March 14th to July 14th 2019

History, Gender, Technology

Exhibition> Performances> Meetings> Workshops> Shows

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In partnership with

SummaryLaGaîtéLyrique4

Foreword

5

A word from the curators

7

Historical landmarks

7

Timeline

8

1rst part:
When computers wore skirts

17

2nd part:
Do it yourself and tactics of resistance26

3rd part :Science frictions

36

Video games selected by guest curator
Chloé Desmoineaux

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Foreword
Computer Grrrls
The world of technology is invariably associated with male figures.
This blatant lack of diversity is now becoming a concern, as demonstrated by the host of initiatives created to address the issue. At thesame time, women played a major, yet underappreciated role in thedevelopment of computing. For the Computer Grrrls exhibition, LaGaîté Lyrique is showcasing 23 international artists and collectives
that are rewriting dominant technology narratives by asking the question, “What if we put the ‘grrrls’ back in computers”?
The artists invited – women designers, makers, hackers and contemporary researchers – are reshaping the alliance between women andmachines using an array of tools: 3D printing, YouTube tutorials, virtual reality, video installations, algorithms, promotional videos andmore. Computer Grrrls takes visitors on an intuitively plotted journeythat is both rich in history and a thought-provoking experience with astory to tell.
As a hub for postinternet culture, it was only natural for La Gaîté
Lyrique to embrace an exhibition – co-produced with the Hartware
MedienKunstVerein (HMKV) in Dortmund, Germany – that lies sosquarely at the intersection of art, social issues and new technology. Indeed, the activists’ perspectives presented in Computer Grrrls
broach a broader series of topics: electronic colonialism, minorities’
place on the Internet, the sexist bias of algorithms, the dangers ofwhite men having complete control over artificial intelligence, anddigital surveillance, as well as ideas for changing our outlook andmaking a difference.
Computer Grrrls will present conferences, concerts and DJ sets inconjunction with the exhibition of works, rounding out a multiform
series designed to foster interaction between different audiences. It’sa prime opportunity to think along different lines – and not just lines
of code.

LaGaîtéLyrique

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A word fromthe curators
Inke Arns andMarie Lechner

The title of the Computer Grrrls exhibition was inspired by an article
in the April 1967 issue of the women’s magazine Cosmopolitan, which
lauded computing as a particularly promising new career path for
women. Ironically, the article was published just as the proportionof men in the field was starting to increase. This trend was cemented
by the advent of personal computers in the 1980s – the epitomeof a “boys’ toy” – and the coinciding emergence of the “nerd” and“hacker” archetypes. Today, the field is more male-dominated thanever. But that was not always the case. Computer Grrrls showcasesinternational artists working to (re)politicise the use, design anddevelopment of technology in our monopolistic era. Through theirworks, these women offer a critical, caustic, speculative perspective
on information and communication technologies mainly designed bywestern men, yet which affect us all greatly.
These artists are seeking to change the way we think about technology at a time when developments in artificial intelligence – themost disruptive technology since the Internet – are endangering
hard-fought advances. Researcher Kate Crawford noted the threat in
a 2016 New York Times opinion piece: “Like all technologies before it,
artificial intelligence will reflect the values of its creators. So inclusivity matters… Otherwise, we risk constructing machine intelligencethat mirrors a narrow and privileged vision of society, with its old,familiar biases and stereotypes.”
They decode and recode, amplifying discordant voices in an increasingly normative technological landscape. They do so through avariety of methods: stereoscopy and other forms of illusion from thepast century, as well as more modern techniques, high- and low-techalike, including virtual reality, 3D printing and cardboard prototypes,
watercolours and algorithms, YouTube tutorials and soldering irons.
The artists invite us to travel back in time (Lauren Moffatt), they reveal
the underappreciated role of women in the early days of computing(Aleksandra Domanović, Roberte la Rousse), awaken the ghosts ofwomen operators from the past by unearthing old advertisements
and corporate videos (Caroline Martel), take a comparative look at
the machine breakers of yesteryear and their modern counterparts(Lauren Huret), show 1980s computer advertisements in a new light(Jenny Odell), and relieve their family history as a YouTube series
set in the largest computer factory in former East Germany (Nadja
Buttendorf).

The artists also reveal the discrimination and gender norms writtenLaGaîtéLyrique

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into code (Erica Scourti, Zach Blas & Jemima Wyman). Who still
remembers Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook predecessor, Facemash,which stole photos of female students from Harvard servers for users
to rank based on their attractiveness? An early symptom of the “broculture” at start-ups (poked fun at by Jennifer Chan)?
They question the prevailing notion of technological progress bylaying bare the underlying power dynamics and digital (neo)colonialism, while advocating new forms of connection (Tabita Rezaire). Theymap the Internet to pinpoint sociopolitical issues (Louise Drulhe) andupdate cyberfeminist manifestos (Manetta Berends). They take apartmachines and explore their circuits, and revive old technologies todefy planned obsolescence (Darsha Hewitt).
They investigate new, invisible forms of exploitation (E. Giardina
Papa) and technological oppression (Simone C. Niquille), while also
proposing alternative scenarios for taking back control of technologicaltools (Hyphen-Labs). They invent haunted, malfunctioning software,
expose bugs in the machine (Elisabeth Caravella), and imagine postgender avatars (Lu Yung). They devise resistance tactics that parody
movements to thwart the side effects of our “digital appendages”(Dasha Ilina). And they invite us to move past binary gender bypromoting bio-hacking for all (Mary Maggic).
The artists overcome the current dearth of utopian thought bydrawing from mythology and science fiction alike, invoking dark
goddesses from the Middle East (Morehshin Allahyari) and offeringa glimpse of post-human super intelligence (Suzanne Treister) to findan ‘elsewhere’ and imagine a future from which we can rethink thepresent.

