Off-Script: Technologies and Tactics of Feminist Errancy / Hors-Piste: technologies et tactiques de l'errance féministe

When: November 4-5 2018
Where: TBA

In collaboration with Studio XX and the HTMlles festival
“Beyond the Hashtag: Failures and Becomings”

Keynote Speaker:Professor Marcela Fuentes (Northwestern U.)

25 years ago, in Lizzie Borden’s film Born in Flames (1983), an activist, intersectional feminism dealt with the failure of political revolution to effectuate real social justice by using pirate radio, guerrilla training and the repurposing of broadcast media to assemble a heterogenous feminist resistance. Today, what are our options for hijacking business as usual in the face of exclusions of women, queers, people of colour, and other marginalized communities for feminist ends? How can we go off-script in a story of violence, indifference, and discrimination to participate in novel forms of world-making?

Everywhere we turn, feminist activism is targeting bad behaviour and creating new networks of community through digital technology. Campaigns and hashtags such as #MeToo, #TimesUp, #SayHerName and #NiUnaMenos, campus protests, live feeds, sousveillance, and spreadsheets of predators have demonstrated the power of technology to boosts the signal of whisper networks of support, knowledge exchange, and warnings into new spheres. The consequences of this scaler shift are still unfolding; we must go beyond the determinative dynamic of action/reaction to assess the broader potential for reshaping social norms in the name of equity, justice, and representation. How do different techniques and technologies of digital resistance succeed, fail, and mutate as intersectional feminist praxis? How might technology at once rewrite and hack into conventional read-only histories and establish impenetrable narratives that exclude those it seeks to represent? How does digital networking emerge as a shifting tactical tool in local and transnational protests and systems of queer and feminist solidarity?

Organizers:Alanna Thain and Vanessa Ceia

About The HTMlles

Since 1997, The HTMlles has brought together artists, scholars, and activists passionate about critically engaging new technologies from a feminist perspective. The festival takes place biannually in Montreal, and its aim is to showcase cutting-edge projects produced by local and international artists. Each edition focuses on a specific theme and addresses urgent socio-political questions by pushing the boundaries of artistic and feminist practices. This year’s edition is “BEYOND THE HASHTAG: FAILURES AND BECOMINGS”https://htmlles.net/en/

The HTMlles is produced by Studio XX, a bilingual, feminist artist-run centre for technological exploration, creation, and critique, founded in 1996.

https://www.mcgill.ca/igsf/
https://studioxx.org/
https://htmlles.net/