Cyberfeminism 2: Electric Boogaloo

Quinn: Hello and welcome back to Pictorial on Relay FM. I'm Quinn Rose, and I didn't go to art school, but I love learning about art and seeing art that is new to me.

Betty: Hi, and I’m Betty. I also didn't go to art school, but I also really love learning about art. I have been volunteering at an art gallery for the past almost 10 years, but at this point it doesn't really matter, cause we're looking at art from the internet. 

Quinn: Yeah, this is art that you too can see. So we’re doing a part two to our last episode, which was about cyber feminism. So if you did not listen to that episode, you should go back and listen to that first, because otherwise this is not going to make a whole lot of sense. In that episode, we went through a whole background on what cyber feminism is and the critiques, and ultimately weakening of that movement and what's happened to it. And today we're going to actually go through and look at a few examples of what cyber feminist art was when it was kind of in its heyday in the nineties. Now I do have to say before we get going, as one of the main premises of cyber feminism was that the art that they made was very graphic and in your face and subversive and often quite sexual—all the art we're looking at is very not safe for work. The conversation we will be having about it, we will keep it PG of course. But just a blanket warning for all of these pieces, do not click these links unless you are like… don't click these links at work is what I'm saying. 

Betty: Yeah. I'll have to make sure I put a big disclaimer in the, in the YouTube version of this as well. So people—

Quinn: I didn’t even think of the YouTube version.

Betty: Yeah, when that comes out, we'll have a big like disclaimer at the beginning, which hopefully is what you'll be seeing on the screen right now.

Quinn: Yeah. I mean, it's not pornography. Like there are some images from all of them that are perfectly reasonable. It's just, you never know what you're going to get if you keep scrolling kind of thing.

Betty: Sometimes there is like a fine line between like, oh, this is just nudity in art to this is a little bit too much. But yeah, like I would say—well, I guess I haven't seen any of this yet, but I'll be the judge of that once you show them to me. 

Quinn: Sure. So we are going to start out with one of the most classic pieces of cyber feminist art, and this is called All New Gen. And so this was created by the VNS Matrix, who we talked about in the last episode. They were this little collective that was some of the founders of cyber feminism, basically, they were the people who wrote this thing called A Cyberfeminist Manifesto for the 21st Century. They were in Australia, but in 1991 four women came together and called themselves the VNS Matrix. And they created this thing called All New Gen. And what it is is a video game. It originally, in its first conception, wasn't an actual interactive video game, but a year or two later, they were able to actually put it together and to be an actual interactive video game. A few very interesting things about this—one, the beginning screen of it asks, what is your gender? And you can click male, female, or neither. But if you click male or female, it sends you into this loop that ends the game. You have to pick neither.

Betty: Wow, that’s… that seems ahead of its time.

Quinn: Yeah. A lot of the stuff that cyber feminism was doing, it was very like woman focused. But it would also was trying to be very subversive with gender and especially in the way that sort of biology and gender are connected and wanting to really break down that association. And which we'll see more in other pieces that we're going to look at as well. But the basic premise of the game is you are, you have a little army and you are hacking into what is called the Big Daddy Mainframe. It's a very subtle symbol of the patriarchy. The whole idea is, you know, the internet was a very masculine space. Still is. It was aggressively gate kept—I guess that's how you would say that—by men in power and culturally and all these different ways. And so this was a way of sort of reclaiming it in a very female space. There's also a specific word for the people in your army, which I will be not saying this podcast because we are keeping this family friendly. But they are all female characters, which in itself was subversive at the time. There were barely any female playable characters in video games at all. Just as like a little video game history note here, this was after Metroid came out which is like, I think the first game, or at least the first mainstream game in which he played as a woman. But the fact that the playable character was a woman was like a huge reveal and like kind of a secret. In the first game, you could only find that out—like the character only took off her helmet at the end of the game if you beat it in under five hours, it was like a very big deal. And this was just a couple of years after that. And then you are literally going through this game, taking apart all of these male ideas of technology and video games and creating what is called a New World Disorder with the help of, let's just say weapons that were devised from female anatomy.

Betty: Yeah, I’m seeing some of these, I'm looking on this website and I'm seeing a lot of pictures that I'm, I'm definitely not going to describe with words. Because some of it is a little disturbing and I see it—I see a lot of anatomy.

Quinn: This is an anatomical forward game.

Betty: I would say so, yeah. Is this, let me ask, is this like because I'm, I'm obviously not playing the game right now. Maybe I'll check it out later if it's free for play, but is this like mostly a text-based game or is there actually like characters moving around and stuff? Do you know?

Quinn: Yeah. I mean, they didn't have the best graphics of the world, but there were, there was definitely a lot of imagery in the game.

