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Claude Cahun, Self Portrait 1947.

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I feel like I’m floating in plasma I need a teacher or a lover I need someone to risk being involved with me. I am so vain and I am so masochistic. How can they coexist?“

Francesca Woodman, from a journal entry featured in Francesca Woodman by Chris Townsend (via watchoutforintellect)

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Team Internet: if you’ve got a couple minutes and a few bucks to spare, I encourage you to support the campaign to install Aleksandra Mir’s Keep Abortion Legal on a Missouri Interstate billboard.

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Meet McKenzie Mack, Art+Feminism’s new Program Coordinator!

I’m So Here For It: a Coming-of-Age Tale about Joining Art + Feminism

I’m McKensie, the new Program Coordinator at Art + Feminism and resident Southern belle and intergalactic, black girl. I was born in Chicago and welcomed into the world by a family of butter aficionados. I’m a writer, performer, consultant and strategist with a penchant for Baldwin and high-class meme curation. When I’m not producing content about politics, pop culture, and race, I’m developing anti-oppressive strategies for dismantling systems of disempowerment in cultural institutions. I enjoy twirling in my living room, hosting shows about fun, and dabbing to 90s R & B. I’m also a sucker for homemade pie that’s just like my Nana used to make. So what brought me here to Art + Feminism? 

I’m here because I believe in women and their power. I’m here because who writes and edits our histories as marginalized people makes a difference in how we perceive the world, how the world perceives us, and how we perceive ourselves. Access to knowledge is power, but if that knowledge is skewed by a view that says that we don’t matter- how can it be useful to us? How it can it empower us to be heard?

Since 2014, Art + Feminism has gathered women to more than 280 events across 6 continents and has improved thousands of Wikipedia pages. Did you know that in 2011 a survey conducted by the Wikimedia Foundation found that just 8.5% of editors on the platform were women? Art +Feminism seeks to amplify that number by welcoming cis-women, trans-women, femmes, queer women, and women of color to claim space for themselves in the writing and editing of histories and stories, not unlike their own. This year, I proclaim the theme of my work with Art+Feminism to be ‘Claiming Space’. My 2017 is going to be all about empowering women to lay claim to their voice through writing, editing, and non-apology. AND I’M SO HERE FOR IT. #goodbyehaters

Want to learn more about becoming a friend or ally to the organization or interested in organizing an event where you live? Email me at info@artandfeminism.org so we can kiki over sweet treats and make plans to take over the world - one edit a time.

Yours in solidarity, tacos and trap music,

McKensie

p.s. you can find me on Twitter @mckensiemack

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(via Bananarama - Cruel Summer (OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO) - YouTube)

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Gay bars are therapy for people who can’t afford therapy; temples for people who lost their religion, or whose religion lost them; vacations for people who can’t go on vacation; homes for folk without families; sanctuaries against aggression. They take sound and fabric and flesh from the ordinary world, and under cover of darkness and the influence of alcohol or drugs, transform it all into something that scrapes up against utopia.

Please Don’t Stop the Music | The Nation

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cool indigenous feminist scholars to check out

there are soooo many indigenous scholars who are feminist, this is a short list of some that write more explicitly on feminism, gender & sexuality, violence against women, woman empowerment, etc. there are way more out there (and even more Native woman academics with feminism-informed work), so this is really just a start with a few suggestions. 

for a list of really cool amazing Native women outside academia, i recommend checking out this Inspiring Native Women collection. 

Cutcha Risling Baldy (Hupa, Karuk, Yurok): Cutcha Risling Baldy is a scholar whose work applies Native American Studies to feminist theory, literary theory and the development of Indigenous methodologies. Some of her current research focuses on the resurgence of one ceremony of the Hupa people (The Flower Dance) and the social and community growth that happens because of the return of this ceremony. In 2007, Ms. Risling Baldy founded the Native Women’s Collective, a nonprofit organization, to support arts and culture projects in the Native American community. 

Devon Mihesuah (Choctaw): Devon Abbott Mihesuah is a Choctaw historian and writer. Mihesuah is a professor of applied Indigenous studies and history at Northern Arizona University. Her books include Indigenous American Women: Decolonization, Empowerment, Activism; Cultivating the Rosebuds: The Education of Women at the Cherokee Female Seminary, 1851–1909; and Roads of My Relations.