LaGaîtéLyrique

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Illustrated timeline, presented in the exhibition Computer Grrrls, HMKV at Dortmunder U, 27 October 2018 - 24 February 2019, photo : Hannes Woidich

Historicallandmarks

When IBM France commissioned the philologist Jacques Perret to finda fitting French word for “computer”, in a letter dated April 16, 1956,
he suggested translating computer with “ordinateur” – an adjective
he called “God bringing order into the world.” He then specified thatthe word should be better used in its feminine form: ordinatrice.
“Ordinatrice is very well suited, and also has the advantage of clearly
distinguishing your machine from the vocabulary of theology,” wrote
Perret. IBM, however, remained with the male version. In a not-sodistant past, computers “wore skirts”, in the words of former NASAmathematician Katherine Johnson. Indeed, before the word computer described a machine, it referred to a profession that, at the beginning of the 20th century, was often practiced by women. Women
crunched astronomical data, cracked Nazi codes and calculated ballistics trajectories for the army. They were called “Bletchley Girls”,“Rocket Girls”, or “ENIAC Girls”. Women were very prominent in theearly stages of computing, both in unit record equipment and science
departments, but saw their role diminish considerably starting in the
mid-1980s amid the emergence of personal computers.

Timeline

Women have been working with machines for a long time – as typists,telegraphers, telephone operators, machine data processors, programmers. They have often played a pioneering role, albeit temporarily, in developing innovative technologies. Often they were replacedby machines that bore their name. Long before the word “computer”
described a machine, it referred to women who performed calculations by hand. In the beginnings of computer science, they were very
present in the field of punch cards as well as in scientific departments. But their presence declined considerably in the mid-1980s
with the introduction of the personal computer, an unprecedented
phenomenon in the history of a profession. In the 1990s, cyberfeminists called on women to reappropriate the field of technology in theage of the Internet. Today, many initiatives are working to remedy thisimbalance.

In the exhibition, an illustrated
timeline with more than 200
entries documents the roleof women in the history oftechnology from the 18th
century to the present - fromthe earliest programmers andhuman computers to current
technofeminisms.
Concept: Marie Lechner, Inke Arns
Graphic design: Nicolas Couturier
G-u-i.net

LaGaîtéLyrique

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1st Part:
When computers wore skirts

May they be telegraphists, typists, telephone operators, machine
operators or programmers, women have formed an avant-garde in
the development of innovative technologies. The artists invite us togo back in time, they reveal the women’s role from the very beginnings of IT.

© Caroline Martel, Le Fantôme de l’Opératrice, 2014LaGaîtéLyrique

EXHIBITION LEAFLET · COMPUTER GRRRLS

8Lauren Moffatt (AU)Lauren Moffatt is an Australianartist who works with immersive
media. She studied at the UNSW(AU), l’Université Paris VIII and in
Le Fresnoy Studio National desArts Contemporains (FR). Lauren’s
works explore the sources offriction between virtual andphysical worlds. They have beenshown in the Palais de Tokyo (FR),
Daegu Art Museum (KOR), FACT
Liverpool (UK), Werkleitz Festival(DE), at the Sundance Film Festival(US) and at the ZKM (DE)..
deptique.netLaGaîtéLyrique

The Unbinding

2014
Stereoscopic 3d projection
Une production Le Fresnoy, Studio national des arts contemporains

The Unbinding presents a world composed of fragments of archival
images. Conceived as an installation, this stereoscopic video work
revolves around a female character whose face, hands and hairchange with each movement. Inspired by Ada Lovelace and Mary
Shelley, by Cubist portraits and Philip K. Dick’s ‘scramble suit’, thecomposite character lives across several temporalities and neverleaves her loop. The action is set in a cabin reminiscent of a giant
computer, built by the protagonist in a forest using discarded computer parts. Is the cabin serving as a time machine? Or are we travelling
inside the character’s memory? By revisiting an old film technology,
Moffatt wanted to create a visual system that illustrated the artist
Hito Steyerl’s remark according to which the brain functions like a
web browser where each image is reminiscent of another.

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Jenny Odell (US)

Jenny Odell is an artist and author
who lives in Oakland, California.
Her works often involve dealings
with archives and the establishing of new archives. Odell
was artist in residence with theInternet Archive, Recology, San
Francisco, and Facebook. Herworks have been shown a.o. at theContemporary Jewish Museum
and in the New York Public Library.
In 2016 she created a mural foran outside wall of a Google data
centre in rural Oklahoma. Odell
has been teaching digital art at
Stanford University since 2013.
Her book How to Do Nothing:Resisting the Attention Economy
will be published by Melville House(2019).
www.jennyodell.com

LaGaîtéLyrique

Polly Returns
2017Video, 3:03 min
Courtesy of the artist

Polly Gone
1988
Video, 3:02 minof Shelley Lake

While in residence at the Internet Archive, I came across Polly Gone, a
1988 computer animation by Shelley Lake (who was then the technicaldirector of Digital Productions, a prominent 3D animation studio). In
the video, a female robot – whose severe, mechanistic design was
inspired by Oskar Schlemmer’s Triadic Ballet – zips around a futuristic dome house doing various domestic chores, all while a horror
movie soundtrack with synthesised beats plays in the background.
Fascinated with how dystopian and surreal the animation seems inretrospect, I attempted to address the horror of the digital sublime
in a modern day version: Here, Polly returns in 2017 to find herself
awash in a sea of listicle titles (à la ‘Three Ways to Turn Stale Bread
into Something Delicious’, or ‘5 Ways to Increase your Productivity’).
My soundtrack is based on Shelley Lake’s soundtrack, which in turnwas inspired by the soundtrack from The Day the Earth Stood Still(1951). (Jenny Odell)

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Jenny Odell (US)Neo-Surreal
2017
Digital prints
Courtesy of the artist“Neo-Surreal is a collection of works that extracts intentionally andunintentionally surreal imagery from 1980s BYTE magazine ads. The
reconfiguration of this material highlights the ways in which such imagery, viewed in hindsight, inadvertently portrays some of the stranger
and more sinister aspects that technology eventually came to embody.
For instance, one finds things like a computer wearing a policeman’s
hat and wielding a riding crop (evoking surveillance) or a pill opening
to reveal a computer chip (evoking biometrics). Similarly to Richard
Prince in his Cowboys series, I’ve done nothing here except to remove
the text, restore some backgrounds and re-title the images. I completed this work while in residence at the Internet Archive.” (Jenny Odell)LaGaîtéLyrique

