber/vns-matrix/index.php, (accessed 2 July 2019).

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Sterneck,website,language they used was poetic, playful and blasphemous, reflecting the artists’ ideas
on “How Future Woman should be represented”.86
During the same period in UK, the theorist Sadie Plant also coined the term‘cyberfeminism’.87 As Plant notices, the ‘Cyborg Manifesto’ motivated, during the1990’s, many feminists so as to manifest their own declarations on gender, sexuality
and their relation with the emerging back then cyberculture.88 In accordance with thefibrous character of the digital networks of communication, which are comprised ofanti-hierarchical structured connections,89 ‘cyberfeminism’ as an umbrella term also
embraces different and often contradictory feminisms.90 As the art critic Yvonne
Volkart puts it, “Cyberfeminism only exists in the plural”.91 This is the reason why ‘Old
85

Burrows, D, O'Sullivan, S, ‘Section III. Mythotechnesis to Machine Fictioning: 22.
Technofeminisms: The Future Cunt’, Fictioning: The Myth-Functions of Contemporary Art andPhilosophy, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, 2019, p. 426-429.
https://vnsmatrix.net/publications/technofeminisms-the-future-cunt, (accessed 27 November 2019).
86
Da Rimini, Francesca, ‘VNS Matrix: Cyberfeminists: Francesca da Rimini on cyberfeminism andtechnology’, artwork, The Community Arts Network of SA, Adelaide, SA Australia, issue 3, 1996, p. 8-9.
Available from: https://vnsmatrix.net/publications/vns-matrix-cyberfeminists, (accessed 27 November2019).
87“Science fiction people call this Steam Engine Time: that moment in history when a technology,
or an idea, is so bound to happen that it’s invented by several people at once.” “CyberFeminist itself ispartially a critique of the misogynistic overtones of cyberpunk literature in the 80s” See: Evans, Claire L,‘Feminist Worldbuilding in the Australian Cyberswamp’, Rhizome, New York, NY, USA, 2016.
https://vnsmatrix.net/publications/feminist-worldbuilding-in-the-australian-cyberswamp, (accessed 27
November 2019). In conjunction with: Evans, Claire L, ‘We Are the Future Cunt: CyberFeminism in the
90s’, Vice, website, 2014, para. 3, https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/4x37gb/we-are-the-future-cuntcyberfeminism-in-the-90s, (accessed 27 November 2019).
88
Also check out the work of Elizabeth Grosz, Susan Hawthorne, Zoe Sofoulis, Dale Spender, Linda
Dement, Jill Scott, mez breeze and Melinda Rackham. See: Burrows, D, O'Sullivan, S, ‘Section III.
Mythotechnesis to Machine Fictioning: 22. Technofeminisms: The Future Cunt’, Fictioning: The MythFunctions of Contemporary Art and Philosophy, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK,
2019, p. 426-429. https://vnsmatrix.net/publications/technofeminisms-the-future-cunt, (accessed 27
November 2019). In conjunction with: Barnett, Tully, ‘Monstrous Agents: Cyberfeminist Media andActivism’, Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology, no. 5, 2014, p. 1. Available fromhttps://vnsmatrix.net/publications/monstrous-agents (accessed 27 November 2019).
89
See footnote
90
As dollyoko points out, cyberfeminism was a global movement: “the Italians were great for
example…FikaFutura in Milan. And the Finns. And the Germans. I guess it was very Euro, but then there
were some powerful women in Canada and The States. Like Jamaican-Canadian digital artist Camille
Turner.
And
CarminKarasicfromtheElectronic
Disturbance
Theatre(http://www.thing.net/~rdom/ecd/EDTECD.html). EDT did one of the first Distributed Denial of Service(DDoS) actions--Floodnet--circa 1998 (way before Anonymous) in solidarity with the Mexican Zapatistas.
Their action provoked the US military into retaliating against the DDoS participants by launching hostile
Java applets back to their computers, crashing them. I know, I was online in New York participating in
the DDoS at the time. The military’s involvement only came to light later. See Evans, Claire, ‘An Oral
History of the First Cyberfeminists’, Vice, 2014, https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/z4mqa8/an-oralhistory-of-the-first-cyberfeminists-vns-matrix (accessed 27 November 2019). In conjunction with ‘A
Cyberfeminist
Manifesto
for
the
21st
Century’,netart
anthology,
website,https://anthology.rhizome.org/a-cyber-feminist-manifesto-for-the-21st-century (accessed 27 November2019).
91
VNS matrix, ‘VNS Matrix: A Cyberfeminist Manifesto for the 21st Century, 1991’, The Art
Happens Here: Net Art Anthology, Rhizome, New York, NY, USA, 2019, p. 30-33. Available fromhttps://vnsmatrix.net/publications/vns-matrix (accessed 27 November 2019).

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Boys Network’, the first Cyberfeminist International, elusively defined ‘cyberfeminism’by citing everything it is not and denominated the list ‘The 100 Anti-Theses ofCyberfeminism’.92 By articulating decentralized concepts, they attempted to evade therestrictive and exclusionary acts of labeling and definition.93
The techno-utopian character constitutes, nevertheless, a common ground forcyberfeminisms since new media were ‘tabula rasa’ back then, enabling new worlds tobe constructed.94 Cyberfeminists imagined a world where the boundaries derived fromthe dichotomies of modern thought would not exist anymore.95 Whereas othertechnoculture theories, throughout the 1990s, abide by the mind/ body separation,envisioning a “civilization of the mind”, for cyberfeminists the flesh still constitutes animportant parameter in cyberspace.96 VNS Matrix for example, conceive thecyberspace as a ‘world of slime’, where “the clitoris is a direct line to matrix”.97 The
politics of the body comprise a feminist theory contribution98 and echo the ‘Cyborg
Manifesto’ declarations.
In her essay, Donna Haraway explicates that cyborgs,99 apart from “creatures offiction”, “of mythology”, are also creatures of “social reality” and “lived experience”.100

92

The ‘100 Anti-Theses’ include, inter alia: “01. cyberfeminism is not a fragrance”, “04.
cyberfeminism is not an ideology”, “14. cyberfeminism is not complete”, “70. cyberfeminism is not postmodern”.
See
Old
Boys
Network,‘100
anti-theses’,
OBN,
website,https://www.obn.org/reading_room/manifestos/html/anti.html (accessed 27 November 2019).
93“Cornelia Sollfrank, meanwhile, notes that attendees at the International’s workshops ‘couldn’t
agree on one definition of Cyberfeminism, but agreed NOT to define the term. The strategy of keeping
the term as open as possible was consensual. (1998: 1). See Hester, Helen, ‘After the Future: nHypothesis of Post-Cyber Feminism’, Res, website, http://beingres.org/2017/06/30/afterthefuturehelenhester/ (accessed 27 November 2019).
94
As Francesca da Rimini puts it: “the future is up for grabs: it is 'unmanned'. In this whole brave
new world of technology there's a lot of space for people who aren't empowered, who don't havemoney, to get in and to mess with the machines to infiltrate the systems”. See: Da Rimini, Francesca,‘VNS Matrix: Cyberfeminists: Francesca da Rimini on cyberfeminism and technology’, artwork, The
Community Arts Network of SA, Adelaide, SA Australia, issue 3, 1996, p. 8-9. Available fromhttps://vnsmatrix.net/publications/vns-matrix-cyberfeminists (accessed 27 November 2019).
95
Barnett, Tully, ‘Monstrous Agents: Cyberfeminist Media and Activism’, Ada: A Journal of Gender,
New
Media,
andTechnology, no.
5,
2014,
p.
1.
Avaiablefromhttps://vnsmatrix.net/publications/monstrous-agents (accessed 27 November 2019).
96
Paasonen,
Susanna,‘Revisiting
Cyberfeminism’,Communications: The European Journal of Communication Research, vol. 36, issue 3, 2011, p. 335–352.
Available from: https://vnsmatrix.net/publications/revisiting-cyberfeminism, (accessed 27 November2019).
97
VNS matrix, ‘VNS Matrix: A Cyberfeminist Manifesto for the 21st Century, 1991’, The Art
Happens Here: Net Art Anthology, Rhizome, New York, NY, USA, 2019, p. 30-33.
https://vnsmatrix.net/publications/vns-matrix, (accessed 27 November 2019).
98
Angel, M, Gibbs, A, ‘At the Speed of Light: from cyberfeminism to xenofeminism, cyberfeminism,
xenofeminism and the digital ecology of bodies’, Digital Poetics in a Handbag: Women pioneers in digital
writing, 2017, p. 2. Available from Academia.edu.
99
As it is mentioned above, cyborg as a term originates from the science fiction literature, basic
source of inspiration for Haraway. Haraway chose to use this term because it is gender neutral and thus
it reflects more accurately the world where this configuration is placed: the “world beyond the gender”.
In addition, it serves more expressively Haraway’s figurative language and political myth. See: Haraway,
Donna J, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women. The Reinvention of Nature, Routledge USA/ Free Association-16-

Cyborgs, in other words, are creatures of hyper-reality in the sense that whilst they are
human’s simulacra,101 they do not exist only in the imagery; they are also livingorganisms. Cyborg configurations,102 transcending the boundaries between naturaland artificial, reality and fiction, question the dominant in western societies white
cis103 straight male human104 subjectivity. Pursuant to Haraway, “cyborgs break withthe tradition of a creation controlled and dominated by humans, a creation that refers
to a genealogy of creators and creatures and in which neither the boundaries between
humans and animals or between humans and machines, nor those between subjects
and objects are clearly defined”.105
Women106 in western societies, like cyborgs, were invented very recently as a subject.
Female body also incorporates both human and mythical characteristics. Despite thefact that biologically and morphologically looks like man’s body, it is not totally thesame. Thus, “woman” exists in the dominant discourse as something that looks like aman, but is “not-a man” and by extension, “not-a human”. Due to their alleged “nonhuman”-“monstrous” 107- bodies, women have been hunted and oppressed as
Books UK, 1991, Greek trans, Ανθρωποειδή Κυβόργια και Γυναίκες: Η Επανεπινόηση της Φύσης,Εκδόσεις Αλεξάνδρεια, 2014, p. 15 (note of the translator).
100
Ibid, p. 223
101
See p.8.
102“For an analysis of the cyborg phenomenon that is directed at the interfaces of art and media
culture, the term configuration is helpful in two ways: Firstly, it suggests analyzing not only cyborg
representations and metaphors, but also their functions—including the interfaces that support thedifferent systems and discourses. Secondly, it brings into focus the outlined crossing of different, evenideologically molded systems of terms and meaning, which decisively influences cyborg fantasies andfigurations.” Kuni, Verena, ‘Mythical Bodies I; Cyborg configurations as formations of (self-) creation in
the fantasy space of technological creation (I): Old and new mythologies of ‹artificial humans›’, MediaArt Net, website, p. 1, http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/themes/cyborg_bodies/mythical_bodies_I/1/,(accessed 2 July 2019).
103
The term connotes a subjectivity that is not transgender.
104
Human (adj.)mid-15c., humain, humaigne, "human," from Old French humain, umain (adj.) "ofor belonging to man" (12c.), from Latin humanus "of man, human," also "humane, philanthropic, kind,gentle, polite; learned, refined, civilized." This is in part from PIE *(dh)ghomon-, literally "earthling,earthly being," as opposed to the gods (from root *dhghem- "earth"), but there is no settled explanationof the sound changes involved. Compare Hebrew adam "man", from adamah "ground". Cognate with
Old Lithuanian žmuo (accusative žmuni) "man, male person". See: Online etymology dictionary, website,
https://www.etymonline.com/word/human, (accessed 2 July 2019).
105
Haraway, Donna J, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women. The Reinvention of Nature, Routledge USA/Free Association Books UK, 1991, Greek trans, Ανθρωποειδή Κυβόργια και Γυναίκες: Η Επανεπινόησητης Φύσης, Εκδόσεις Αλεξάνδρεια, 2014, σ. 265.
106
Woman (n.) "adult female human", late Old English wimman, wiman (plural wimmen), literally"woman-man," alteration of wifman (plural wifmen) "woman, female servant" (8c.), a compoundof wif"woman" (see wife) + man "human being" (in Old English used in reference to both sexes;
see man (n.)). Compare Dutch vrouwmens "wife," literally "woman-man." See: Online etymology
dictionary, website, https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=woman (accessed 2 July 2019).
107
Monsters, for Haraway, are sharing with the verb “demonstrate” more than their common root.
“Monstrous bodies” demonstrate “the monstrous relations confronting subjects in the age of
information and biotechnology”. Monstrous bodies have become deviant or demonized in order for thedominant white cis straight male subjectivity to be empowered. The phrase “inappropriate/d others” isused by Haraway in a similar way. In particular, she borrowed the phrase by the Vietnamese director
and feminist Trin T Minh-ha in order to connote all those who are not compromising with the dominant
identitarian and political stereotypes of the “self” and the “other”. Monsters consequently, are in-17-