Dian Million (Tanana Athabascan): Dian Million’s most recent research explores the politics of mental and physical health with attention to affect as it informs race, class, and gender in Indian Country. She is the author of Therapeutic Nations: Healing in an Age of Indigenous Human Rights, which is a discussion of trauma as a political narrative in the struggle for Indigenous self-determination in an era of global neoliberalism. 

Haunani-Kay Trask (Kanaka Maoli): Haunani-Kay Trask is a feminist, indigenous rights activist, and Professor of Hawaiian Studies at the University of Hawaii. Trask is the author of several books on feminist and political discourse. Her titles include Eros and Power: The Promise of Feminist Theory; Light in the Crevice Never Seen; From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawaii; and Night Is a Sharkskin Drum. 

ku’ualoha ho’omanawanui (Kanaka Maoli): ku‘ualoha ho‘omanawanui is associate professor of Hawaiian literature in the English department at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, and a poet, artist, and mālama ‘āina advocate. She specializes in traditional Hawaiian literature (including folklore and mythology), Oceanic (Pacific) literature, and indigenous perspectives on literacy. Her book, Voices of Fire–Reweaving the Lei of Pele and Hi‘iaka Literature, recovers the lost and often-suppressed political significance of stories of the volcano goddess Pele and her little sister Hi’iaka (patron of hula).

Jennifer Nez Denetdale (Navajo): As the first-ever Diné/Navajo to earn a Ph.D. in history, Dr. Jennifer Nez Denetdale is a strong advocate for Native peoples and strives to foster academic excellence in the next generation of students interested in Native Studies. Denetdale is an Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of New Mexico and teaches courses in Native American Studies. She specializes in Navajo history and culture; Native American women, gender, and feminisms; and Indigenous nations, colonialism, and decolonization.

Jessica Danforth (Haudenosaunee): Jessica Danforth is an attorney, community activist, and works with the Native Youth Sexual Health Network. Jessica Danforth is a self-described “multiracial Indigenous hip-hop feminist reproductive justice freedom fighter.”

Leanne Simpson (Anishinaabe): Simpson is the author of three books; Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back, The Gift Is in the Making, and Islands of Decolonial Love, and the editor of Lighting the Eighth Fire, This Is An Honour Song (with Kiera Ladner) and The Winter We Danced: Voice from the Past, the Future and the Idle No More Movement (Kino-nda-niimi collective). She is of Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg ancestry and a member of Alderville First Nation.

Lee Maracle (Salish, Cree): Lee Maracle is a member of the Stó:lō Nation. She strives to integrate European literary styles and Native oral storytelling forms, while confronting the cultural rifts between aboriginal and white society and the resulting problems for individual identity. Her work addresses the relationship between violence against women and violence against the land. 

Pamela Palmater (Mi’kmaq): Pamela Palmater is a lawyer who has dedicated her life to advocating for the rights of Indigenous people and empowering Indigenous women. Associate Professor in the Department of Politics and Public Administration and Chair in Indigenous Governance at Ryerson University, Pamela is a commentator, author, social media enthusiast and the inaugural Academic Director of Ryerson’s Centre for Indigenous Governance. Pamela works with diverse First Nations, community groups, students and feminist legal scholars to empower Indigenous women and build communities characterized by equality, inclusion and self determination. Pamela was also one of the major leaders and voices of the Idle No More movement.

Paula Gunn Allen (Laguna Pueblo): Paula Gunn Allen was a poet, literary critic, lesbian activist,and novelist. She drew from Pueblo oral traditions for her fiction and poetry, and also wrote numerous essays on its themes. She edited four collections of Native American traditional stories and contemporary works, and wrote two biographies of Native American women. In addition to her literary work, in 1986 she published a major study on the role of women in American Indian traditions, arguing that Europeans had de-emphasized the role of women in their accounts of native life because of their own patriarchal societies. It stimulated other scholarly work by feminist and Native American writers.

Sarah Deer (Muscogee Creek): Sarah Deer is a legal scholar and advocate leveraging her deep understanding of tribal and federal law to develop policies and legislation that empower tribal nations to protect Native American women from the pervasive and intractable problem of sexual and domestic violence. A citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation of Oklahoma, Deer has documented in academic scholarship the historical and ideological underpinnings of the failure to adequately protect victims of physical and sexual abuse in Indian Country, and she has worked with grassroots and national organizations attempting to navigate the complex legal and bureaucratic hurdles facing Native victims of violence. 