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Nadja Buttendorf (DE)Nadja Buttendorf is born in 1984
in Dresden (GDR), studied art at
Burg Giebichenstein Universityof Art and Design Halle (Diploma2012) and has lived and worked
in Berlin since 2011. Her videos,
performances, installations andobjects deal with social questions
revolving around body images andstereotypes in gender roles (incl.
in the history of the developmentof the computer in the GDR).
nadjabuttendorf.com

LaGaîtéLyrique

Robotron - a tech opera
2018-2019
Web series, 3:00 min

Robotron, the first soap opera set in the computer industry of the
GDR,retraces the development of computers in a planned economy
and the everyday life of women in East Germany. The people-owned
company (VEB) Kombinat Robotron was the largest computer manufacturer of the former GDR and one of the most important producers
of information technology in socialist Eastern Europe. The artist’s
mother worked from 1976 to 1990 as a technician at Robotron, where
she met her husband, who worked there as an electrical engineer.
They got married and had two children. Then the artist’s father had anaffair with another woman, who also worked at Robotron. Everyone
knew about it, except Buttendorf’s mother. In 1990, during the German
reunification, the company was dismantled and the parents divorced.
In this fictitious relationship drama inspired by her own family history,
the artist assumes the joint tasks of director, DOP, screenwriter andcast. Inspired by Nasime Aghdam, known as the YouTube Shooter,
Robotron oscillates between Star Trek, German soap operas andSnapchat aesthetics.

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Nadja Buttendorf (DE)Soft Nails♥ [ASMR] Kleincomputer
Robotron KC87 ♥2018
HD Video, sound, 13:14 min

Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) is a form of physicalstimulation via whispering and quiet sounds that grew out of net
culture on the largest online video platform, YouTube. The viewer/
listener finds the tingling sensation caused by these sounds very
pleasant. ASMR videos are often produced by young women who viewthe technique as a form of care giving.
Most ASMR videos use the latest technological tools to trigger the
tingling. Nadja Buttendorf has given the experience a new twist
by using high-tech equipment from the past. She presents the
Kleincomputer Robotron KC 87 from every angle. “KC” stands for
Kleincomputer, which means “small computer” in English. The model
was released in what was then East Germany in 1987 by a Dresdenbased company that belonged to the Robotron combine.

LaGaîtéLyrique

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Lauren Huret (FR)Lauren Huret lives and works as an
artist in Geneva (CH). Graduatedfrom the École des Beaux-Arts in
Bordeaux and received her MFA
from the University of Art and
Design in Geneva (HEAD). Works
with performance, video, collage
and book media. Exhibitions,among others, in the Kunsthaus
Langenthal (CH); Hard Hat,
Geneva; Le Consortium, Dijon; La
Panacée, Montpellier; Le Magasin,
Grenoble; Neue Galerie, New Yorkand Copenhagen Contemporary.
www.laurenhuret.com

Breaking the Internet
2016
HD Video, 35:00 min
Courtesy of the artist

From the Jacquard loom – the early nineteenth-century forerunnerof programmable machines – to telephone operators and social
media stars, this video retraces the historical developments of different technologies and their deleterious effects. The title of the work
operates an ironic shortcut between Kim Kardashian and the historic Luddite movement: While the English textile workers resisted
the dispossession of their know-how by breaking the machines thatthreatened to replace them, the queen of selfies claimed to ‘breakthe Internet’ by posing naked for the cover of Paper magazine in 2014,
triggering a storm of reactions that was supposed to bring down
the network. Huret’s video establishes a connection between thedisembodied voices of early- twentieth-century telephone operatorsand the voiceless bodies of women on Instagram, as epitomised by
Kardashian.
Lauren Huret’s exhibition
Praying for my Hatersfrom 3rd february to 28th april 2019 at Centre Culturel Suisse.

LaGaîtéLyrique

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Caroline Martel (CA)

Caroline Martel is a documentary
filmmaker, artist and scientist who
is especially interested in archives,
invisible stories and audio-visualtechnologies and cultural heritage.
Works: the film montage essay
The Phantom of the Operator(2004), Wavemakers (2012), thesolo exhibition Industry/Cinema
in the Museum of the Moving
Image, New York City (2012) andSpectacles du monde, a 35-screen
installation commissioned by the
Musée d’art contemporain deMontréal (2017).

LaGaîtéLyrique

Le fantôme de l’opératrice
2004
Documentary, 65:00 min
Courtesy of Artifact Productions

In the twenty-first century, it is more common to be greeted by thesynthetic voice of an answering machine than by a ‘voice with a smile’– the glamorous description for telephone operators who, in the previous century, held a central place in the development of global communication. With an eye for the quirky and humorous, Caroline Martel
explores this little-known chapter in the history of female labour
through a dazzling montage of clips Le Fantôme de l’Opératrice (The
Phantom of the Operator) – more than 125 remarkable, rarely seenindustrial, advertising and scientific management films produced by
telephone companies in North America between 1903 and 1989. Its
dream-like narrative unfolds at the crossroads of science and fiction.
The invisible army of women, the linchpins of technological progressin motion, was eventually eclipsed by the advent of automated systems. ‘The brighter the projections of the dream machine’, the narrator tells us, ‘the darker the shadows they cast.’

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Aleksandra
Domanović (CZ)VUKOSAVA

Aleksandra Domanović, born in1981 in Novi Sad (ex-YU, today
Serbia), lives in Berlin. Soloexhibitions, a.o., The Future
Was at Her Fingertips, Tanya
Leighton Gallery, Berlin (2013);
Turbo Sculpture, SPACE, London(2012); From yu to me, Kunsthalle
Basel (2012). Participation in
exhibitions,a.o.,Inhuman,Fridericianum, Kassel (2015);
A Different Kind of Order, ICP
Triennial, New York (2013);
Speculations on Anonymous
Materials, Fridericianum, Kassel(2013); Lux Biennial of Moving
Image,
Tramway,Glasgow(2012); 4th Marrakesh Biennale,
Marrakesh (2012); The First Kiev
Biennale, Kiev (2012).