“witches”, “sluts” or “Eva’s daughters”. Haraway acknowledges that woman’s
oppression is a political fact which creates the collectively lived experience of being
considered by the dominant discourse as an object.108 The hybrid nature of cyborg
configuration, however, has changed what is perceived as “woman experience” in thelate 20th century,109 enabling women to unite as a collective subject to the struggle forreinvention of self, embracing in parallel their other different identities. For
cyberfeminists, therefore, ‘cyborg’ represents a political identity that allows as toredefine subjectivity, transcending speciesism, race, class and gender. The latterrationale is reflected in Haraway’s essay-concluding famous statement: “I would rather
be a cyborg than a goddess”.110
The aforementioned fragmented structure of the collective female subjectivity, whose
identities are multiple and diverse, is conveyed in Haraway’s ironic language. Irony
became a common tool among cyberfeminists, since it is a method of joining
contradictory discourses, like cyborg configurations do.111 Influenced by the black‘intersectional feminism’ of Combahee River Collective,112 cyberfemisists, like the VNS
Matrix collective, support feminisms that are “inclusive of all women: trans women,
womxn,113 feminine-identified non-binary identified people and cis women”.114 The
latter stands in opposition to older forms of western feminism, such as the whiteparallel the creatures that destabilize the dominant evolutionary, technological and biological discourse.
See: Haraway, Donna J, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women. The Reinvention of Nature, Routledge USA/ Free
Association Books UK, 1991, Greek trans, Ανθρωποειδή Κυβόργια και Γυναίκες: Η Επανεπινόηση τηςΦύσης, Εκδόσεις Αλεξάνδρεια, 2014, p. 17, 18. In conjunction with: Volkart Yvonne, ‘Monstrous Bodies:
The Disarranged Gender Body as an Arena for Monstrous Subject Relationns’, Media Art Net, website, p.
1, http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/themes/cyborg_bodies/monstrous_bodies/1/ (accessed 2 July2019).
108
Haraway, Donna J, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women. The Reinvention of Nature, Routledge USA/Free Association Books UK, 1991, Greek trans, Ανθρωποειδή Κυβόργια και Γυναίκες: Η Επανεπινόησητης Φύσης, Εκδόσεις Αλεξάνδρεια, 2014, σ. 224.
109
Ibid.
110
Ibid, p.
111
Paasonen,
Susanna,‘Revisiting
Cyberfeminism’,Communications: The European Journal of Communication Research, vol. 36, issue 3, 2011, p. 335–352.
Available from https://vnsmatrix.net/publications/revisiting-cyberfeminism, (accessed 27 November2019).
112
The term “interscectionality”, also referred to as “intersectional feminism” was firstly introducedby the Cobahee River Collective, a black feminist organization founded in 1973 in Boston,
Massachusetts. Oppressed not only because of their gender but also because of their race and class,black women were struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression. Intersectionality
studies the “intersections between forms or systems of oppression, domination or discrimination”.
See: Combahee River Collective, website, https://combaheerivercollective.weebly.com/, (accessed 27
November 2019).
113“The term ‘Womxn’ is an alternative term for the English language word ‘women’, which has
been regularly in use since 2015 to explicitly include transgender women and women of color. It has
been used in a similar manner as ‘womyn’ and ‘wimmin’, as a rejection of the folk etymology of 'woman'allegedly being 'of man'. Due to transgender women and women of colour's perceived exclusion fromthe usage of these respellings, an "x" is used to "broaden the scope of womanhood," to include them.”
See ‘Womxn’, Wikipedia, website, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Womxn#cite_note-2, (accessed 27
Nivember 2019).
114‘VNS Matrix’, VNS Matrix, (website), https://vnsmatrix.net/the-artists, (accessed 27 November2019).

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‘1970’s or ‘second wave’ feminism, that privilege cis white women and aretechnophobic and even anti-sex.115
The ironic tendency of cyberfeminists has, however, been accused of restraining rather
than promoting critical dialogue, due to the ambiguity it creates about theirpositions.116 In her 2011 essay, the critic Susanna Paasonen using the example of
OBN’s ‘100 anti-theses’, concludes that since this ambiguity is open for interpretation
to everyone, sometimes the networks of oppression and the inequalities are not given
the proper attention.117 When, although, the systems of oppression are not precisely
identified, ‘collective demands’ cannot be located either, since the experience of
oppression is what links the oppressed subjects to the collective struggle foremancipation.118 Sadie Plant, likewise, by connecting Lady Lovelance, switchboard
operators and South-East Asian women working in silicon chip factories, and placing
them all under the umbrella of ‘feminization’, viewed as an uncoordinated multiplicity,
disregards the inequalities among them.119
The contribution of cyberfeminisms, notwithstanding, in feminist theory and digital
media culture cannot be underestimated. Invented at a ‘Steam Engine Time’,120 theypresented the artistic, analytical and political tools for a critical examination of
cyberculture and its engagement with gender politics. Discoursing about genderemancipatory uses of technology, sex-positive female sexuality, game culture andcommodification of the bodies, they remain relevant.121 The following internet
artwork, ‘dollspace’, constitutes an example of how the content of theaforementioned discourses can be expressed through new media art.
III.1. The Web-based Narrative Architecture ‘Dollspace’ as a Cyberfeminist Artwork‘Dollspace’122 constitutes a prominent example of cyberfeminist internet art. It is
written in HTML code, but it reminds the oldschool analogue fanzines. It was launched
115

Paasonen,
Susanna,‘Revisiting
Cyberfeminism’,Communications: The European Journal of Communication Research, vol. 36, issue 3, 2011, p. 335–352.
Available from https://vnsmatrix.net/publications/revisiting-cyberfeminism, (accessed 27 November2019).
116
Ibid.
117
Ibid.
118
Burrows, D, O'Sullivan, S, ‘Section III. Mythotechnesis to Machine Fictioning: 22.
Technofeminisms: The Future Cunt’, Fictioning: The Myth-Functions of Contemporary Art andPhilosophy, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, 2019, p. 426-429. Available from:https://vnsmatrix.net/publications/technofeminisms-the-future-cunt, (accessed 27 November 2019).
119
Paasonen,
Susanna,‘Revisiting
Cyberfeminism’,Communications: The European Journal of Communication Research, vol. 36, issue 3, 2011, p. 335–352.
Available from https://vnsmatrix.net/publications/revisiting-cyberfeminism (accessed 27 November2019).
120
See footnote 87.
121
Paasonen,
Susanna,‘Revisiting
Cyberfeminism’,Communications: The European Journal of Communication Research, vol. 36, issue 3, 2011, p. 335–352.
Available from: https://vnsmatrix.net/publications/revisiting-cyberfeminism, (accessed 27 November2019).
122
Da Rimini Francesca, Dominguez Ricardo, Grimm Michael , D O L L S P A C E, website,
https://dollyoko.thing.net/title.htm, (accessed 2 July 2019).

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on the web in 1997, by one of the members of the ‘VNS Matrix’ collective, Francescada Rimini (aka dollyoko).123 Due to its hypertextual structure it contains a great amountof data (graphics, text, sound, hypertexts124 and hypermedia125) that can be infinitely
rearranged.126 The width of the artwork, before the revised edition in 2001, could betranslated in 700-800 tangible pages.127 All this amount of information was produced
in a sixth-month period, while dollyoko was in Kyoto, exchanging personal “huntings”
with her friends. The non-visual text-based e-mails they used as communication form,
triggered dollyoko’s imagination in creating an alien world, “a pond of dead girls”.128
Dollyoko’s friend, Claudia Raddatz, helped by making the translation into Spanish andsome animations, Ricardo Dominguez offered some of his writings and Michael Grimm
created the soundtrack.129 Interesting to note that dollspace has been threatened withcensorship both in Belgium and in Italy, but still remains on the web corrupting it withslime.130

123

Francesca da Rimini (GashGirl, doll yoko, liquid_nation) is an Australian cyberfeminist artist
based at times in Adelaide and at other times in London, New York or Rome. Since 1995 she has createdmany online projects including the web-based narrative architectures “GashGirl”, “Los Dias de losMuertos” and the award-winning “dollspace”. In order to provoke her feminist anti-theses in the
cyberspace, she is experimenting with the artistic exploitation of the aforementioned communication
forms as well as the email dialogues and the virtual communities. In accordance with most of themultimedia artists, she has an interdisciplinary background. She has worked in the information
technology industry and she was awarded the Australian Council’s New Media Fund Fellowship for her
research in the fields of quantum physics and indigenous knowledge systems. In parallel, she
periodically works with the Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT), which she co-founded in
1988. She is also tutor, writer, video maker, curator, documentary producer and arts manager. Da
Rimini’s political agenda does not only include gender inequalities. She has also fight for Aboriginalrights and has participated in eco-activist movements against nuclear, military and mining industries. In
1991 in Adelaida she co-founded with Josephine Starrs, Julianne Pierce and Virginia Barratt the
influential cyberfeminist media art collective “VNS Matrix”. See: ‘Francesca da Rimini, «dollspace»’,
Media Art Net, website, http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/artist/rimini/biography/, (accessed 2 July2019).
In
conjunction
with:‘FrancescadaRimini’,Monoskop,website,https://monoskop.org/Francesca_da_Rimini, (accessed 2 July 2019).
124
The most popular form of hypertext is the World Wide Web.
125
When media, such as images, are interconnected by hyperlinks they are also described as‘hypermedia’ instead of ‘hypertexts’. In this thesis the two terms are used interchangeably. See: Burk,
Dan L, ‘Copyright and Feminism in Digital Media’, American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy &the Law, vol. 14, no.3, 2006, p. 522. Available from Academia.edu (accessed 2 July 2019).
126
The visitor-user of the website can navigate him/herself by clicking on the hypertexts that areavailable on each page. Hypertexts, either words or (moving) images, are interconnected hyperlinks thatgive the user access to other pages of the work containing hypermedia. In some pages of the program
the user is able to choose among more than one hypertext and thus decide the trajectory of thenarration. In other pages on the contrary, there is only one hypermedia to click. The user is sometimes
also linked to pages that don’t have any hypertexts, but the images are changing without the user’s
control. Some other times, video, sound or images are automatically downloaded in the user’s computerwhen s/he clicks on a hypertext, enabling him/her to keep them as a souvenir. The hypermedia that are
hidden in images are sometimes difficult to be detected and the user might believe that the narration
has come to an end. However, if s/he searches more carefully s/he will definitely find a hypertext to linkher/ him to the next page. Dollspace operates like a database, containing a great amount of data which
can be infinitely rearranged. As a result, the navigation never ends unless the user decides so.
127
See the Appendix
128
Ibid.
129
Ibid.
130
Ibid.