Winona LaDuke (Anishinaabe): Winona LaDuke is an enrolled member of the Mississippi Band Anishinaabeg who lives and works on the White Earth Reservations. She is also the Executive Director of Honor the Earth, where she works on a national level to advocate, raise public support, and create funding for frontline Native environmental groups. She serves as co-chair of the Indigenous Women’s Network, a North American and Pacific indigenous women’s organization. She has written extensively on Native American and environmental issues. Author of now six books, including The Militarization of Indian Country, Recovering the Sacred: the Power of Naming and Claiming, and All our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life.

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submitted by @carminota

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I recently heard someone describe dystopia as a genre where the contemporary daily, real experiences of oppression are finally visited on white people, and I think there’s a lot of truth to this. More broadly, dystopia as a genre often seems to lack any real future­oriented political imagination. Dystopias are reactionary projections that don’t do anything for us in the here and now. In many ways, imagining dystopia is a safer activity than imagining utopia – the latter involves projecting our hopes, desires, and fantasies, rather than simply our fears.

http://mkopas.net/files/talks/InterruptingPlayQueerGamesFuturity.pdf

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Basically, this kind of discourse or critique or public commons or whatever, that has been replaced largely by trolling. Yes, that’s a fact. Trolling is the contemporary form of critique, right? Trolling Trump-style is contemporary politics. That’s not very pleasant, but there is no way but to face it. So what do we do? I don’t know. What do you think?

http://www.moca.org/stream/post/hito-steyerl-and-devin-kenny

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EstherWalls—librarian and international activist—is pictured above at a party with Allen Ginsberg, just one of the many artists and intellectuals she socialized with while working at the New York Public Library.

Before she befriended poetry icons, Walls attended the University of Iowa, where she was the first African-American female student elected to Phi Beta Kappa.  Walls graduated summa cum laude in 1948 with a B.A. in Romance Languages.

While at Iowa, Walls made history as one of the five students who desegregated university dormitories.  Walls, Virginia Harper, Gwen Davis, Nancy Henry and Leanna Harper moved into Currier Hall in 1946.  “It seemed to be something so normal that should’ve happened,” Walls later reflected. “I had a right to be in Currier Hall. Why not? I was the valedictorian of my high school class, and I was from the state of Iowa.”

Want more? Visit the Iowa Women’s Archives! We’re open weekly Tuesday-Friday, 10:00am to noon and 1:00pm to 5:00pm.

This post was written by Christina Jensen, Student Assistant in the Iowa Women’s Archives and graduate student in the UI School of Library and Information Science.

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(via Scenes from the Studio)

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Cool Coding+Editing Initiatives

Hour of Code

In a study conducted to determine why girls decide not to learn to code, Google found that most girls’ decision is made before they even enter college. Girls are more likely to be interested in science if they are engaging with the subject at a young age. Code.org offers beginning coding lessons for kids starting at age 6, using popular characters from Frozen, Star Wars, and Angry Birds.  

Black Girls Code

Black Girls Code is an organization dedicated to giving girls of color the tools to develop their own future. In the past they have held events such as a Robot Expo, Build a Webpage in a Day and an App Inventor & Beta Game Jam.

The Black Lunch Table Wikipedia Edit-a-thons

The Black Lunch Table is an ongoing collaboration between artists Jina Valentine and Heather Hart. Their series strives to close the gap in the documentation of art history through guided conversations among cultural producers of color.

Currently, The Black Lunch Table is organizing edit-a-thons at The McColl Center of Art + Innovation to “create, update, and improve Wikipedia articles pertaining to the lives and works of visual artists from the African Diaspora.”

Code: Debugging the Gender Gap

Code: Debugging the Gender Gap is 20__ documentary profiling the lives of several women in the tech industry and attempts to unravel the intertwining reasons for why there is a dearth of women and minorities in tech. Find a screening near you or organize one for your community here.  

Afrocrowd

Afro Free Culture Crowdsourcing Wikimedia (AfroCROWD) is a new initiative which seeks to increase the number of people of African descent actively editing Wikipedia. On Saturday, February 27th join the Bronx Council of the Arts, working with AfroCROWD Initiative, for a Black Life Matters Edit-a-thon at Hostos Community College. RSVP here.