LaGaîtéLyrique2013
Laser sintered plastic, polyurethane, soft-touch & brass finish,
acrylic glass
Courtesy of the artist and Tanya Leighton Gallery, Berlin
In this work, Aleksandra Domanović looks at the Belgrade Hand,
the world’s first five-fingered artificial hand, invented in 1963 by the
Serbian scientist Rajko Tomović (1919-2001) and further developed byscientists at MIT. In 1977, the prosthesis starred in the lead role of thehorror film Demon Seed. During her research, Domanović realised theimportance of women in thedevelopment of cybernetics, the Internet,
multimedia and Virtual Reality. The timeline accompanying this work
reflects her findings.
Domanović’s 3D-printed plastic and polyurethane sculptures are
soft-touch-coated with brass and aluminium. They represent gestures and symbols from various cultural traditions and eras, from an
Indian symbol of immortality and love to a closed fist and a hand that
resembles a Spanish reliquary from the 16th century.

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2nd Part:
Do it yourself
and tactics of resistance

The lack of diversity among researchers and programmers in thetech field has become problematic for both industry and society.
The shortage of women is not without consequences, because algorithms reproduce the biases of those who programm them. The
artists make discriminations and sexist standards logged in thecode visible and question the notion of technological “progress”.
They invite us to reclaim those tools in order to go beyond thosebinarisms.

Darsha Hewitt, A Side Man 5000 Adventure, 2015.
© Meyer, Loose, HewittLaGaîtéLyrique

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Jennifer Chan (CA)Jennifer Chan is a Canadian video
and media artist and curator whogrew up in Hong Kong, but lives
and works in Toronto (Canada).
MFA in Art Video, Syracuse
University, New York (2013). Soloexhibitions, a.o., The Blue Pill, Art
Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba(Canada) (2017); Young Money,
Future Gallery, Berlin (2012), as
well as the screening of I’ll Show
You HD, transmediale, CanadianEmbassy, Berlin (2013).
jennifer-chan.com

LaGaîtéLyrique*A total Jizzfest*
2012
Video, installation 3:22 min

This video celebrates Silicon Valley and the founders of successfulcompanies, platforms and blogs such as Microsoft (Bill Gates), Apple(Steve Jobs), Google (Larry Page & Sergey Brin), Facebook (Mark
Zuckerberg), Twitter (Nick Dorsey), Megaupload (Kim Dotcom), Skype(Niklas Zennström & Janus Friis), Buzzfeed (Jonah Peretti), Tumblr(David Karp & Marco Arment), Vimeo (Jakob Lodwick) and others.
Advertising slogans such as ‘Hot Creations’ or ‘The Best Selection’,a post-Internet aesthetic and cheesy soundtracks (including ‘Boys of
Paradise’ by Unicorn Kid) turn this video into an amusing and simultaneously caustic inventory, evidencing that the brave new world of
media is dominated by male protagonists. According to a study by
the American Association of University Women, in 2013 merely 26%
of professional computer scientists were women – 9% less thanin 1990. Women are even less represented in the field of Artificial
Intelligence(AI), which is arguably the most disruptive technology
since the advent of the Internet.

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Tabita Rezaire (FR)is an artist who works withscreens and energy fluxes. Hercross-dimensional method ofwork imagines network sciences,organic, electronic and spiritual,
as healing technology that clears
the way to consciousness of theheart. In that she navigates architectures of power, she reveals thescientific imaginary, in order to inthis way address the omnipresent
matrix of colonialism and theprotocols of energetic misalignment that affect the songs of our
body-mind spirits. Tabita lives in
Cayenne, French Guyana.
www.tabitarezaire.com

LaGaîtéLyriquePremium Connect

2017
HD Video, 13:04 min
Courtesy of the artist and of Goodman Gallery (South Africa)

The Internet and its unilateral flows of information – from the Westto the rest of the world – is a powerful tool of cultural imperialismand erasure of indigenous knowledge systems. Tabita Rezaire aims todecolonise this conquering cyberspace, an instrument of electroniccolonialism. What other technologies are available to share information? In Premium Connect, the artist, researcher and healer explores
cybernetic spaces where the organic, technological and spiritual
worlds intertwine. Based on African divination systems, undergroundcommunication networks of plants, communication with ancestors
and quantum physics, Premium Connect opens up other forms ofconnectedness (to oneself, to others, to the Earth and to the universe) that do not rely on exploitation, exclusion and profit. Drawing
on the work of the Nigerian philosopher Sophie Oluwole, she establishes parallels between the binary code of computers and the binary
protocols of the Ifa divination system practiced by the Yoruba people,
suggesting that our information highways may be rooted in African
spirituality.

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Darsha Hewitt (CA)Darsha Hewitt is known for her
examinations of communications
technology and her use of DIY
aesthetics and practices. Her work
is interdisciplinary and characterised by a strong feminist critiqueof technology. She deconstructs
and experiments with obsoletehousehold devices, with the goalof demystifying systems andprocesses of the economy, powerand control incorporated into
capitalist culture.
darsha.org

LaGaîtéLyrique

A SideMan 5000
Adventure2015
10 videos, 5:00 min

Courtesy of the artist

Shimmer
Generators
V.3D

2018
Analogue Wurlitzer Side Man
5000 rhythm machines

The Side Man 5000 is the oldest commercially available drum machinein the world, built in 1959 by the Wurlitzer Company, who called ita ‘percussive rhythm device’. A Side Man 5000 Adventure is a videoseries directed and hosted by the Canadian artist Darsha Hewitt,
where the electro-mechanical ‘Cadillac of drum machines’ becomesa window into a world of shimmering vacuum tubes, high-voltage
oscillations and basic electronics. A Side Man 5000 Adventure is anentertaining and fun lesson in both media archaeology and DIY andmaker culture, and an introduction into the basics of physics, electronics and mechanical design. It is the first comprehensive technicaldocumentation of a machine that made history. And it is a must-watch
series for anyone interested in learning more about music, electronic
history or how things work. (Darsha Hewitt)

