Video Vortex Reader II: moving images beyond YouTube

126 Video Vortex Reader II Moving Images Beyond Youtubecollection case studies127ArtFem.TV: Feminist Artistic Infiltrationof a Male Net CultureEvelin Stermitzproject, ArtFem.TV empowers women artists, highlights their works within the context ofgender issues, and broadens the discourse about art and feminism in a new media context.The question of a dedicated artistic space raised in 1929 by Virginia Woolf’s ‘A Room of One’sOwn’ is reconsidered by cyberfeminists towards the end of the same century, and seen in thecreation of this project. Furthermore, ArtFem.TV aims to subvert the commercialized systemsand structures of broadcast television.To understand the background of ArtFem.TV, it is necessary to examine the history of feminismin relation to art. Feminism and feminist art finally came to the forefront in the late1960s, a time of liberation and political struggle, during which there was public debate thatenabled a re-thinking of the position of women in society. Women were encouraged to actand react in public ways, and art, as a primarily public issue, became a powerful vehiclefor feminist discourse. The main questions asked were: What makes women different frommen?; and with respect to art, what makes women artists and women’s art different from thatproduced by men? In their art, women reflected upon patriarchy in social systems, in history,in art history and in current affairs. While feminists fought an uphill battle, feminist issuesgained prominence, first in the U.S., Great Britain and Germany, and have spread to manyother nations and cultures since the 1970s.ArtFem.TV, Screenshot 2011. Images courtesy and copyright of individual artists.ArtFem.TV 1 is a form of online television programming that brings together art and feminism.The basic aim of the video-based web portal is to foster the involvement of women in the arts,to nurture women’s artworks and projects, and to create an international online televisionscreen presenting the creativity, images and voices of women. ArtFem.TV is a non-profit,artist-run, Internet Television (ITV) and media art portal I founded in 2008, and have sincethen curated, edited and maintained as an artistic cyberfeminist project. ArtFem.TV is anartistic hyperspace for the images and statements of women artists that would be otherwisehidden on popular media sites.The term ‘feminist art’ can be misleading, as the word feminism is often inaccurately connectedto a struggle against men, but feminism is definitely not sexism. In relation to art, theterm ‘feminism’ should be used in the sense of understanding art from a female perspective.Although this does not exclude feminist struggles, it is more concerned with the recognition ofa female position, or rather a subject position. This position is constituted by a critical engagementwith gender issues and views art as a socio-political matter. As an artistic cyberfeminist1. www.artfem.tv.In the 1970s, the so-called second-wave of feminism emerged, along with its message that ‘thepersonal is political’. The position of women was seen to be inextricably linked to a patriarchal,commercialized, oppressive culture, and their social, sexual and personal struggles were seento be embedded within such a culture. 2 In the 1980s, the conflict between the two basic approachesto feminism - integration and separation – led the focus to shift from equity to difference.This third-wave approach became strongly affiliated with the academy, and increasinglytheoretical, as it developed into the academic research fields of women’s, gender, and feministstudies. According to Charlotte Krolokke and Anne Scott Sorensen, third-wave feminists are‘motivated by the need to develop a feminist theory and politics that honour contradictory experiencesand deconstruct categorical thinking... .They embrace ambiguity rather than certainty,engage in multiple positions, and practice a strategy of inclusion and exploration’. 3Third-wave feminism is inspired by and bound to generational shifts wrought by the new globalworld order, the fall of communism, new threats of religious and ethnic fundamentalism,and the dual risks and promises of new info- and biotechnologies. It is characterized by local,national and transnational activism in areas such as violence against women, trafficking, bodysurgery, self-mutilation and the overall ‘pornofication’ of the media. 4 Gender became a discursivepractice in a social matrix, inclusive of the emerging movements of queer and transgender2. See Charlotte Krolokke and Anne Scott Sorensen, Gender Communication Theories and Analyses:From Silence to Performance, Thousand Oaks, London and New Delhi: Sage, 2006, p. 10.3. Krolokke and Sorensen, Gender Communication, p. 16. Krolokke and Sorensen also discuss thenotion of ‘transversal politics’, writing that ‘What defines transversal politics is not only the factthat differences in nationality, ethnicity, or religion - and hence in agenda - are recognized butalso that a commitment to listen and participate in a dialogue is required’, p. 20.4. Krolokke and Sorensen, Gender Communication, p. 17.