"We have evolved into a society who has a crisis of identity. It seems more difficult to act as an individual within highly developed technocratic societies. I knew from the beginning, from Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman, " (c1978/9) that this form of representation expressed a technocratic view of "woman". You either heroicize her, or you underrate her as a secretary. What place did you ever create for me within this representation?...."

---Dara Birnbaum, "Individual Voices as Political Voices: Critiquing and Challenging the Authority of Media," in Women in New Media, in press MIT Press.

--Agnes Hegedus, "My Autobiographical Media History - Metaphors of Interaction, communication and Body Using Electronic Media", in Women in New Media, in press MIT Press.

Elsewhere in this panel, Helen Thorington and others have said that there are more oportunities for women now. I'm wondering, if others have -- as Agnes Hegedus expresses -- experienced this as connected with working in media art (?)

From: Karen O'Rourke
Date: August 13, 1999

This has been noted of telecommunications art, as we don't necessarily need to have a physical presence. When Anna Couey asked me to evoke women telecom artists I thought were important, I remember being a bit puzzled at first as I sorted out names. So and so was an important artist, but was she really a telecommmunications artist? As for another artist whose work I liked, I wasn't sure of his/hergender: in Spanish Joan is often a man's name whereas in English it would probably be a woman's.

From: Carolyn Guertin
Date: August 19, 1999

A couple of years ago in the midst of a discussion about 'what is hypertext' on the hypertext literature list (ht_lit), Carolyn Guyer was parrying with a group of predominantly male writers. At the end of one of her posts she posed the question, "Where the heck are all the women here anyway?" At that time, I felt myself to be pretty much labouring in the dark, wrestling with that question myself. A few other souls piped up hesitantly and I asked a few questions about where the heck was the *feminist* work being done in hypertext. A few women's names were offered up to the list, but most were either not feminists by any recognizable definition of the term or were working programmers or other professionals, not hypertext authors. Surprisingly few names were offered as to who was doing feminist work beyond the often cited Eastgate authors Guyer herself, Shelley Jackson and the first practitioner of the form, Judy Malloy.

This sent me on a quest. I couldn't believe there was no feminist work being born in the medium, but how exactly does one go about locating 'feminist hypertext' when authors are more engaged in doing the work than applying that--or the cyberfeminist--label to themselves? What search engine would allow me to turn up women's hypertext work on the web or with publishers? (And, as Karen O'Rourke notes, it is not always possible to identify women practitioners on the basis of names alone.) What manner of scouring the web, books and articles would allow me to find feminist works in hypertext that were not already gathered together on reference pages like Michael Shumate's Hyperizons? After several months of searching, hunting down leads, links and vague references, I found more than 50 of them in English and French, and more since. But it was at that point that I was faced with the same problem that Karen O'Rourke had: how could I classify these widely divergent artworks as 'feminist hypertexts' and these diverse authors/artists/theorists/programmers all merely(?) as 'feminist hypertext authors'? The reality and the range of the texts--in subject matter, genre, technological expertise, visual versus textual elements--was so complex that it seemed reductive to lump them all together under one moniker or grouping. How can one really place Marta Werner's "The Flight of A821: Dearchiving the Proceedings of a Birdsong" next to Adriene Jenik's Desert Mauve: A CD-ROM Translation, or Olia Lialina's "My Boyfriend Came Back From the War" next to Carolyn Guyer's Mother Millennium project and call these the same?

The problem of discovery remains. We continue to grope in the dark. Forums like this one for the Invencao Symposium are coming into being from time to time now, there is the Faces list, the Maid in Cyberspace site, Les Penelopes, but for the most part how do we find each other? How do we discover the truly innovative work that is being done by women on a daily basis worldwide across genres and mediums and languages? How do we ensure that we keep ourselves plugged into (cyber)feminist networks where radical artistic and technological innovations render old forms and old classifications unrecognizable? What do we call these new kinds of work that are not visual art or literary text or multimedia work or software, but, in keeping with the meaning and spirit of cyberfeminism, some complex melding of all of these and more?

We all rifle through anthologies delighted when we find one or two articles written from a feminist perspective, but with the exception of Cherney and Weise's Wired Women, Lynn Hershman Leeson's Clicking In and Judy Malloy's forthcoming Women in New Media the pickings in book form are few and far between. To people this silence and to discover these innovations, we must keep talking. Thank you, Judy, for allowing us this opportunity to collectively stretch our cyberfeminist muscles in the practice of media art dialogue.

Cynthia Beth Rubin
Date: August 24, 1999

The Electronic Arts liberated me from the prejudice that I face when I was a woman painter. In the traditional media, women are seldom taken seriously as artists until they prove themselves, and if they dare stray into areas that were traditionally female (images of flowers, chidden, etc.) they cannot be taken seriously no matter how serious the intention or product.

In the beginning Electronic Arts, just being able to use a computer gave a certain credibility to women artists. Everything was new and exciting, and work was more often judged by the work itself than how well the artist fit the stereotype of artist (hard drinking white male).

In recent years, as the computer has become more accessible to more people, the old prejudices area creeping back in. This affects women and all people who do not fit the stereotype (often now tied up with making money).

As for questions of identity: all of the various pieces of my identity go into my work, but the female side is seldom a focus (I focus more on my Jewishness and more North American side). But certainly my Femaleness influences how I think, how I construct imagery, even what medium I work in. Curiously, the many women work in 2D visual art are often regarded as not really using Electronic Art, but simply making the computer "just another tool". The "just another tool" argument is obviously false - no other medium would have led me to my current visual vocabulary, and I fear that this comes from a male pre-occupation with power and competition to be the first on the block to try new technology.

From: Christy Sheffield Sanford
Date: August 27, 1999

Thanks, Carolyn Guertin, you're one of the people who found me. I'm surprised when people don't know my work. Naive, I guess. I've been something of a talent scout myself and have discovered for myself and to show a workshop many new women artists-writers this year: mez, Olia Lialina, Lehan Ramsay, Annie Abrahams and Jeanette Lambert among others.

One thing I've noticed is that sometimes newer work is overlooked. For example, I often see a reference to Olia Lialina's My Boyfriend Came Back From the War. Olia has done many pieces since then, fabulous work. I don't mean this as a criticism, I know people are busy, but to take someone seriously is to keep up with what they're doing. I'm always creating new work and hopefully taking it higher.

[The Panel]
[The Panelists]
[Keynote Statements]
[About this Panel]