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Erica Scourti (GR)Erica Scourti, born in Athens,
now living in London and Athens.
Her work can be understood asa performative autobiography,
with
which
she
exploresidentities within contemporary
biosociological-technologicalsystems. Exhibitions, among
others, at High Line Art, NewYork;
Wellcome
Collection;
Kunsthalle Vienna; Hayward
Gallery, London; EMST Athensand South London Gallery. In
addition to articles, among others,
in Documents of Contemporary
Art: Information (2016, MIT
Press), she began her doctorate
at Goldsmiths, London in 2018.
www.ericascourti.com

LaGaîtéLyrique

Body Scan

2014
HD Video, 5:03 min
Courtesy of the artist

For the video Body Scan, Erica Scourti took images of her body with
her iPhone and ran them through various search engines and appsthat attempt to correlate pictures with information on the Internet.
An off-voice (the artist) comments on the search results and museson the sometimes witty or sexist meanings contained in the results.
For example, images of female body parts (especially breasts) areroutinely linked to suggestions on how to improve them.
Prior to this work, Scourti was interested in how artists, in particular, imagined themselves, their partners and their sexuality with thehelp of the latest technology available to them at a given time. As
historical role models she cites Joan Jonas, Carolee Schneemannand Frances Stark. But her work is also interested in the normative
aspects embedded in image searches as, indeed, all algorithmic processes. Body Scan visualises the objectification and standardisationof the female body. An intimate and autobiographical work, it also
points to much larger social forces and developments.

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Dasha Ilina (RU)

Dasha Ilina is a digital artist who
lives in Paris. Her work questions
the relationship we have with ourdevices and their interfaces, andtransforms the answers into digitaland physical works of art thatare interactive, educational andoften also ironic and entertaining.
She is the founder of the Center
for Technological Pain, a centre
dedicated to combating illnesses
that arise from dealing with technological devices.
dashailina.com

LaGaîtéLyriqueCenter forTechnological Pain
2018
Installation, video
Courtesy of the artist

Center for Technological Pain (CTP) is a mock company conceived byDasha Ilina that offers DIY and open source solutions to solve healthproblems caused by digital technologies such as smartphones andlaptops. Among the prototypes it has developed are mechanical eye
shields that reduce eyestrain, a headset to free the user’s hands, aninsomnia-free box and various more or less absurd contraptions torelieve strained elbows and fingers.Ilina, who is part of a generationof millennials who never take their eyes off their smartphone, alsooffers DIY manuals on how to build low-tech accessories from cheapmaterials. CTP further questions the negative effects of technology by adapting self-defence techniques to fight this contemporary
addiction.

EXHIBITION LEAFLET · COMPUTER GRRRLS

22Mary Maggic (US)Mary Maggic is a non-binary
artist who works at the interface
between biotechnology, cultural
discourse and civil disobedience. Her most recent projects
consist of DIY instructions for the
extraction and identification of
hormones, the micro-performativity and potential for mutagenesis,
meaning gender hacking of which
are emphasised. She has a Masterof Science from the MIT Media Lab
and has exhibited in, among otherlocations, the Haus der Kulturen
der Welt, Berlin; H3K, Basel; Jeude Paume, Paris; ICA, London andSpring Workshop, Hong Kong..
maggic.oooLaGaîtéLyriqueHousewives Making Drugs
2017
Video, 10:10 min
Courtesy of the artist

In this video, which at first resembles a generic cooking show, Mariaand Maria describe an easy way to harvest estrogens – female hormones – and thus bypass the pharmaceutical industry. Transgenderpeople use (prescription) estrogen supplements for sex changes frommale to female. In order to become independent from doctors andhealth insurances and achieve ‘radical body autonomy’, Maria andMaria become biohackers, explaining that humanity has always practiced organic hacking – just think of wine – or cheese-making, or evenbeer-brewing. They present the ‘estrofeminiser’, a device that helps
users to retrieve the estrogens the human body excretes through theurine. It is assembled from commercially available materials suchas a bottle and cigarette filters. Hormones without a prescription?
Maria and Maria make it possible. An increasingly enthusiastic studioaudience applauds them.

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Louise Drulhe (FR)Louise Drulhe, born in 1990
in Paris, lives and works as agraphic designer and artist in
Paris. Graduated from the ENSAD
Paris. Theoretical and sculpturalresearch on the charting andvisualisation of the Internet. She
understands spatialisation asa tool for understanding socialand political themes connectedto the Internet. Participation in
exhibitions, a.o., in the Museum ofModern Art of Freiburg; MUCEM,
Marseilles; Biennale of SaintEtienne; Biennale of Moscow.
louisedrulhe.frLaGaîtéLyrique

Critical atlasof Internet
2015
PosterCourtesy of the artist

Blockchain, anarchitecture ofcontrol
2016
Video, 15:00 min‘Looking at the Internet is like looking at a landscape through awindow: you have a framed vision of a larger whole. But in the caseof the landscape, you can walk out of the room and see the expanse
as a whole. The Internet, on the contrary, does not exist without aframe,’ writes Louise Drulhe. The Critical Atlas of Internet was bornfrom the desire to represent the geography and architecture of the‘invisible’ realm of the Internet, ‘a territory in which we spend ourtime without knowing its form’. The designer seeks to visualise the
network of networks that is ever more intricately entangled with thephysical world, and to use spatial analysis as a key to understanding
its political and economic implications. To do so she has developed
15 hypotheses on its potential form, which she puts to the test: Is
the Internet a unique point in the centre of the globe? Is it a surface
dented by the weight of big monopolistic actors? Is the whole planet
overshadowed by the American cloud? The Atlas was built using aunique programming code that allows for an infinity of different displays both online and on paper. It is accompanied by a video dedicated to the blockchain, a decentralised technology originally aimed
at reviving the democratic origins of the web, but which is now about
to turn into an architecture of control.