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Due to the artwork’s wide spatiality, it is difficult, within the scope of this paper tohighlight all the aspects that it brings under controversy. Thus, I focus on what I would
consider most important if I was curating the artwork for political purposes, promoting
it as cultural good that can contribute to social change. My twofold analysis centers on
the artwork’s hypertextual structure, which by attacking hierarchies enables
interactivity (and vice versa) and its feminist content, as is expressed in the medium inwhich it is embedded. The embodiment of the feminist discourse into new media
technology is, according to my view, what provides distinctive political value to theartwork. It enables a certain unity of theory and praxis, as it more or less occurs in thepolitical practice of social movements. What also lends political value to the artwork is
the fact that anyone can have access to it without payment.
III.1.a. Hypertext’s Fragmented Structure as Form of Narration
Dollspace has never had a script. As dollyoko points out in the discussion we had on
dollspace during the interview: “the whole project just grew, and that’s what I love
about hypertext. The rationale was to make a pond of dead girls.131 That was the
motivation and some kind of release-the-spirit”.132
It could be argued that hypertexts constitute a characteristic form of new media that
contributed to a certain modification of the trajectory of human thought, bydemostrating that it is not essential to structure cognitive constructions upon
hierarchies. The ‘meaning’ is not produced through an aristotelistic process of ‘cause
and effect’, but it may as well be understood as a network of separate individual
gestures. Accordingly, hypertextual structure, in a way confirms the postmodern
theories about ‘authenticity’. Considering that, pursuant to Barthes, Derrida, Foucault
and other postmodern critical thinkers, there is no single objective truth, as themeaning changes according to the historical, political and societal context, and so
there is no original interpretation of an artwork. In this manner, the Author-God issuspended from his/her previous position of authority, 133 bequeathing theinterpretation of the artwork to the audience. Artistic process becomes moreexperiential and conceptual, encouraging critical thinking against what Burroughs calls“prerecordings;134 dominant views upheld by existing institutions of power”135. In
131

As dollyoko recalls, when she was in Kyoto in 1997, she went to a famous pond where, in thepast, mothers pressured by social circumstances, drowned their babygirls. This strong image of womenpracticing infanticide motivated dollyolo so as to create dollspace. The latter image is reminiscent of the
Greek Kaiadas abyss legend (ο μύθος του Καιάδα). According to the legend, ancient Spartans, living in
the most militarized society of ancient Greece, were throwing to Kaiadas their feeble children. In thisway, society is structured upon the discourse of ableism –a network of oppression still dominant- justbecause war demands strong bodies. See the Appendix.
132
Ibid.
133
On the basis that there is no original interpretation of an artwork, Rolland Barthes attacked
traditional literary criticism, which gave emphasis on the authority of author. See: Barthes, Rolland, ‘The
Death of the Author’, Aspen, no. 5-6, 1967.
134
Burroughs’ “prerecordings” remind of Foucault’s “discourse”. “Discourse” is comprised by anentity of signs, which are structured in compliance with specific rules and limitations, demonstrating
specific connotations that define inevitably the thoughts and the actions of subjectivity, in accordancewith the Foucault, Michel, L’ Archeologie du Savoir, Editions Gallimard, 1969, Greek trans, ΗΑρχαιολογία της Γνώσης, Εκδόσεις Εξάντας, 1987.

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practice, hypertexts facilitate the “re-coding”136 of texts by blurring the lines between
writing and reading. In his 1970 essay ‘S/Z’,137 Barthes is opposing the “writerly” texts,
which are texts that can be written and re-written, to the “readerly” texts, which canbe red but not written. Hypertext constitutes a “writerly” text, since it enables thereader/user of the computer program to interact with it and influence the trajectory of
the plot. The writing process consequently, becomes more dialectic devaluating thecentrality of the author. Thus, every day people are obtaining a more interactive role in
the reproduction of the artwork.
It is evident, therefore, that dollspace belongs to the category of the “writerly” texts.
Not only because it is an interactive artwork that is re-written every time that it is red,but also because it was produced in a very similar manner with how hypertexts
function. As it is mentioned above, during the process of the artwork’s production,
dollyoko was exchanging texts with her friends, who contributed in it with theirpersonal experiences and perspectives. The hypertextual structure of the work
enabled the interconnection of all those stories, which would be probably consideredinapplicable in a traditional text that demands an etiologically predefined purpose. The
notions of ‘cause’ and ‘effect’ incorporate those of ‘beginning’ and ‘ending’. The
fragmented non linear structure of the hypertext, on the other hand, links different
connotations under a concept, transcending their contradictions at such a level that its
definition always remains unfinished. Thus, the eeriness of the infinite is created.138
This is the reason why dollyoko’s “pond of dead girls” triggers the ‘uncanny feeling’139of the visitor.140 It provokes whoever enters it, a disturbing feeling of being imprisoned
into the eeriness of infinite.

135

Takehana, Elise, ‘Burroughs / Rauschenberg: Text-Image / Image-Text’, p. 278. Available fromAcademia.edu (accessed 2 July 2019).
136
Theorized by Barthes, Derrida and others. See: Burk, Dan L, ‘Copyright and Feminism in DigitalMedia’, American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law, vol. 14, no.3, 2006, p. 528.
Available from: Academia, (accessed 2 July 2019).
137
Barthes, Roland, S/Z, Editions du Seuil, 1970, Eng. trans, Blackwell Publishing, 1990, p.ix.
138
Anne Carson, in her essay ‘Eros the bittersweet’, analyzing the notion of ‘eros’ (love), postulates
what makes a paradox: a thought which attempts to reach a conclusion that it is never reached. The
ancient Greek poetess Sappho was the first to characterize eros as “bittersweet”. Sappho’s back thenneologism, which provoked her ridicule by her contemporaries, constitutes another example of joining
contradictory connotations in the same world. See Carson, Ann, Eros the Bittersweet: An Essay,
Princeton University Press, 1986, Greek trans, ‘Ερως ο Γλυκόπικρος, Εκδόσεις Δώμα, 2019, σελ. 15, 110.
139
The psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud in his 1919 essay ‘The uncanny’, supports that humans’tendency to create copies of themselves (like dolls) arise due to their fear of death. He supports that the
replicas which they create is an attempt of overcoming mortality. However, when they look at a replica,
they feel uncanny (disturbing) because it reminds them that death is inevitable. In 1997, the roboticist
Masahiro Mori, endeavoring to explain the uncanny response that humans have towards robots,
published an essay in the journal ‘Energy’, in which he concludes: “When we die, we fall into the troughof the uncanny valley. Our body becomes cold, our color changes, and movement ceases”. Those arealso characteristics of the human replicas and as such they remind of the inevitable death. Accordingly,
the “pond of dead girls” shares a lot of similarities with the “uncanny valley”, since it is valley of dead.
See Freud, S, McLintock, Haughton, H, The uncanny, New York, Penguin Books, 2003. In conjunction with
Kloc,
Joe,
‘Into
the
Uncanny
Valley’,Seed[website],https://www.seedmagazine.com/content/article/uncanny_valley/P2/ (accessed 2 July 2019).
140
I made the parallelism of the uncanny response that humans have towards replicas, with their
response towards the paradox of the infinite. According to my view, the infinite also reminds the-22-A concept that incorporates different and possibly contradictory connotations echoes
the Old Boys Network ‘100anti-theses’ that positioned under the umbrella of‘cyberfeminsm’ multiple and diverse non-identities. Respectively, hypertext’s
fragmented structure resembles the fragmented collective female subjectivity.141 Thisis the reason why hypertext from its beginning was perceived as a medium thatenables feminist perspectives to be expressed.142 Its non linear, interactive character
that was analyzed above, questions the traditional, hierarchical and patriarchal writing
forms, enabling the re-invention of subjectivity. One of the first prominent “Literary
Hypertexts”143 was Shelley Jackson’s ‘Patchwork Girl; or, a Modern Monster’, released
in 1995, two years before dollspace.144 What is distinctive about this artwork is that
Shelley is making a “correspondence between the medium and the message”. 145 In
particular, the reader/user of the computer program is invited to “sew”146 the parts ofPatchwork Girl’s body. Each part belongs to a different girl with different sociopoliticalbackground and story. Thus, the “monstrous” body that the user creates constitutes a
metaphor illustrating hypertext’s multiplicity of connotations and, in parallel,
Patchwork Girl’s (and by extension collective female subjectivity’s) multiplicity ofidentities.147
The embodiment of the message into the medium, as it is mentioned above, enables
the interaction of the symbolic with the factual and thus, in a sense, theory becomespraxis, while the latter simultaneously reproduces theory. The aforementioned
interactivity of the symbolic with the real is what attributes to dollspace its politicalinevitable death because it will stop being a paradox only if humans manage to reach immortality (albeit
other paradoxes will then emerge; See Don Dellilos novel Zero K). I also made the aforementioned
connection because it is common in the collective conscious to connect the situation of death with
infinite situations, like the paradise and the hell.
141
According to Haraway, gender, race and class constitute fragmented political identities of thepostmodern subject. See Haraway, Donna J, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women. The Reinvention of Nature,
Routledge USA/ Free Association Books UK, 1991, Greek trans, Ανθρωποειδή Κυβόργια και Γυναίκες: ΗΕπανεπινόηση της Φύσης, Εκδόσεις Αλεξάνδρεια, 2014, σελ. 233.
142
Another example of cyberfeminist artwork is Linda Dement’s 1995 CD-Rom ‘Cyberflesh
Girlmonster’. “Linda described her projects as driven by a desire to put some guts into machine,
illustrating the point with the CD’s ample landscape of mouths, eyes, ears, clitorises and nipples
morphing into each other and giving rise to monstrous kinds of carnalities.” See 142 Paasonen, Susanna,‘Revisiting
Cyberfeminism’,Communications: The European Journal of Communication Research, vol. 36, issue 3, 2011, p. 335–352.
Available from https://vnsmatrix.net/publications/revisiting-cyberfeminism (accessed 27 November2019). In conjunction with Burk, Dan L, ‘Copyright and Feminism in Digital Media’, American University
Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law, vol. 14, no.3, 2006, p. 523-528. Available from: Academia.edu(accessed 2 July 2019).
143
Hackman, Paul, ‘"I Am a Double Agent": Shelley Jackson's "Patchwork Girl" and the Persistenceof Print in the Age of Hypertext, Contemporary Literature, vol. 52, no.1, 2011, p. 85. Available fromJSTOR (accessed 2 July 2019).
144
The narrative is based on two books: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and L. Frank Baum’s The
Patchwork Girl of Oz, reflecting feminist and post-structural theories. Jackson is making a parallelism of
the act of creating a hypertext with the way that female bodies are being constructed in the discourse.
See: Ibid.
145
Ibid, p. 86.
146
Jackson parallelizes the writing process of linking hypertexts with sewing, an activity that isclosely related to woman subjectivity. See: Ibid, p. 94
147
Ibid, p. 93.