WikiProject Women in Red

WikiProject Women in Red’s aims to decrease the content gender gap on Wikipedia. They frequently hold edit-a-thons and are currently hosting a virtual edit-a-thon on black women’s history.

Deep Lab

Deep Lab is a cyberfeminist collective made up of researchers, artists, writers, engineers, and cultural producers. Looking at issues such as surveillance, coding, race, privacy and capitalism, their work manifests as lecture series, publications, contemporary art, public programming and performances. View a short documentary about Deep Lab here.

Trans*H4CK

Trans*H4ck’s mission is to develop open source tech products to benefit trans and gender non-conforming communities. Since their 2013 launch, Trans*H4ck has had over 600 transgender developers, designers, and aspiring coders present at their hackathons, producing mobile apps that are used by trans* and gender non-conforming people across the country.

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Siânie leads a training for #artandfeminism volunteers (at Graduate Center, CUNY)

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Books!

Fun fact: The image Art+Feminism uses to publicize its edit-a-thons is a take on Russian constructivist artist Aleksandr Rodchenko’s Books poster, created as an advertisement for the publishing house Gosizdat. In the poster, artist Lilya Brik is depicted joyfully crying out Books!

Lilya Brik was born November 11, 1891 in Moscow. She grew up in a wealthy Jewish family and graduated from the Moscow Institute of Architecture. In addition to collaborating with artists such as Henri Matisse, Marc Chagall and Aleksandr Rodchenko, she also directored two films: Jews on the Land and The Glass Eye.

From 1922 to 1928 Brik was a collaborator on LEF, the journal of the Left Front of Arts. LEF, emphasizing the ties between politics and art, was built around the idea that artistic forms were themselves vehicles of ideas, and so the creation of a new society required the creation of new forms. Under the communism regime, women artists were considered equals of their male colleagues. Working together, Constructivist artists created a unique, shared visual vocabulary for a new era.

Constructivism emphasized the active participation of the viewer. Similarly, open source projects, such as Wikipedia, encourage a collaborative, communal approach to information. This horizontal approach to knowledge results in a digital commons, that is,

               information and knowledge resources that are collectively creates and                owned or shared between or among a community and that tend to be                non-exclusivedible, that is, be (generally freely) available to third                          parties. This, they are oriented to favor use and reuse, rather than to                   exchange as a commodity. 

Rodchenko’s poster symbolizes a summoning of public knowledge. A central technique of Constructivism was photomontage: the process of creating a composite photo by rearranging multiple photos into a single image. Collage and photomontage are historically political art forms. They have been associated with movements such as Dada, Constructivism, and second wave feminism. They bring together disparate materials in order to create brand new works. Wikipedia operates in a similar manner, employing the collaborative collaging of a variety of sources to create a cohesive body of information.

The high ideals of artistic movements don’t necessarily manifest themselves like we might wish. Often in seemingly progressively groups, hypocrisy runs rampant. For example, German Dadaist Hans Richter who described Hannah Hoch’s contribution to the movement as the “sandwiches, beer and coffee she managed somehow to conjure up despite the shortage of money.“      

“Wikipedia’s openness hardly makes it perfect,” Andrew Leonard wrote in his article for Salon about the trend of “revenge editing” on Wikipedia. Lilya Brik’s Wikipedia entry spends little time on her artistic endeavors and instead positions her only as muse and lover to well known male artists. The open source movement is beset with gender inequality. Less than 10% of Wikipedia’s contributors identify as female. With its emphasis on female editorship, Art+Feminism works to achieve equality not just on the screen but in the production of our public knowledge.  

-Emily Gaynor, Art+Feminism editorial fellow

Read more about open source gender trouble here:

Open Source on Wikipedia

List of women in FLOSS on Geek Feminism Wiki

This Is What Tech’s Ugly Gender Problem Really Looks Like by Issie Lapowsky 

Out in the Open: The Crusade to Bring More Women to Open Source by Klint Finley

The Internet’s destructive gender gap: Why the Web can’t abandon its misogyny by Astra Taylor

Gender, Representation and Online Participation by Bogdan Vasilescu, Andrea Capiluppi, Alexander Serebrenik