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Manetta Berends (NL)

Manetta Berends, born in1989 in NL, works as a graphic
designer with an interest in digital
infrastructures and free software.
In 2016 she completed her MA in
media design at the Piet Zwart
Institute in Rotterdam, now works
as a freelancer and is a memberof varia, a collective initiative foreveryday technologies and free
software in Rotterdam.
http://213.167.241.137/~mb

Cyber/technofeminist
cross-readings

2019
Research resource
Commissionned by Marie Lechner and Inke Arns

The Cyber/technofeminist cross-reader offers a cross-referenced collection of technofeminist manifestos, mostly published between the
1990s and modern day, which analyse women’s role in technologicalenvironments.
Manetta Berends developed a search engine that draws connections
between the various documents via keywords, to explore the manifestos and their relevance to the present.
The cross-reader is built on text processing algorithms, in particular TD-IDF, which is commonly used in search engines for weighted
information retrieval. Published in 1972, this crucial algorithm waswritten in part by British computer scientist Karen Spärck Jones, who
defended women’s position at university computer science departments. It also allows users to print extracts from the manifestos.
This work received a grant for multimedia and digital art creationfrom France’s national centre for cinematography, the CNC.

In collaboration with DICRéAM

LaGaîtéLyrique

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3rd Part:
Science frictions

Artificial intelligence is about to become one of the most decisive
technologies of our era. Its first deployments have neverthelessshown that it tends to increase the discriminations and social inequalities. The artists take a critical and speculative look on technological evolutions.

© Suzanne Treister2016-2018 SURVIVOR (F)/Lost Cloud War
Courtesy of the artist, Annely Juda Fine Art, London and P.P.O.W., New YorkLaGaîtéLyrique

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Simone C. Niquille (CH)

Simone C. Niquille is a designerand scientist who lives and works
in Amsterdam. BFA in graphic
design, Rhode Island School of
Design, Providence, RI (USA) andMA in visual strategies, Sandberg
Instituut, Amsterdam. She teaches
design research at the ArtEZ
University of the Arts, Arnhem.
2016 Fellow at Het Nieuwe
Instituut Rotterdam and recipientof the Talent Development Grant
from The Creative Industries NL
2016/2017. Contributor to the
Dutch pavilion at the Architecture
Biennale of Venice 2018.
www.technofle.shLaGaîtéLyrique

The fragility of life
2017-2018
Video, 24:15 min, inflatables

Simone C. Niquille’s research focuses on anthropometric standards
encoded in 3D modelling technologies. These techniques are used in
all kinds of applications from special effects in cinema and forensic
investigations (such as crime scene reconstructions) to biometricidentification. They determine to a large extent how the human bodyand identity are represented and perceived in digital space. Niquilleshows how standardisation and automation protocols are informedby racist and physical bias. Her work revolves around three characters: The first is a Hillary Clinton impersonator whom we follow
during the last days leading up to the 2016 US presidential election.
The second, ROOT 0082, is a body from the CAESAR database, one of
the most important available databases to this day, created by thelaboratories of the US Air Force at the turn of the 21rst century andstill in use today in 3D character creation software such as Fuse. The
third, the avatar Kritios They, was created using Fuse and materialises
as inflatable figures produced in two different places based on thesame specifications.

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Elisa Giardina Papa (IT)Elisa Giardina Papa’s works
examine gender, sexuality andwork in the context of neoliberalcapitalism and technology. MFA,
Rhode Island School of Design,
Providence, RI (USA) and BA,
Politecnico, Milan. Exhibitions
and presentations in, among
others, MoMA, New York; Whitney
Museum, New York; Seoul
Mediacity Biennale 2018; XVI
Quadriennale di Roma; Unofficial
Internet Pavilion of 54th Venice
Biennial, rhizome.org and Haus fürelektronische Künste, Basel. She
lives and works in New York andSicily.
www.elisagiardinapapa.org

Technologies of Care
2016
Videos, installation
Courtesy of the artist

Giardina Papa portrays workers who offer digital micro-services,
fetish work or emotional support online, and gives them a voice.
In Technologies of Care, we meet seven digital workers: an ASMR
(Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) artist, a virtual boyfriend,
an online dating coach, a storyteller and video performer, a social
media fan, a scientist working simultaneously as fingernail designer,
and a customer service representative. Papa has found these freelancers in Brazil, Greece, the Philippines, Venezuela and the USA, where
they offer their services anonymously via online platforms, whichmake a profit from them. With the exception of the virtual boyfriend,
all interviews are interpreted by female-sounding voices. While thetranscripts read like ethnographic research texts, the interviews in thevideo function like chamber plays on unfettered digital neoliberalism.
www.rhizome.org/editorial/2016/oct/04/
the-download-technologies-of-care/LaGaîtéLyrique

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Lu Yang (CN)Lu Yang, in Shanghai, 2010
Graduation from the China
Academy of Art. The artist works
with video, installation, animation,
digital painting and games, andexamines the biological andmaterial conditions of humanexistence with a great deal of dark
humour and in the absence of any
sentimentality. Exhibitions in the
UCCA, Peking; Centre Pompidou,
Paris; Montreal International
Digital Art Biennial 2016; Liverpool
Biennial 2016; Chinese pavilionof the 56th Venice Biennale 2015;
Shanghai Biennale 2012.
www.luyang.asiaLaGaîtéLyrique

Delusional Mandala
2015
Video, 16:27 min
Courtesy of the artist

Lu Yang’s Delusional Mandala is a breathtaking rollercoaster ride
through the world of 3D rendering, C-pop and digital representationsof the human body. The video begins with the artist making a 3D scanof herself, from which she then builds a digital body (‘Uterus Man’)
that becomes the main protagonist of the video – literally from birth
to death, which is celebrated in a brashly coloured hearse. Uterus
Man, the artist’s alter ego, is subjected to various surgical procedures that lead to a change in the character’s consciousness, which
can now be controlled from the outside. A mandala is a figurative
geometric image that has magical or religious meaning in Hinduism
and Buddhism. In the wider sense, the mandala embodies the entire
universe with the heavens, the Earth and the underworld. It serves
as a visual aid that by depicting gods, landscapes or signs allows thefaithful to internalise complex religious contexts.