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value. Its feminist content is effectuated during an interactive, dialectic process which
discredits the networks of oppression produced by hierarchy. Pursuant to the poststructural theory of Judith Butler,148 subjectivity is not something biologicallypredefined, but it is rather constructed inside the discourse.149 The destabilization of
the dominant discourse of hierarchy therefore, may create a fertile ground for themultiplication of the subject’s identities and vice versa. In other words, dialectic
processes may boost the deconstruction of the dominant dualistic theories, such as
those which perceive female identity as a single and homogenous identity opposite tomale.
The artwork’s, non-linear150, non-hierarchical narration also represents a practicalexample of postmodern literary theory.151 Words and images constitute independentsources of gesture whilst they simultaneously have the role of a signifier and asignified, as is the case with Baudrillard’s “world of simulacra” or the cyberspace.
Hypermedia narration is reminiscent of Burroughs’ ‘cut-ups’. Being one of the mostinfluential postmodern artists and premature exponent of cyberpunk culture,
Burroughs combined in his work the visual152 and the verbal. His technique of cutting
words from their original context and placing them in different positions resembles
Dadaist collages and photomontages. His writings have the form of a database, inwhich words are interacting with other words as if they were paintings, creating adispatched -from time and space- narration. By altering the words’ connotations
Burroughs strikes against the discourse of the “one and only” reality, illustrating thesign-mediated environment of the 20th century.153
Hypertext as a medium, accordingly, reflects the modularity154 of postmodernity,
whilst in parallel enables the experimentation with new, less hierarchical narrativetechniques, allowing less dominant perspectives to be heard. Dollspace’s feminist
content, therefore, is expressed in accordance with the medium that is used. Stories
and images of different women can be rearranged and presented randomly, without
being restricted by hierarchy, constructing a representation of a collective rebelling
female subjectivity with multiple identities.

148

Butler, Judith, Gender trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, Routledge USA, 1990.
As it is theorized by Foucault. See footnote no. 39.
150'Hyper-' refers to structure and not size The English prefix "hyper-" comes from the Greek prefix"ὑπερ-" and means "over" or "beyond"; it has a common origin with the prefix "super-" which comesfrom Latin. It signifies the overcoming of the previous linear constraints of written text written in paper.
See ‘Hypertext’, Wikipedia. The free encyclopedia, website, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext(accessed 2 July 2019).
151
Burk, Dan L, ‘Copyright and Feminism in Digital Media’, American University Journal of Gender,
Social Policy & the Law, vol. 14, no.3, 2006, p. 528. Available from Academia.edu (accessed 2 July 2019).
152
Despite the fact that Burroughs is mostly known for his writings, he was also experimenting withvisual arts and music. “The cut-up seems revolutionary to Burroughs because it brings writing closer topainting by making the medium of the writer more tangible and haptic.” See Takehana, Elise, ‘Burroughs/ Rauschenberg: Text-Image / Image-Text’, p. 275. Available from Academia.edu (accessed 2 July 2019).
153
Ibid. p.278.
154
Manovich, Lev, The language of new media, Cambridge, MIT Press, 2001, p. 51.
149

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III.1.b. Cyberfeminist Content
The cyberfeminist content is evident not only in dollspace’s hypertextual structure, butalso in its aggressive ‘slime’ and ‘vapourware’ aesthetics and its provocative messages.
Dollspace is composed of images, e-mails, music and poetic texts that could have beenpossibly collected or written by a girl and placed disorderly in her diary.
Because of the fact that dollspace is made up from countless data it is difficult tocomment on each and every image or text. What they are all sharing, nevertheless, isthat their content is conveyed in a very immediate and experiential manner, expressing
the different aspects of female subjectivity from a female perspective. Its personal
character, however, do not render it less political since -as the second-wave feminists
declared-155 “personal is political”. Representations of eastern and western every day
women of different ages demonstrate that women have multiple other identities
whilst they all experience oppression because of their gender, no matter what theirrace or class is.
Narration, however, is not focused on the issue of woman oppression so as to victimize
female subjectivity. On the contrary, through the artwork, navigation is raising an
aggressive female perspective against her oppression. In accordance, words like“dolls”, “ghosts”, “bitch”, “cunt” and “virgin” demonstrate the demonization of female
subjectivity and in parallel the fact that this demonization has given her the power todestabilize
thedominant
evolutionary,technologicalandbiological156
discourse. Technology, besides, can link women from every corner of earth, enablingthem to share their experiences and be united as a collective subject. The latter isillustrated by the slang internet language that is used in the narration. Slang internet
language gives an informal, personal character to the artwork, whilst in parallel
reminds to women that they now have the chance to share their experiences with
their sisters from other countries in a language that they can all understand.
Dοllspace is, in addition, characterized by cyberpunk aesthetics. Cyberpunk constitutes
a subgenre of science fiction literature, which explores the possible implications ofscience and technology in human societies. 157 It should be noted that the dystopian
scenarios of the future are rather common in cyberpunk works of art. Feminist science
fiction, nevertheless, shed light to the positive perspectives of technologicalbreakthroughs, presenting utopian society as something not only desirable but alsoachievable. 158 The artwork’s title for example, invites us to imagine how it would be if
155

Second-wave feminism occurred in USA during the decades 1960-1980. Whilst first-wave
feminists were focusing on the legal inequalities (vote, property), second-wave feminists inspired by the1949 Simon de Beauvoir’s ‘Second Sex’ drew attention to the oppression that women are subsistinginside the family environment. ‘Second Sex’, theorizing that gender is not biologically predefined (sex)but it is socially constructed, is considered a milestone for the feminist theory. See Athanasiou, Athina,Φεμινιστική Θεωρία και Πολιτισμική Κριτική (Feminist Theory and Cultural Critique), Athens, Nissos
Publications, 2006.
156
See footnote about the “monstrous bodies”.
157
See the works of Philip K. Dick, William Gibson, Roger Zelazny, John Brunner, J. G. Ballard, Philip
José Farmer and Harlan Ellison.
158
See the works of Ursula K. Le Guin, Eileen Gunn, Marge Piercy, Joanna Russ, Elizabeth Burgoyne
Corbett and Frances Harper.

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cyberspace were a place assigned to women. Similarly, feminist digital artists,
commonly influenced by Haraway159 and other postmodern feminists, are exploring
the potential of technological developments to blur the lines between natural andartificial, reality and fiction, and therefore to redefine human body and multiply
human identities.160 In this context, dollspace is not only radical, but also a very
characteristic work of its period, as it reflects the emerging cyberpunk culture of the
1990’s and postmodern feminist perceptions.
As a closing point of the chapter, an extract from the artwork itself could be cited,which expresses in a more poetic way the artist’s perceptions on cyberfeminism:“There is no precedent whatsoever for such an event. In the whole of history ofhumanity, in the whole history of the world and of the earth, in all that to which one
can give the name of history in general, such an event (let us repeat, the event of adiscourse in the philosophico- scientific form claiming to break with myth, religion, andthe nationalist ‘mystique’) has been bound, for the first time and inseparably, toworldwide forms of social organization (a party with a universal vocation, a labor
movement, a confederation of stated, and so forth). All of this while proposing a newconcept of the human, of society, economy, nation, several concepts of the State andof its disappearance”.161 Cyberfeminism can be a guide to the aforementioned
direction, offering the tools so as to map out our mythical bodies and find ways toreconstruct them. Technology has nevertheless overturned mythology, requiring theconstruction of a new vocabulary that it will not be based on dualistic contradictions.
Artistic expression can assist us by offering a critical rethinking of our relations with theothers, the nature, the objects, the cyborgs. We may find more similarities thandifferences.
However, as it is analyzed in chapter II, feminist utopias still exist mostly in fantasy.
Due to information capitalism, the web is more regulated and commodified,162 whilst
white cis straight male culture signified crucially new media technology. Nevertheless,because of the fact that new media are cultural objects that reflect our “monstrous”163
relationships, it is important to observe them. What they are telling us, in thisparticular spatiotemporal conjucture, is that our relations are empty of meaning. This
is why the struggle for the reinvention of self has become a necessity. Since thetechnomaterial conditions in the millennial era have radically changed, it is time forthe cyberfeminist theses to be reconfigured and engaged with new critical perceptions
on the gender-digitality intersection. Now that we are after the cyberfeminist future, as

159

Haraway is also influenced by cyberpunk culture.
See Digital photographer Cindy Sherman, graphic artist Barbara Kruger and visual artist Ursula
Biemann.
161
Da Rimini Francesca, Domninguez Ricardo, Grimm Michael , D O L L S P A C E, website,
https://dollyoko.thing.net/title.htm (accessed 2 July 2019).
162
Evans, Claire, ‘An Oral History of the First Cyberfeminists’, Vice, 2014,
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/z4mqa8/an-oral-history-of-the-first-cyberfeminists-vns-matrix(accessed 27 November 2019).
163
See footnote 107.
160

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‘Laboria Cubronics’ points out, “we need to articulate a feminism fit for a world thatswarms with technological mediation, […] abstraction, virtuality, and complexity”.164
IV. Cyberfeminism after the Future165
The necessity for a critical update of cyberfeminism’s elusive positions has become
apparent, especially in the era of “biotech, genetics, data mining, surveillance,
immaterial labor, online pornographies, software and hardware production, digital
divides and accessibility of information”.166 The prefix ‘cyber’, accordingly, connoting
the pre-millennial techno-utopianism, which was never achieved, has been
outdated.167 Dollyoko herself admits that since 1991, her analysis has changed.168 As
she explains, due to information capitalism the web is more regulated, whilst much
effort has been made by the dominant powers so as to control free access to
information. However, as repression is being accelerated, more disordering regimes
are invented by the oppressed.169 Cyberfeminism has offered and is still offering theappropriate tools with a view to social change.170As dollyoko points out:
“Cyberfeminism is one of many feminisms and feminism has not gone away”.171
Nevertheless, there currently exist so many feminisms that can no longer be based onthe ‘woman’ identity. In her 2017 essay, Helen Hester, one of the academics
composing the ‘Laboria Cubronics’ xenofeminist collective,172 proposes the ‘n164

