IsayUsaySsay

Name   : Irene de Groot
Time   : 16.00-18.00 (V2-exhibition space)
Subject: Cyberfeminism and subjectivity
Date   : Sunday 21 January 1996

The second part of the sunday afternoon in Rotterdam is devoted to cyberfeminism. In general, cyberfemism refers to a cultural political movement that is concentrated around the work of Donna Haraway. According to cyberfeminists, cyberspace (that is, the space for interaction between man and machine) offers new tools in the struggle for sexual equality. It appears to have the potential to pull down the traditional boundaries of the human body. Who are we indeed? With the disappearance of our body as the identification mark of a human being, the conception of ourselves is likely to change.

During their lecture, Nina Czegledy (specialized on women's art work and experimental film, and active in both the USA and Europe) and Inke Arns (from Berlin) relieve one another. In stead of taking an academic standpoint, so they say, they concentrate on reality. Their main issue is: how is advanced medical science reflected in art? Other subjects, that are dealt with automatically, are for example body politics, the objectification of individuals and certain medical technologies (as in vitro fertilization).

Czegledy and Arns share the consciousness of the need for a new language of tactical media within the existing discourse. In search for such a new language, they stick to a humanistic subjective approach. This subjective approach is very much the opposite of current medical science, that emphasizes abstraction, clinical detachment and objectivity. In fact, medical science leaves no space for the individual at all; _visualization_ is the heart of the matter. Computerized tools turn the human body inside out and render it nakedly public.

As Haraway once pointed out, in the age of biopower the embodied subject is 'cannibalized' by technologies. We've all become observers of ourselves. Unborn babies decorate billboards throughout the city. Moreover, at least one time every night we can watch a television documentary on a certain medical topic, letting us enter not only the private life of the suffering person, but also literally his or her body! With the all-seeing eye of Western medicine, which is generally held in great respect, we are left with little or no control of our own bodies.

As a consequence, our perception of ourselves has changed. This is reflected by the art works that Czegledy shows on slides. An example is the framed enlargement of a flesh-wound. Our corporate integrity, in a way, is undermined by this kind of art. Another example is a short film of an apparently mentally ill person, who knows how to draw the attention of the public, by simply repeating her daily pursuits. In this case, the disease has almost become a metaphor, by way of criticizing society.

Alla Mitrofanova (St. Petersburg), a former art historian but now calling herself a philosopher, directs the discussion to a somewhat abstracter level. However, her thoughts basically correspond with those of Czegledy and Arns. According to Mitrofanova, the classical body is dead. After the social, technological, sexual and psychedelical revolution, nature and body are only empty forms of representation: we've become dislocated and disembodied subjects. The additional value of Mitrofanova's view is probably that she involves Eastern (Tantra) images. Unfortunately, the bus leaving for Amsterdam made that a part of the public had to miss most of her lecture and the final discussion.

Irene de Groot (igro@xs4all.nl)