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Elisabeth Caravella (FR)Elisabeth Caravella is a French
filmmaker and artist who lives andworks in Paris. She graduated fromthe European School of VisualArts, École Nationale Supérieure
des Arts Décoratifs in Paris and Le
Fresnoy, National Studio. She has
made experimental films inspiredby web culture and cinema, forexample, the photoshop film
Anonymous Phone Call (2009),
Howto (2014) or Krisis (2018), a
virtual reality machinima.
www.elisabethcaravella.com

LaGaîtéLyrique

Howto32019
Cinematic tutorial,
20:00 min"Hello and welcome to my new tutorial". Thousands of DIY tutorials
and instructional videos are posted daily on the Internet. Exploiting
their filmic potential, Caravella attracts visitors into a haunted heterotopic space.Howto adopts the form of a tutorial for a strange kindof software that seems to be a tool for creating both 3D text and film
sets. While the narrator tries to explain how it works, the software
appears to spin out of control, disrupted by a ghostly presence inside
the machine that prevents it from working (well). The bug takes theshape of a discarnate draping with unpredictable movements, a twisting and turning whirlwind of freedom revealing the creases and fault
lines in the computer and undermining its binary system. Caravella,
who says she has learned almost everything she knows thanks totutorials, also reveals the ghostly aspect of this mode of communication: sitting alone in front of your screen, you look at another person
sitting alone behind hers.

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Zach Blas (UK)
& Jemima Wyman (AU)Zach Blas is an instructor in the
Department of Visual Cultures atGoldsmiths, University of London.
Lectures and exhibitions, a.o., at
the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven;Jeu de Paume, Paris; Instituteof Contemporary Arts, London;
e-flux, New York; Strelka Institutefor Media, Architecture and
Design, Moscow. Solo exhibitions:Gasworks, London (2017), Art in
General, New York (2018).
www.zachblas.info
Jemima Wyman is an interdisciplinary artist who lives and works
in Brisbane and Los Angeles. Soloexhibitions: Sullivan + Strumpf,
Sydney (2017); Commonwealthand Council, Los Angeles (2015).
Group shows: The National,
Carriageworks (2017); Conflict:
Contemporary responses towar, UQ Art Museum (2014); The
Unexpected Guest, Liverpool
Biennial, UK (2012); 17th Biennale of
Sydney (2010).
www.jemimawyman.wordpress.
comLaGaîtéLyrique

I’m here to learn so :))))))
2017
Four-channel video installation, 27:33 min
Courtesy of the artists

In 2016, Microsoft launched a chatbot named Tay on Twitter. Tay, who
was supposed to embody a 19-year-old American girl, had been programmed to speak to a generation of millennials and gradually adopt
their vocabulary and language patterns. Using machine-learningtechnology that enables the software to learn from the data it is being
fed, Tay was expected to increase her knowledge through her interactions with Twitter’s human users. But its creators had not taken into
account the possibility of interference by malicious trolls who quickly
taught Tay to use racist, sexist and homophobic language, forcing
Microsoft to take her offline after a mere sixteen hours. The title ofthis installation by Zach Blas and Jemina Wyman refers to Tay’s firsttweet. The artists bring her back to life: she sings and dances, reflects
on life and death of Artificial Intelligence, philosophises on what itmeans to have a body and delivers ironic comments on the chatbot’s
gender.

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31Hyphen-Labs (US)Hyphen-Labs is an internationalteam of women of colour, including
engineers, scientists, architects
and artists, which works at theintersection of art and emergent
technologies, science and thefuture.
Ashley Baccus-Clark, Director of
Research at Hyphen-Labs, is a
Brooklyn-based molecular and cellbiologist, and a multidisciplinary
artist who uses new media andstorytelling to treat themes likedeep learning, cognition, memory,
race, trauma and belief systems.
Ece Tankal, one of the foundersof Hyphen-Labs, is a Turkishborn designer, architect andmedia artist who lives and works
in Barcelona. She is interested
in and works with mixed media
installations, virtual reality andspeculative design.

NeuroSpeculative AfroFeminism
2017
Virtual reality set, props, 4:00 min
Courtesy of the artists

Operating at the intersection of product design, virtual reality andneuroscience, NeuroSpeculative AfroFeminism (NSAF) is a neurocosmeto-logy laboratory that has developed a series of accessories
designed to address problems experienced by black women in their
daily life such as surveillance, lack of privacy and police violence.
Among its product sare a scarf to avoid facial recognition, a dichroicreflective visor thataverts hostile looks, and earrings with embedded
micro-cameras that record transgressions. Their flagship product is avirtual reality experience that immerses customers in a kind of futuristic hair salon. The setting refers to the long history of salons as ‘safe
spaces’ for women of colour and a fertile ground for political and philosophical discussions. When wearing the helmet, users experience
themselves as a black woman with long braids about to be fittedwith “Octavia Electrodes”, which propel its wearer into a dreamlike
digital multiverse. Thanks to the “Octavia”, an explicit reference to
the American science-fiction writer Octavia E. Butler, Hyphen-Labs
imagine a future where advanced technologies are created by and for
women of colour.