Hester, Helen, ‘After the Future: n Hypothesis of Post-Cyber Feminism’, Res, website,
http://beingres.org/2017/06/30/afterthefuture-helenhester/ (accessed 27 November 2019).
165
The title is referred to Helen Hester’s essay ‘After the Future: n Hypothesis of Post-Cyber
Feminism’, that critically examines the contribution of cyberfeminism in gender and digital culture,
attributing in parallel the analytical and political tools so as to be adjusted in the current technomaterial
conditions. See: Hester, Helen, ‘After the Future: n Hypothesis of Post-Cyber Feminism’, Res, website,
http://beingres.org/2017/06/30/afterthefuture-helenhester/ (accessed 27 November 2019).
166
Ibid.
167
Ibid.
168
See the Appendix.
169“Anti-piracy measures such as the British government blacklisting notorious tracker sites like
The Pirate Bay immediate spawned a host of proxy sites, and retaliatory takedowns of compliant ISPs by
Anonymous)”. See Evans, Claire, ‘An Oral History of the First Cyberfeminists’, Vice, 2014,
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/z4mqa8/an-oral-history-of-the-first-cyberfeminists-vns-matrix(accessed 27 November 2019).
170
See for example “the Bloodbath collaboration with a roller derby team (www.bumpp.net). That
could be read as a cyberfeminist intervention. Chicks, machines, extreme sports. Or the growth offemale hacker clubs, workshops and events like G.hack (http://ghack.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/?p=979) andGenderchangers (http://www.genderchangers.org/links.html). You might like to chat with Nancy
Mauro-Flaude about this (http://sister0.org), she’s been doing this for eons. And in the global South
there are many projects fostering a critical socially-engaged technological literacy, and women are
driving and participating in many of these. Such projects don’t need to be labelled ‘cyberfeminist’, butthey embody some of the cyberfeminist ethos and attitude. See Ibid.
171
Ibid.
172
“Laboria Cubroniks (b. 2014) is a xenofeminist collective, spread across five countries and threecontinents. She seeks to dismantle gender, destroy ‘the family,’ and do away with nature as a guarantor
for inegalitarian political positions. Her name is an anagram of ‘Nicolas Bourbaki’, a pseudonym underwhich a group of largely French mathematicians worked towards an affirmation of abstraction,
generality and rigour in mathematics in the early twentieth century. Members include Diann
Bauer, Katrina Burch, Lucca Fraser, Helen Hester, Amy Ireland, and Patricia Reed.” See ‘Laboria-27-

hypothesis’ mutable architecture.173 In particular, she suggests that the ‘OBN’s’negative definitions need to be synthesized with positive statements of selfidentification.174 Acknowledging the risks that the definition process might carry, the ‘nhypothesis’ architecture, like the open source software, remains accessible for
perpetual updates and seeks to articulate a political identity that is not exclusionary,
but in parallel, it goes beyond individualism. Self definition is a political tool that
promotes collective demands, creativity and critical exploration.
Laboria Cubronics in other words, is proposing an updated intersectional feminism175
that instead of limiting the number of collective identities to those of gender, race andclass, it multiplies them to a fluid number.176 When identities are divided in accordancewith the networks of oppression, the latter remain static, since they are reproduced,
and thus they are naturalized. Gender, race and class abolition presupposes the refusalof everything that is fixed. After all, as cyberfeminists declared, nothing is natural –noteven the body. That is why digital technology may be a useful tool in the path foremancipation. In accordance with the collective’s manifestations, it is time for the noncis, white, straight, male subjectivities to accept the fact that are alienated within theuniversal digital environment and properly use new media infrastructure so as tobecome more alienated.177
What Laboria Cubronics is proposing, consequently, is a combination of cyberfenism’s
non-identities with intersectional feminism’s identity politics. Their assertions also
resemble the post-structural Foucauldian feminist theories. The collective’s requests
for multiplication of identities through the use of new media, for example, arereminiscent of what Judith Butler has called “subversive bodily acts”.178 In particular,
due to her concept of ‘performativity’,179 Butler has been accused for theorizing “thedeath of the subject” since it seems that the subjects do not have a free choice while
performing their gender. To these critiques, Butler opposes the intentional action ofsubversive bodily acts. She points out that precisely because gender is a repetition it ispossible to be repeated differently.180 Offering the example of the drag artists, she
concludes that a gender repetition in disruptive and unexpected ways (revealing thus
its unnatural nature) could create the appropriate fragments for the destabilization of
the dominant gender identities. Butler, in other words, asserts that all subjects since
their birth are inevitably performing their gender. The latter, however, does not induce
Cubronics’, Monoskop, website, https://monoskop.org/Laboria_Cuboniks (accessed 27 November2019).
173
Hester, Helen, ‘After the Future: n Hypothesis of Post-Cyber Feminism’, Res, website,
http://beingres.org/2017/06/30/afterthefuture-helenhester/ (accessed 27 November 2019).
174
Ibid.
175
See footnote 112.
176
Laboria
Cubronics,
Xenofeminism:Apolitics
for
Alienation,
website,https://www.laboriacuboniks.net/ (accessed 27 November 2019).
177“It is through, and not despite, our alienated condition that we can free ourselves from themuck of immediacy. The construction of freedom involves not less but more alienation; alienation is thelabour of freedom’s construction. Nothing should be accepted as fixed, permanent, or ‘given’ — neithermaterial conditions nor social forms. XF mutates, navigates and probes every horizon.” See ibid.
178
Butler, Judith, Gender trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, Routledge USA, 1990.
179
See footnote 25.
180
Butler, Judith, Gender trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, Routledge USA, 1990.

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the death of the subject, but on the contrary, it reveals the possibilities for thedeconstruction of the former dominant gender identities.
The approval of inevitability is a common element within the xenofeminists’manifestations. The acceptance of the fact that “we are alienated, fragmented and yet
embodied still” constitutes the only threshold for constructing new different worlds.181
Sufficient time has now passed since the emergence of new media but we still refuse
endorsing that they influence us as well as the factual infrastructure. Thus, the critiqueon the impact of the digital intermediation upon our lives remains elusive. However, as
the members of Laboria Cubronics write: “The relationship between technology, social
relations, and the political imagination is complex, mutually shaping, dynamic, anddependent upon continuous conversation”.182 Consequently, if we confront the pastand present with a blind eye, without examining it through radical political tools, it is
impossible to critically and creatively imagine and collectively construct a future free ofthe current networks of oppression.

PART BIn the second part are examined the ways in which the theoretical context of the thesis
can be put into praxis. In the second chapter there is a business plan that will help theprocess of producing and communicating a post-cyberfeminist artworkin accordance with the said values and political content.

I. Producing and Communicating a Post-cyberfeminist Artwork

As discussed above, cyberfeminism, as a cultural movement, interconnected art,
politics and technology. However, the connections between these discourses are multivariant and multipurpose, and may crystallize into various forms in different historicalconjunctions. Art at times is engaged with political discourse so as to interpret it, todescribe it and to critically examine it, or may serve as a medium through which a
political message is propagated.183 Nevertheless, when art is employed as a tool for
maintaining the dominant power, it constitutes pure political propaganda.184
Prominent examples of art serving as pure political propaganda are those of thetotalitarian Communist and Nazi regimes. On the other hand, cultural movements such
181

Dean, Aria, ‘Select All: Toward a Xenofeminist Future’, Topical Cream, 2015,
http://topicalcream.info/editorial/select-all-toward-a-xenofeminist-future/ (accessed 27 November2019).
182
Ibid.
183
Moller, Frank, ‘Politics and Art’, Oxford Handbooks Online, website, 2016,
https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935307.001.0001/oxfordhb9780199935307-e-13 (accessed 27 November 2019).
184
Ibid.

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as those of 1920s Dadaism and the late 1950s and 1960s Situationist International andother avant-garde movements, have demonstrated art’s critical and emancipatory
potentialities, by inventing forms and communication techniques that questioned
traditional norms, offering new perspectives of seeing the world.185 Chantal Mouffe
characterizes as ‘critical’ the artistic practices that “can contribute to unsettling thedominant hegemony” by “bringing to the fore the existence of alternatives to thecurrent post-political order”.186 As it is evident from the above, art can be politicalwithout being critical but it is impossible to be critical without being political.187
Consequently, since the fusion of art and politics is complex and diverse, it is important
to identify the important and dominant interconnections, which produce the desirable
content that is transmitted through the communication of the artwork.
As it is examined in the first part of the thesis, cyberfeminst art could be characterized
as critical, since it offers alternative perspectives of using new media technology andrepresenting subordinate groups of people, by engaging art with feminisms. Feminisms
contributed in the critical examination of the dominant powers, by focusing, inter alia,
on the experience of the historically silenced and excluded subjectivities. Starting fromthe feminist declaration that ‘personal is political’, we are led to the assumption thatpolitics should not be a privilege of a political elite, which governs via impressive andyet secluded institutions. In a similar way, art as a medium of political expression
should not be a privilege of an intellectual elite. When art is produced or disseminatedso as to satisfy the patrons and compliment the aristocrats, for the vindication of stateauthority or in order for the galleries and the auction houses to earn a profit, free
expression is restricted. Thus, while producing and communicating a postcyberfeminism artwork, due attention should be given so as the voices and theexperiences of the oppressed are not restricted. New media technology has offered
the tools to that direction.
When VNS Matrix collective started to make projects, none of the members knew how
to use digital technology, or how to draw.188 The members of the collective all shared acommon passion of expressing themselves against the emerging “technopatriarchal
order”. New media technology offered the tools to make art, without the prerequisiteof being a good technician. After all, what really matters in postmodernity is the idea.
The VNS Matrix collective admitted its amateurism and clearly acted in accordancewith the “gift economy” of the internet.189 The whole concept was based on the

185

Montfort N, Wardrip-Fruin N, The New Media Reader, Cambridge, MIT Press, 2003, p. 22
Mouffe, C, Wagner, E, Agonistics: Thinking the World Politically, London; New York, Verso,
2013, p. 92, 93.
187
Ibid.
188
Da Rimini, Francesca, ‘VNS Matrix: Cyberfeminists: Francesca da Rimini on cyberfeminism andtechnology’, artwork, The Community Arts Network of SA, Adelaide, SA Australia, issue 33, 1996, p. 8-9.
Available from: https://vnsmatrix.net/publications/vns-matrix-cyberfeminists (accessed 27 November2019).
189“None of us can draw, so we are shameless plagiarisers and copyright abusers. We've released
all of our work back into the world through posters and postcards. The manifesto has been translated
into six or seven languages. We put our work on the Net and we don't care if people take our stuff andmess with it, because we haven't figured out a way to make money from this - so we think we just might
as well put it out there. We also believe that there is a gift economy happening in this world of
186

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perspective that everyone can produce cultural objects and transmit cultural ideas.190
Thus, when the collective was organizing exhibitions, or released their work online, it
did not matter if someone intervened into it. On the contrary, their purpose was tocollect stories of the everyday people and reproduce them in their artworks.191 Thus,
art is not perceived as a commodity, but as a form of expression of collective demands
and desires.
I.1. Production
What is most interesting in all the new media user-generative platforms192 such as
photoshop is that they equip their users with technological features which enable
them to interact with their interfaces by creating, adapting and disseminating
contents. Τhese technological features have actually broaden up the concept of“technological reproducibility” in the digital age. As Walter Benjamin observes, due tothe invention of the mechanical reproduction, the authenticity, the –“here and now”of the work of art has been devalued. The work of art can be perceived out of its
original context since its reproduction becomes autonomous, enabling more recipientsto have access to it and therefore democratizing art and culture.193 In addition, digital
reproduction attributes new forms of autonomy to the work, through its
dematerialization and liquefaction.194 As a result, “the work is not owned but lived, iscollectively widespread but not linearly distributed and finally is infinitely
reproducible”.195
Open source software196 is a type of information technology infrastructure that has thepotentials to facilitate the collective process of creating a post-cyberfeminism artwork.
Since it is “software with source code that anyone can inspect, modify, andenhance”197 it enables the anti-hierarchal interconnection of the different experiences
and perspectives of the collective subjectivity, promoting in this way collective
demands and perspectives, without excluding the special needs and desires of theindividual subjectivities. Consequently, open source software reflects the Xenofeminist

