Cybernetic Resistance: Feminism, the Archive and the first Internet Café
The Showroom, London, November 2016A project by Brenda Guesnet and Kiona Hagen Niehaus as the recipients of the 2016 Women’s Art Library and Feminist Review ‘Living with Make: Art in the Archive’ Research Bursary
With performances by Paul Maheke, Kiona Hagen Niehaus and Erica Scourti, and conversations with Sisters Uncut, Code Liberation, Sex Worker Open University and Xana
‘Cybernetic Resistance’ evoked CYBERIA, the first Internet Café of its kind, founded in London in 1994 as a space for women to share skills and resources surrounding the use of the web. A two-day event at The Showroom revisited this optimistic feminist moment as a setting for performances, artworks and public conversations, exploring whether the Internet Café could help us imagine a utopian space for specific communities to gather and organise towards their respective goals.
Kiona Hagen Niehaus, Queer To Me, 2016. A real-time performance using objects from the Women’s Art Library, experienced via an online stream to The Showroom. Kiona stated: “the lack of ready-made context available to me as a queer woman has meant that I have often had to pick out pieces of material, a look, particular wording from a character, or the relation- ship between bodies in an image, and relate them back to my own worldview in order to find a sense of imagined belonging.”
Erica Scourti, Secondary Sources v.2, 2016. Fragments of research, scribbled asides and personal observations drawn from both the Women’s Art Library and Scourti’s personal archive were woven together into a text. Using a voice-activated light to read the text, the room flashed in and out of darkness in synch with the artist’s voice until the illumination blinded her eyes and reading became impossible.
Paul Maheke, As Far As You Are Unconcerned, 2016. Live performance using movement and moving image to explore a range of intensities and flux within which the body operates as an archive, intersecting a variety of social contexts and poetic registers.
Participants could visit the temporary Internet Café with works by Kiona Hagen Niehaus and others, explore documents from the Women’s Art Library, attend public conversations with local organisers (Sisters Uncut, Code Liberation, Sex Worker Open University and Xana) and contribute to an ‘Internet Café Kit’ that is stored permanently in the Women’s Art Library.
Supported by Goldsmiths, University of London, Feminist Review and The Showroom through the ‘Living with MAKE: Art in the Archive’ research bursary.
To view and download the handout with the full text and programme designed by Anna Mikkola, click here.