Carmen Aguilar y Wedge,
co-founder and creative director
at Hyphen-Labs, is a latinx
structural designer and artist synthesizing design and technology todevelop immersive - transmedia
experiences.
www.hyphen-labs.com

LaGaîtéLyrique

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Suzanne Treister (UK)

Suzanne Treister, born in 1958
in London, studied 1978-1981
at St. Martins School of Art (BAHonours) and 1981-1982 at theChelsea School of Art (MA) in
London. While she was known as apainter in the 1980s, she became apioneer of digital media art in the
1990s. Her alter ego, the time-travelling
researcher
RosalindBrodsky, plays an important rolein a whole series of projects (e.g.
HEXEN 2039, 2006). Suzanne
Treister now lives in London
following stays in Australia, NewYork and Berlin.
www.suzannetreister.net

LaGaîtéLyrique

SURVIVOR (F) and ASICENE

2016-2018
Drawings & watercolours (here: prints)
Wallpaper
Courtesy of the artist and the Annely Juda Fina gallery, London and
P.P.O.W gallery, New YorkSURVIVOR (F) is a hallucinogenic exploration of a future reality in an
undetermined time and space. A compilation of manifestations of asurvivor of the human race on earth, in space, on a new planet or in aparallel universe, or of an artificial super intelligence (ASI), SURVIVOR(F) presents visions of a post-futuristic sublime, charting an existential imaginary of potential human / non-human, agency/non-agency
and beyond. SURVIVOR (F) is a contemporary futuristic-alchemical
depiction of the universe and beyond. ‘The Sky Was the Colour of
the Death of the Internet’ is a reference to William Gibson’s sci-fi
novel Neuromancer (1984). Taking the shape of wallpaper, ASICENE
is the artist’s neologism for the next age, the age of Artificial Super
Intelligence.(Suzanne Treister)

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Morehshin Allahyari (IR)Morehshin Allahyari, born in1985 in Iran, media artist and art
activist, living in the USA since2007. Allahyari became knownwith Material Speculation: ISIS
(2016), 3D-printed reconstructions of artefacts destroyed by
ISIS, the 3D Additivist Manifesto
and the 3D Additivist Cookbook(both with Daniel Rourke). 2016
Artist in Residence Vilém Flusser
Residency Program, Berlin; 2016-17
Eyebeam’s one year Research
Residency. Exhibitions, among
others, alien matter, Haus derKulturen der Welt, Berlin (2017).
www.morehshin.com

LaGaîtéLyrique

She Who Sees the
Unknown:

She Who Sees the
Unknown:

2017-2018
3D printed resin
HD video, 09:48 min2018
3D printed resin
HD video, 07:14 min

Ya’jooj Ma’jooj

Aisha Qandisha

Courtesy of the artist and Upfor Gallery, Portland, USA
In She Who Sees the Unknown, the Iranian-born artist Morehshin
Allahyari stages malefic deities and monstrous female djinns from the
Near East and Middle East. Her project is part of an ongoing series on
digital colonialism and re-figuration as a feminist and activist practice. Allahyari’s tools are 3D scanners and printers, which she uses
to explore the symbolic underpinnings of traditions and myths. In her
videos, she creates magical and poetic-speculative narratives on theeffects of colonialism and other forms of contemporary oppression.
They are populated by different characters, most prominently Ya’jooj
and Ma’jooj, who stand for the powers of chaos against which Allahbuilt an iron wall, the collapse of which, according to the prophecy,
heralds the end of the world. Aisha Qandisha is one of the most fearsome female djinn in Morocco’s Islamic folklore. It appears as a young
woman with a beautiful face, but with the feet of a goat or a donkey.
It takes possession of men by opening their bodies to other demons.

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Roberte la Rousse

Roberte la Rousse is a collectivethat develops artistic and criticalprojects, founded by visual artist
Cécile Babiole and researcher
Anne Laforet. The collective works
on topics related to the Frenchlanguage and gender, with theaim of combatting deep-seatedlinguistic sexism.

Wikifémia - The computer grrrls
network
2019
Interactive installation

Wikifémia translates French Wikipedia articles with the biographies ofremarkable women into feminine language and creates performances
based on their lives. This installation uses the online encyclopaedia’s
tree structure to present visitors with visual documentation of thehundreds of women who contributed to the history of computing.

Co-produced by Labomedia, Espace Gantner, La Gaîté Lyrique, Espace
Jean-Roger Caussimon and Emmetrop, with development and production
support from Dicream in 2017 and 2018.
Computer programming: Laurent Malys.

LaGaîtéLyrique

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Video games selectedby guest curator Chloé Desmoineaux

All The Places You’ll Go (Women As Place),by Angela Washko

Behind Every Great One, by Deconstructionteam

Chloé Desmoineaux

When video games grew in popularity in the 1980s, girls weren’t considered potential players. Now there are as many female players as
there are male. Yet women still only account for 14% of staff at gamedevelopment studios. That might explain why, with a few exceptions,the female characters in AAA games (the blockbusters) are clichéd orstereotypical.
Chloé Desmoineaux’s selection offers a sampling of topics and portrayals related to how women are depicted in video games. “I wanted
my selection to be feminist and inclusive. The goal was to give prideof place to complex, situated female figures while also doing justiceto all those who have been kept out of the limelight, objectified,sexualised, exoticised or used as a foil for male heroes, in line with
Anita Sarkeesian’s analysis in her series of YouTube videos, ‘Tropes vs.
Women in Video Games’.”Chloé Desmoineaux is an artist
and curator based in Marseille.
Inspired by speculative fiction,
tactical media and cyberfeminism, her recent work focuses ongender, identity and interspecies
relations. Her tools of choice arehacking and experimentation,
along with related media: code,
video games, videos, interactive
installations and online performances. She co-organises the
Art Games Demos parties with
Isabelle Arvers and the “S’ilvous Play!” exhibition with Pierre
Corbinais for Institut Français.
www.chloedesmoineaux.com

LaGaîtéLyrique

JEEP JEEP, by Anna Luisa Petrisko

You will be able to deconstruct the concept of the ‘perfect woman’and define your own while gesturing in front of a Kinect with Lea
Schönfelder; explore the mental burden of a housewife whose work
too often goes unnoticed, with the studio Deconstructeam; discover
the difficulty of putting on make-up in a rush with Jenny Jiao Hsia;
explore female pleasure through a flowery tunnel with the studio Taleof Tales; bat off unwanted hands desperately trying to touch your hairwith Momo Pixel; play Thelma and Louise in GTA mode with Marlowe
Dobbe and Jane Friedhoff; and much, much more.
The selection mainly features independent games produced by small
studios or solo developers. The emergence of the indie scene has
propelled many women artists and developers to prominence in theindustry, while fostering newfound creativity. Examples include Zoë
Quinn’s Depression Quest and Anna Anthropy’s Dys4ia, which havebecome flagship games with a strong following in the feminist andqueer gaming community.

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