technology: there are a lot of people out there who are forming new tribes and new communities, andthey're being assisted through the Internet.” See Ibid.
190
Ibid.
191
Ibid.
192
The term ‘generativity’ has been defined by Zittrain to denote a technology’s capacity on thewhole to produce spontaneous changes driven by mass and uncoordinated audiences. J. Zittrain, ‘The
Generative Internet’, Harvard Law Review, vol.119, no.1974, 2006, p.1980–1982, as cited in Corinne H.Y.
Tan, ‘Technological “Nudges” and Copyright on Social Media Sites’, Thomson Reuters (Professional) UK
Limited and Contributors , 2015, p. 67. Available from Academia (accessed 12 April 2019).
193
Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility and Other
Writings on Media, edited by Michael W. Jennings, Brigid Doherty, and Thomas Y. Levin; translated by
Edmund Jephcott ... [et al.], The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, London, 2008.
194
Ziovanni Prattichizzo, ‘Living Young in the Digital Age’, GSTF International Journal on Media &Communications, vol.1, no.1, 2013, p.44. Available from Academia (accessed 12 April 2019).
195
Ibid, p.44-45
196
See for example Etherpad, website, https://etherpad.org/ (accessed 27 November 2019).
197
Opensource, website, https://opensource.com/resources/what-open-source (accessed 27
November 2019)-31-manifestations, whilst it is already used by many contemporary feminist artists,198
including dollyoko.
As dollyoko points out: “My immaterial body was born in a place of the dead in 1994.
Late one night two of us sharing a keyboard and inhabiting one “Guest” body, engaged
with a dyslexic vampire, the_Unborne, in a morgue at LambdaMOO—the Mother of all
MOOs”. 199 MOOs constitute text-based online social environments, which enable users
to communicate in real time through a central database server, by using the MOO
programming language.200 Thus, users have the opportunity to create artworks,
sharing their imaginaries and exchanging ideas, in spite of any physical distance that
may keep them discarded in the real world. MOOs consequently, may be a useful tool
for organizing the production of a post-cyberfeminist artwork since they create a
network with multiple interconnections, augmenting in this manner the number of theparticipants to the infinite.
This is the reason why dollyoko perceive MOOs as fundamental to the process ofstructuring her immaterial persona. As she explains in the interview we had, she
focuses on the political economy of things and the chains of production.201 How theartwork is produced plays an important role in critical art. Dollspace for example, as it
was analyzed in the first part of the thesis, was produced by the use of digital tools andtechniques that are in accordance with its anti-hierarchal and anti-patriarchal politicalcontent. Open source software enables the effectuation of techniques that permit thecreation of “hexes”202 against the hierarchal structure of the networks of dominationsuch as capitalism and patriarchy. What is more, it equips the artwork withphilosophical concerns that are often met in postmodern culture, like the paradox ofexistence and the human uncanny reaction confronting it.
I.2. Communication
How the critical artwork will be communicated also addresses many political concerns.
Since it is produced so as to mobilize the oppressed to follow their utopias, it should beaccessible to them. Thus, a proper propagation with a mass appeal and a free (or free
donation) distribution are essential. ‘Dollspace’ constitutes an attempt for new media
technology to be used disruptively to the traditional modes of the artwork’scommunication, for the sake of free expression and free access to art. Dollyoko had
the interdisciplinary background to recognize the power of the emerging, back then,198

See for example the work of the new media artist and theorist Nancy Mauro-Flude. Nancy
Mauro-Flude, website, http://sister0.org/ (accessed 27 November 2019).
199
Dollyoko has co-created with Graham Harwood Netmonster, another platform for artisticcollaboration that resembles Lambda. See Appendix and Da Rimini, Francesca, ‘We Spun a Dream Last
Night’, Furtherfield, website, 2017, p. 156, https://www.furtherfield.org/spun-dream-last-nightfrancesca-da-rimini/ (accessed 27 November 2019). In Conjunction with Da Rimini, Francesca, ‘Delighted
from the Spectacle’, dollyoko.thing.net, website, https://dollyoko.thing.net/g8/daRimini-spectacle.pdf(accessed 27 November 2019).
200
Da Rimini, Francesca, ‘We Spun a Dream Last Night’, Furtherfield, website, 2017, p. 156,https://www.furtherfield.org/spun-dream-last-night-francesca-da-rimini/ (accessed 27 November2019).
201
See the Appendix.
202
Ibid.

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World Wide Web and use it in order to communicate political messages
independently, without the intermediation of any other stakeholder.

When dollspace was released in 1997, cyberspace was still an unexplored territory andthus, dominant powers had not anticipated to occupy it completely. However, thesevoices are today lost under the huge amount of information that is produced daily. The
web is saturated by signs empty of content, whilst information is being manipulated byhuge corporations such as ‘Google’ and ‘Facebook’. Some prominent effects are the“fake news” in everyday politics,203 or the prohibition of photos depicting female
nipples on social media. A critical internet artwork therefore, should be communicatedthrough independent web spaces so as not to be censored by such corporations orother dominant powers. This is the reason why dollyoko still pays a fee to the server
were dollspace is located. The artwork’s independent location prevented its ceasing
when it was threatened with censorship in Belgium and in Italy.
The new Directive on the Digital Single Market which was voted by the EU Parliamenton 26 March and approved by the Council on 15 April 2019204 changed the status of
the information society services’ liabilities, such as Google and Facebook. Many humanrights advocates criticize it on the grounds that it will promote censorship. The
Directive contains two main controversial articles: Article 15 and Article 17. Article 15,
which is known as the “link tax”, gives the rightholders direct control on their works inthe sense that they have the right to require remuneration by information society
services when their works are uploaded and disseminated through their platforms.
Article 17 obliges the service providers to implement “effective and proportionate”
preventive measures against copyright infringing acts. Popular social media platforms,
like Instagram and Facebook, have already implemented such kind of filtering
measures. However, in compliance with the safe harbor provisions of the Electronic
Commerce Directive, it was not obligatory, until now, for the EU providers to apply
filtering systems on their platforms. As it is noted in the explanatory memorandum of
the Draft Directive, it is unquestionable that technological breakthroughs havecompletely changed the way that works of art are created, produced, distributed andexploited. Thus, a reform of the existing EU legal framework seemed to be inevitable.
Although it is understood that a fair balance must be achieved between the rights ofcreators, publishers or producers, and the rights of users, the uploading filtering
measures provided by the new Directive may restrict the users’ fundamental rights on
information, on protection of their personal data and on their freedom of expression.
All online platforms, in order to deal with the risk of liability and prevent any copyright
infringements, must now use filter mechanisms, much like the authoritarian regimes
already do, on all texts, pictures and video circulated on the internet.
It is evident from the aforementioned that the logic of the current copyright law is
opposite to the logic of cyberfeminists, which is based on the concept of
203

Rose,
Jonathan,‘Brexit, Trump, and Post-Truth Politics’, Public Integrity, 2017,https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/10999922.2017.1285540 (accessed 27 November 2019)204
European Commission, DIRECTIVE OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL on
copyright in the Digital Single Market, Brussels, 14.9.2016 COM(2016) 593 final.

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appropriation. Despite the fact that hypertext’s appearance raised expectations about
the deconstruction of the existing relation between the artist, the artwork and theaudience, promoting the author-user symbiosis,205 copyright law still maintains the
traditional ownership regime. The right of “paternity” for example, is confirming thecentrality of the author in the production of the artwork, bequeathing to audience theposition of the consumer. Copyright law has also been criticized by feminist voices forthe right of “paternity” as well as for the rhetoric of “conception”206 and otherprovisions in relation to the protectable subject matter.207
This is the reason why a post-cyberfeminist artwork should be communicatedequipped with copyright licenses that permit appropriation, declaring thus resistanceagainst the existing copyright law regime. Such licenses are the copyright-based
Creative Commons (CC). The Creative Commons licenses define the terms for the
distribution and reproduction of creative works. CC provides licenses for different use
cases and includes open content licenses such as the Attribution license (CC BY) andthe Attribution Share Alike license (CC BY-SA) used respectively by many Open Access
Scientific Publishers and Wikipedia. CC also include licenses which declare that thecontent of the artwork is not free or not open when is used under some conditions,like the non- commercial (NC) condition.208
II. The ‘Fragmented Subjectivities’ Project
The idea
In an attempt to produce independent and critical political art against thecontemporary sociopolitical situation in Greece and worldwide, fifteen friends with acommon cultural and political background, we were gathered around one project.
Some of us are photographers, (digital) painters and movie makers, others write texts
or make clothes and some have specialized skills in information technologies. The mostof us have contributed to the project by more than one means. The material we
produce is collectively processed and thus it is difficult to distinguish the author ofeach image or text. Since we are focused on the collective effect of our work, we
prefer to keep individual anonymity and present ourselves only by the collective name
‘Fragmented Subjectivities’. Inspired by ‘dollspace’s’ artistic and political expression, as
well as by the way it was produced and disseminated, we created a similar internet
artwork. Our idea was to revise the 1990’s utopian cyberfeminism, enriching it with ourperceptions upon the existing technomaterial conditions. Thus we created a postcyberfeminist artwork. Web’s modular and atemporal structure constituted the205

Montfort N, Wardrip-Fruin N, The New Media Reader, Cambridge, MIT Press, 2003, p. 14.
See “35 U.S.C. § 102(g) (2005) (requiring the use of the date an inventor conceived an idea if
there is a patent related dispute between inventors over the same invention). As cited in Burk, Dan L,‘Copyright and Feminism in Digital Media’, American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & theLaw, vol. 14, no.3, 2006, p. 522. Available from Academia.edu (accessed 2 July 2019).
207
Ibid p. 521.
208
Hagedorn G, Mietchen D, Morris RA, Agosti D, Penev L, Berendsohn WG, Hobern D, ‘Creative
Commons licenses and the non-commercial condition: Implications for the re-use of biodiversity
information’, in Smith V, Penev L (ed.), E-Infrastructures for data publishing in biodiversity science,
ZooKeys 150, p. 127–149, 2011. Available from Research Gate (accessed 27 November 2019.
206

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appropriate space to link us with our outmost sisters, assisting us to open a dialog withother feminist voices, overcoming spatiotemporal restrictions.
VisionTo become a glitch in the heteronormatively constructed and capital dominated World
Wide Web of the 21st century.
Mission‘Fragmented Subjectivities’ webpage was created as a meeting space, both for its
creators and all those who have the need of being expressed outside the patriarchal,racist, speciesistic and capitalistic norms existing in the ‘real’ and virtual communitiesof our generation. Positioning the experience at the centre of our concern, we start thejourney for a re- invention of self. Art is our weapon; a code that helps us tounderstand and communicate the oppressive experiences which constructed us assubjectivities. We share our experiences so as to empower and be empowered. Our
wounds are the fragments we use so as to scarify the contemporary social forms.
ValuesAgainst the dominant ‘monstrous’ relationships of our world, our aim is to build
meaningful and equivalent relationships. To that direction, we collectively organize theproduction of the artwork, often while eating together, whereas we do not aim to
make a profit from its dissemination. Because we acknowledge capital’s restrictions in
criticality and creativity, we do not accept funding from external stakeholders. In
accordance to Butler’s advocacy on ‘performativity’, we do not focus on creating a‘beautiful’ artwork, but we rather target to the effects and experiences that art might
attribute to society. It is our intention to build a dynamic relation with the visitors of
the webpage, since we conceive artistic experience as the result of the equalcollaboration between the artists and the audience. We confront ‘oppression’ as a webthat circulates all the aspects of our everyday lives. This is the reason why we produce
art inspired by our experiences towards gender, race and class abolition.
Key strategies
Recognizing culture’s and science’s interrelationship, as well as the adverse effects ofthe technological industry in the environmental, labor, gender and racial issues, we are
employing digital technology’s capabilities so as to occupy a space that will function
aggressively to the status quo. In particular, ‘Fragmented Subjectivities’ webpage willoffer us the opportunity to make an exhibition with global resonance, whilst none of
the social media providers may have competence in altering the content of ourartwork. What’s more, digital technology offers us the tools to create an interactive
artwork that could be affected by the visitors. The visitors will have the chance, forexample, to affect the artwork’s streaming, to send us material they wish to embed init, or to download stickers and billboards so as to stick them on their rooms. In orderfor the political purpose of the work to be effectuated, the material that visitors will
sent will be evaluated so as to be in accordance with the anti-hierarchal, antipatriarchal, anti-racist and anti-speceistic content of the artwork. Regarding the
economic assets of the project, due to the fact that we do not accept funding nor do
we ask for a fee, it will be of a very low budget. For that reason, in conjunction with-35-

our intention to make a statement about the environmental change, most of thematerials which will be used, will be garbage. The whole project, in general, will be set
up only by us, whereas if we do not have the knowledge or the tools for something, we
will ask a friend to generously help us. Since we do not perceive our art as ourcommodified property, but our purpose is to freely transmit cultural product andideas, the project will be available to others via the Creative Commons copyrightlicense under the Non-Commercial (NC) condition that permits appropriation but not
in a commodified way.
Aims
Our aim is to maintain the webpage for many years and constantly update it with newmaterial. Even when most of us will be living in different places, the ‘Fragmented
Subjectivities’ project will keep us connected. ‘Open source software’ and other digital
tools facilitate the collective work from distance. We seek to find the most appropriate
ways to disseminate the project globally so as to open a transnational dialogue withsubjectivities sharing the same needs and desires with us. We also wish to contact
Francesca da Rimini, ask her opinion about the initiative we took to produce a remakeof her project and elaborate on contemporary feminisms.
Objectives
Production: Until March 31st 2020 we must have set up the webpage, including aminimum bunch of information. Namely:-200 images (some of them will include text)-10 videos-soundtrack
Dissemination: After we will have collected the aforementioned material and set up
the webpage, we shall all take the appropriate actions in order for the project to bedisseminated globally to as many individuals possible.
Action plans
Production: We will work in groups so as to accomplish the separate parts of the
project. At the end of every week, we will meet all together so as each group present
its work to the other groups. Those that are based in other countries will send theirwork via ‘dropbox’. During the aforementioned meetings, decisions shall be taken by
consensus and will be recorded in the minutes. The material which is consented to be
uploaded on the webpage will be firstly inserted in a pdf form, containing all the bunchof information ready to be uploaded. The teams will be divided as follows:-Setting up the webpage team
-Designing the webpage team-Finding places for the photo shootings and video clips team-Collecting the props and the clothes for photo shootings and video clips team
-Photo shootings team-Video clips team
-Sketches team
-Text team-Soundtrack team-36-

-Photoshop team
-Reading team so as to place the project in the relevant theoretical context
Dissemination: We will create a page on all the major social media sites which will
include a small part of our material and we will promote it on our profiles and on
relevant groups. We will also make large billboards and stickers interconnected with
QR codes to the ‘Fragmented Subjectivities’ webpage, so as to stick them on thestreets.
Key factors to success
It should be reserved that the material we produce is in accordance with the values
and the political background of the project. This is the reason why all the members
should read the thesis upon which the project is based, as well as the texts to which thethesis is referred. Discussions will be also made as it concerns the perspectives of thethesis. In order for the collaborative spirit of the team to be preserved, all of the teammembers should declare their commitment from the start, as well as provide
information on any external responsibilities they have undertaken that might
jeopardize their commitment. The jobs assigned should be clearly defined anddelegated so as to keep a strict timeline that will help us to be consistent with thedeadlines. It is also essential to contact Francesca da Rimini as soon as possible so as to
ask her consent for the official launching of the project. If she is not in consent we haveto be ready to readjust our project and act flexibly.

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Conclusions
Oriented towards a reinvention of the (non white cis straight male) collective self, thethesis explores the appropriate interconnections between digital art and politics that
promote the redefinition process of the collective demands and desires. To that
direction, an effort has been made to critically examine the contemporary collective
experience of oppression. An interdisciplinary approach that creates ruptures in thedominant “situated knowledges” of sciences is adopted, as it seems to be quiteconsistent with the complex and multi-fragmented character of postmodernity.
Intersectional feminism, cyberfeminism and xenofeminism have offered the tools for a
critical examination of digital culture and its intersection with the contemporarysociopolitical milieu.
In the first chapter of the first part of the thesis, an effort has been made so as to bringin the discussion the fundamental role of new media in shaping the condition of hyperreality. Due to the generative and communicational digital capabilities, reality andimaginary are inextricably fused inside the postmodern cultural matrix, resulting in thehyper-production of meaningless information. On the other hand, the fibrous
structuring of new media contradicted western modernism’s dualistic theories(matter/spirit, nature/culture), promoting the philosophical discussions on theredefinition of the limits between the individual and the collective self.
Despite digital technology’s optimistic potentialities of attacking hierarchies, the postindustrial societies are still organized on the basis of the speceistic, racist, capitalistic,
patriarchal et al. networks of domination. In the second chapter of the first part of thethesis, some examples are given so as the most dominant post-industrial sociopoliticalhierarchies to be examined. The appearance of immaterial labor, for example,
demonstrates the fact that technological media have the potentials to reform but not
to abolish oppressive relations. The contemporary intellectual proletarians, instead ofworking fewer hours, as the techno-utopians would expect, are demanded to offer
even their leisure time. At the same time, proletarians in oriental countries work under
extremely oppressive conditions so as to produce hardware components for thedemands of the over-consuming global market. Thus, except from the classinequalities, the western dominance over orient in the post-colonial era is validated.
Capitalism in intersection with the western anthropocentric discourse over nature has
also damaging effects on the environment, resulting in the severe climate change andthe extinction of many non-human species. Human privilege in juxtaposition with man
privilege and white privilege constitute discourses upon which western dominance isstructured. Even though new media technologies have the potentials of creating
ruptures in the patriarchal norms, gender inequalities still exist and are yet embeddedin the software and hardware digital infrastructure.
The rest of the first part of the thesis is devoted in cyberfeminism’s cultural andpolitical contribution to the critical examination of technoculture as a reflection of thematerial sociopolitical reality. In a period in which new media had just started toemerge, cyberfeminsts examined the way that women, gender and sexuality are-39-

represented in digital culture so as to redefine the collective woman identity. Donna
Haraway’s ironic cyborg configuration constituted a prominent inspiration forcyberfeminists who tried to define a new collective political identity. Since irony is amethod of joining contradictory discourses it became a common tool among
cyberfeminists, whose aim was to elusively define cyberfeminism as an umbrella term
under which oppressed subjectivities could be united without being excluded by strict
definitions. Resembling the computer software, which also functions by the sequenceof the contradictory events of the existence (one) and non- existence (zero),cyberfeminism embraces multiple and contradictory feminisms. A prominent
cyberfeminist artwork is dollyoko’s web-based narrative architecture ‘dollspace’. The
artwork’s hypertextual structure, which by attacking hierarchies enables interactivity(and vice versa), and its feminist content expressed in accordance with the medium inwhich it is embedded, reflect its radical political character.
Contrary to the technologically deterministic dystopian theories of the 1990’s,
cyberfeminim’s utopian character contributed in culture and politics by illuminating
the new media emancipatory potentialities for the oppressed subjectivities.
Cyberfeminism’s theses remain relevant but since the pre-millennial technoutopianism was never achieved, they are needed to be aligned with the current
sociopolitical and technomaterial conditions. Xenofeminists, critically examining thecurrent universal condition of “alienation”, are proposing a synthesis ofcyberfeminism’s identity non-definitions with intersectional feminism’s identity
politics. As they declare, it is time to accept the fact that we are inevitably alienated
due to digital technology so as to reinvent a collective rebelling subjectivity that isdefined equally by the separate alienated demands and desires of the non white, cis,straight male individual subjectivities.
Inspired by cyberfeminism’s techno-utopian character and xenofeminism’s “politics ofalienation”, I have tried to assemble around a post-cyberfeminist project some nonheteronormatevely constructed subjectivities. As it is analyzed in the second part of
the thesis, the purpose of the project is to find ways in which new media art cancontribute to the struggle for reinvention of the collective self. Art can liberate us fromthe dominant oppressive discourses that are reproduced through the correct use oflanguage. In this way, we could be free to explore our alienated demands and desires
so as to synthesize them in an artwork that will represent our views on thecontemporary collective rebelling subjectivity. Since it is important to know yourhistory so as to reinvent it, the theoretical part of the thesis will assist us to that
direction. The following text constitutes dollyoko’s and Virginia Barratt’s homage toherstory, underlining the importance of collective memory in the struggle forreinvention.

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209

209

Barratt,
Virginia,
Invocation', In Her Interior, 2019.

Da

Rimini,Francesca,-41-‘Homage:

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Appendix
Skype interview with dollyoko 2.1.2020
L.T: Hello Francesca, I am so glad to meet you. When I saw ‘Dollspace’ I said to myselfthat these girls are part of my history and I think it is very important to know yourhistory and built upon this so as to bring it to the future generations. So, I am very happy
to meet you.
dollyoko: Oh I am gonna cry! I’m sorry I cannot speak Greek. Greek is one of thelanguages, which I would really love to learn.
L.T: It’s ok… I would like to ask you a few questions about climate change in Australia
but you said you are not emotionally ready yet, so I don’t want to push you.
dollyoko: Yeah, it’s very surreal at the moment. I live in Adelaide, in South Australia, so
we have bushfires near here but not to near. But, you know, a lot of my friends live in
Sydney, and the sky has been red there for four or five weeks. There’s now a stage of
emergency in New South Wales, the fires have been joining up and so we have this idiot
federal government that is still –now they say that they don’t deny climate change, butthey basically do. We have very strong fossil fuel interests here, the coal industry… it’s
ridiculous. It’s just crazy. What is happening in Australia? There’s never been so many
bushfires - Australia is a big continent - all at the same time, with no respite.
L.T: In my essay, I would like to elaborate about speciesism, and I would like to hear
your opinion about this. How speciesism plays a role in climate change. The dominanceof humans over animals, the dominant discourse…
dollyoko: I guess this is just a huge manifestation of privilege, added to white or classand gender privilege. It’s human privilege over species. There’s an Australian based
ecofeminist called Ariel Salleh. She wrote a book over 20 years ago called Ecofeminism,
which was republished maybe 2 years ago, and I would recommend it to you. She is a
Marxist and being doing this stuff for many years. She talks about the kind of feminist
environmental practices that are happening in less industrialized countries. She is not
only a theorist but she is an environmental activist and has written on the species’superiority and what that brings. And I guess in Australia too, we have the oldest living
continuous indigenous culture here, with Aboriginal people, who now have beenthought to live here for over 60,000 years and their whole philosophy is about unity
with nature, respect for nature. So that has had a really big impact, at least on
environmental activists and feminists and others, because indigenous scientificknowledge and indigenous environmental knowledge it’s a model on how it would be if
there wasn’t species dominance. So that remains an inspiration, while at the same time
we’ve got a shitload of, you know, Australia is a racist colonial country. This is not to
exoticize “pure” Aboriginal knowledge but indigenous activists have [played] andcontinue to play a really important role in all of these different kinds of environmental-1-

struggles at the moment in Australia. Because, you know, we’ve got the highest rate I
think of species’ extinction here. It’s horrible. And the land clearing goes on and so does
the drilling and fracking.
L.T: Very fruitful information and thank you for that... Changing the subject a bit, I
wanted to ask you about how you curated “dollspace”.
dollyoko: Actually Yvonne Volkart curated dollspace [in one exhibition] and anothertheorist and friend, Katrien Jacobs [curated in another show]. In a nutshell, in 1997 I
went to Japan, to Kyoto, my first time ever in Japan, and on my first night, my friend
showed me a famous pond, like a small lake, where women practiced female infanticide.
That was a very strong image and indeed later I did some research and also a Japanese
friend of mine verified that. At that time I was in correspondence with a writer and an
activist called Ricardo Dominguez. I told him I was haunted by this image of womenforced by social circumstances to kill their baby girls, and he said “well why don’t you
build a pond on the internet for those girls?” So that was the trigger. He gave that idea
and at that time, 1997, I was exchanging a lot of “text-based” emails with lots of people,
you know the old school emails, I don’t know if you are familiar with them…
L.T: No I am not… I actually wanted to ask you what was your relationship with the othercollaborators of dollspace. You were friends or you didn’t have close relations?
dollyoko: I was in Japan for 6 weeks, living by myself in a big farm house and having astrong emotional experience, and that created the right circumstances for this little
ghost to grow inside of me. I was emailing friends - and there was only text, not any
visual web back then, and so, you know, the less visual information the more theimagination comes in the fore. At some point later on I came back to Adelaide and outof the blue a local independent film organization offered me a 3-month paid residency.
Residencies are really different now, in the era of hyper-commodification, but back thenthey invited you to come use their facilities and paid you to do whatever you like. It was
just beautiful, and it was in these 3 months that the website was formed, by using basic
html code and receiving help from friends. Michael Grimm ended up doing thesoundtrack –I deeply love that soundtrack-, my friend Claudia [Raddatz] who is Chilean,made the translation into Spanish and produced some lovely animations, Ricardo madesome writings and other people contributed dreams and their own hauntings. I thoughtthat the website was going to be a hundred pages but it ended up to be 700-800 pages.
When the residency ended I asked them if I could stay for a little bit longer, and indeed I
stayed for 3 more months. So that’s how a core of dollspace was made, and then I
begun working on internet art, competitions and exhibitions and by submitting thedollspace in different contexts and installations and I attracted the interest of somecurators. In 2001 we got invited into the Sonar Festival in Barcelona. I decided then to
add some more story lines, so it became even bigger. I haven’t added anything since2001 and I should probably go in and make it tidier. I really love that work, it’s very close
to me and I do consider it a big collaboration with a number of people.
L.T: How long did it take you to collect all the material - soundtrack, text, images –because I was amazed of the large amount of information in there.
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dollyoko: I think we can say that first six-month period in 1997, [it was] a pretty
intensive work, and then adding a few more things in 2001. Worth mentioning is that
there was never a script, the whole project just grew, and that’s what I love about
hypertext.
L.T: What was the rationale behind it, or there wasn’t any?
dollyoko: The rationale was to make a pond of dead girls. That was the motivation andsome kind of release-the-spirit.
L.T: Regarding the VNS Matrix, what were your relations with the other girls before you
decided to create the collective?
dollyoko: We knew each other, we were friends but we weren’t working together
artistically.
L.T: Ok, because I think the most important contribution of feminists is the “politics
based on the experience”, and the project we are making with my friends is based on
the experiences we have built upon for some years now.
dollyoko: The experiences we talk about is something broader of just being authors,
writers, performers. You know, the shared experience of living a creative life. We
weren’t a tight friendship group, to begin with.
L.T: You were all based in Adelaide?
dollyoko: At the time, Yeah.
L.T: Do you think that this played an important role to your experiences? That you werebased in the same town?
dollyoko: Yeah, definitely, the physical proximity and the fact that Adelaide is I would
say a really good place for experimenting with anything creatively, like fantastic music
has come out from a small town, very interesting films and filmmakers, visual art…
Because Adelaide is a small town, it’s not Sydney, not New York, nor London. In a way,
no one gives a shit, if you know what I mean. You’ve got nothing to lose. Even though
it’s a city of one million people, the art community is very small and fairly fragmented
often too. There used to be an experimental film community, experimental music, a
handful of people working with technology…sometimes there was an overlap, but,overall it’s a good seed bed because it’s not a big cosmopolitan city. It’s a backwater. It
gives freedom.
L.T: What was the political situation back then that made you start the collective?
dollyoko: I can’t answer the question the way you pictured but I could talk only about
myself. I didn’t have much of political awareness then. I never heard of neoliberalism
before I met Ricardo in 1997. So in 1991 I don’t know what part of the bigger world I
was looking at. I didn’t have the same analysis as now, but I think we were really-3-interested in how technology was being promoted, and I was looking at feminism andtechnology and all the promises of technology. This was 1991 and it was very much abrave new world of mainly men. The web was being promoted and even though women
were really active as coders, even in the gaming community, the interest was for us theintersection of feminism and technology. But yeah, Australia is a colonial country, andeverything is true about it now, was true back then.
L.T: You said that you have also studied law…
dollyoko: Sociology. I did my masters in 2005 and that’s when I made the Netmonster
project with a friend of mine called Harwood [Graham Harwood]. It was a very beautiful
project, and then, between 2006 and 2010 I did my PhD on cultural activism. On newforms of collective identity and activism that technology enabled. I did that within the[theoretical] framework of Autonomous Marxism. Since then I’ve been working as asociologist for different people on different projects. You know, the labor situation I
guess here is better than in Greece with the high unemployment especially for young
people, but even here many people are employed precariously. So I have worked on
three projects at the Adelaide Law School, with teams of legal theorists or legal experts
and I have also worked at the Climate Justice Research Center in Sydney and doing a few
other things, so law is not my theme but I have worked on a number of law projects andI’ve been coauthor on a number of papers on property theory of all things!
L.T: Permit me a question on a more personal interest. As I am into handmade clothing, I
was wondering if you have any idea as to how underground fashion can be combinedwith cyberfeminism? How can I add this to make art in cyberfemism…
dollyoko: I love all your rings, by the way, and I feel completely underdressed… With thelittle I’ve read, I think it’s quite interesting the issue of ethical fashion and the supply
chains, from the production of the fabrics to the design making. I’m more interested on
the political economy of things and the chains of production. However I also likespeculative work and creating spills against capitalism, “hexes”, so I’m just thinking now– this is trying to make something off the top of my head after coughing a bit. I don’tknow, focus on the production of cotton, hemp or whatever, how is it produced, cut or
glued, putting it all together, how is it designed, and then some of those fashions being
used in speculative performances, magics.. You know, I have two little grandchildren in
my life and I teach my granddaughter to be a witch and she does it pretty well! The
other day, she told me, out of the blue, “You know, Nonna, I have a third eye!” “Whotold you about the third eye”, I asked. “No one, I just know” she replied. So I’m reallycommitted to magic. But anyway, I think it’s a beautiful and perfect theme to check out
lots of things, in terms of alternative modes of production, forms of labor, affective
labor, social labor, magic… you know, stick knife into the belly of the beast wherever
possible. What kind of ideas have you thought on how fashion can be mobilized in any
way?
L.T: With my friends we make photo shootings, we want to have a political content, andI think that cyberfeminism suit us best in relation to our aesthetics too. Because welisten to electronic music and so it’s a combination of these aesthetics… and I was-4-thinking about the performances too. As far as I am concerned, I had this thing… on the
one hand I was a good student, studied law, on the other hand I was a fashion freak, so I
want to find a way to combine fashion, academics and politics.
dollyoko: Sounds fantastic. You know, a lot of our projects were vapourwave. We’ve
never had a complete game, just parts of games, but I really believe in the power of
speculative artwork. We have to work on the level of imagination both of ourselves andthe people who are going to be interacting with our ideas.
L.T: Can I find somewhere the games you’ve created?
dollyoko: Yeah. We’ve created two projects, the first was ‘All New Gen’, which we calleda game but it was much more an interactive project…
L.T: I loved the names of the characters of the game…
dollyoko: Yeah, we had a lot of fun with that… and then the people would say “why
don’t you make a real game?” and so we applied for funding from the film commission
and we got a lot of money back then to make the first two or three levels of the realgame called ‘Bad Code’. But we should never have called it bad code. We had enoughmoney to employ our friends, a fantastic 3d graphic designer…The first game was built
on a really old operating system of the mac, so it only works now through an emulator,
and we haven’t put that online, so the short answer is no. And the Bad Code, we don’teven know where to begin with that, so, again, the short answer is no.
L.T: Ok, I was thinking of sending you a video we made on fragmented subjectivities,
which was inspired by dollspace, so that you can see the work we do. We don’t have thewebpage set up yet. The idea of setting up the site started because I was thinking thatit’s important to bring your history to the future. As the sociopolitical situation haschanged since the 1990s, I was thinking that maybe we could set up a site that it would
be similar to yours but more updated and focused on the new politics and aesthetics ofthe period and the country that we live in.
dollyoko: Fantastic. I really look forward to seeing it. You’ re a group of people…
L.T: Basically, we are friends that we were active in feminist, anarcho-queer assemblies
for many years and some of us are either photographers, painters… we make art basedon our experiences. Not academic art. More like “the aesthetics of slime” thatcharacterize your work.
dollyoko: Has your group started working and making a business plan and planning thatby the 31st of January will have something started?
L.T: We have started to meet and collecting material but I am now very busy with myessay. Cyberfeminism is intersectional feminism, and as such it discusses issues ofgender, capitalism, race and all these themes that I didn’t have previous academic-5-

background on(as I studied law), so I do all this work by myself. The site won’t be readyby the 31st of January but we will make it for sure.
dollyoko: I’m fully committed to the idea of slow art, you know, the art that takes its
own time. The group that I’ve gotten back together with, identity runners, Agnese[Trocchi] is in Rome, Diane [Ludin] in New York and I’m in Adelaide. We last made awork in 2005 but we’ve always remained friends and we want to do stuff again now. We
have some little things on the side but it has to be slow, it has to be pleasurable. Still
there’s a sense of urgency but we also have to have our strength to do it.
L.T: Yes, and because it is based on our experiences it takes time to build upon things, tofirst meet in person and then make art. I think this is what adds value to your work.
dollyoko: I agree. The connections are really important. That makes the glue between
us. Will that project be in Greek or multi-languages?
L.T: I liked your multi-language site, so we will have text in English and in Greek andprobably in Spanish too.
dollyoko: Have you seen Holobiontes on cyberfeminism? That’s a publisher. They
launched a book a month ago. It is in Spanish, I haven’t seen it yet. They’ve got quite a
lot of stuff on the VNS Matrix in there and our friend Melinda [Rackham] who wrote theessays on VNS Matrix. I forget what the book is called. Something like: “from VNS Matrix
to Xenofeminism.” Have you read the Xenofeminist Manifesto?
L.T: Yes and I have include it to my essay. I think it’s the only feminism after
cyberfeminism that relates feminism to technology.
dollyoko: They were some women who worked on technofeminism. Cornelia Sollfrank’sbook on feminism came out two-three months ago. She would be taking a different
angle as well. She was part of the “Old Boys Network”.
L.T: Oh yeah, thanks a lot for the information!
dollyoko: As far as ‘VNS Matrix’ is concerned –because we have always been answering
letters from students but recently the interest is focused on how it started- we wrote in2016 a new text with the title: ‘A Tender Hex for the Anthropocene’. I do a lot ofexperimental writing, where you make up rules and then you generate a text, sort of likecomputer programming but very manual. So if you write yourself a few rules, you’vethen got a text. One of the texts I sent you is about how ‘Tender Hex’ was created.
Dollspace was such a long time ago but I am really attached to that and I have to saythat I still pay the server 20 US dollars a month just to keep dollspace and some otherprojects, because to me it’s very important politically, to keep it online as long as I can.
Dollspace in particular has been threatened with censorship both in Belgium and in Italy.
L.T: Actually we might face a problem with the server here. We don’t want to pay andwe’re thinking of a non-commercial server…
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dollyoko: Well, I was happy to pay because they have protected my work, but maybe Ishould introduce you to my friend Agnese in Italy who is in contact with various activist
and anarchist run of servers.
L.T: Thank you very much about that.
dollyoko: It is lovely to meet you, really lovely. I hope it was a useful discussion. The
politics is all about the contact and what we can do together in this world that we areconfronting at the moment. We will keep in contact.

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