Betty: As somebody who played a lot of video games as a kid and still to this day plays video games, I am very into games with playable female characters. I think—I do remember just growing up, like at one point, I remember I was like—I played games like Grand Theft Auto and stuff, but, you know, it's kind of like, sometimes I'm ashamed to admit it, but now I'm like, you know what? I'm old enough. I will say that yes, I have played those games. And I do just remember, like when I was, when I was maybe like 14 or 15 at that point, because I never played a game like Metroid, and now I wish I would have, I just remember thinking it's like, wow, like I have never played a game with a playable female character. And then I don't think I went on, I think it was maybe, I was maybe like 18 or 19 when it was the first time I played a game with a female playable character. And I think it was one of those games where you can customize your character. Not to say that it didn't come out until them. But yeah, it really, like had I known about this game back then, I so would have played it.

Quinn: Oh yeah. There is an interesting thing about like the way that gender and sex are depicted in this game as well. Cause I just think it's so fascinating that it starts out that …one source says that you have to say neither, I've seen a different screenshot that has the options is female, male, or nonspecific as the thing that you have to click, but at the same time, like the actual imagery and components of this game are incredibly—again, I have to say they're incredibly anatomical. And they, they definitely associate like biological sex with gender in a way that is not surprising for like 1993, of course. But I just find the sort of, the disconnect there between some playing with the idea of the gender binary and what gender means, but still like very much falling back on basically biological parts equaling gender. This game overall, like, I mean, it does seem pretty blatant, in terms —it’s not like a subtle metaphor or anything. There are lots of games that come out all the time that are about these ideas of like, power and oppression and subverting different ideas. They tend to be more subtle now than this one is, which is very aggressive. It's not even a metaphor really. It's just, you know, you are, you have an army of women and they have to, to fight the patriarchy, the personification of the patriarchy.

Betty: Which is why I can see why this wouldn't be a very mainstream game. And it's kind of, this is why it's a part of this, like art collective, and it's relegated to this, you know, part of the internet where it's like, oh, this is feminist art instead of this is a mainstream video game.

Quinn: Exactly. And it's also, you know, like, again, this is the early nineties when… I'm sure that some people at the time also were like, this is too much you guys, but you know, this is—oh my god, this is 30 years ago. Oh my God. [laughs]

Betty: I know, it is more old than you, Quinn, the game.

Quinn: That just really hurt me, remembering how long ago the early nineties were for some reason. But anyway—but the, the level of like feminist discourse and like gender discourse was very different then. And even though this is, this is the kind of thing that ultimately was like heavily criticized in cyber feminism as a movement of like style over substance, basically, beyond their failure to be intersectional. They also were criticized generally for this idea of like, we're like, we've got grrl power or whatever, you know, with all the r’s, but without having like proper political weight behind their ideas. I'm not saying—like I'm not placing the entire weight of gender, gender politics on this one art piece. But it does, like, it does definitely remind me of those criticisms. And this piece is pretty closely related to another piece I'm going to show you, which is called a cyber flesh girl monster. We are staying subtle. 

Betty: I am excited.

Quinn: This piece is a bit different. And it was also a feminist video game, but It was quite different in what it actually was. And so it was created by an artist, also Australian, named Linda Dement. And she had about 30 women scan parts of their bodies and record sounds too. And then the game is created of all of those different scans of body parts that are basically, you can put them together and you create these like horrifying monster looking things. And they, they can be animated. You can interact, they interact with each other. And every time if you, as the player, when you click on them they trigger some kind of response. That could be one of those audio clips. It could be text. You could like create another one of these girl monsters. Hence the name. And as you go and as you click on everything, it creates a kind of like non linear narrative experience. This is more like a narrative video game then you, you know, fighting to defeat something. But it is supposed to be about this whole idea of monstrous femininity. And it's also heavily about revenge and violence.

Betty: Yeah. I'm looking at some of these pictures and they’re pretty grotesque. You know what it kind of reminds me of—have you ever heard of the exquisite corpse?

Quinn: Remind me about this?

Betty: So it's basically like you have a big blank piece of paper and then somebody draws one little thing, but they, but then they cover it up and then another person continues it and then—I did this at one of the I think one of the Vidcons I went to where like the Art Assignment had a booth where we did an exquisite corpse where like, yeah, like we basically a bunch of people collectively create this like giant monster is, is what it always ends up being like when you continue somebody else's drawing over to like a large piece of paper. So it kind of reminds me of that. But in like a much, even more grotesque way.

Quinn: That—it is kind of reminiscent of that, yeah. Which is funny because the exquisite corpse game is actually like, you know, It's very innocent. It doesn't, but the name is so macabre, meanwhile, cyber flesh girl monster is, is exactly what it sounds like. And it's also what exquisite corpse sounds like.

Betty: This is I actually think a much better representation of an exquisite corpse except like in a much more violent way. Like I see like, almost all of these have like, body parts that look like, they almost look like they've been torn apart. And, or like there's blood. And then there's like, what looks like it could be organs and lips and just all kinds of things mushed together. Like, again, it, it looks feminine cause there's a lot of red lips. There's a lot of what looks like possibly like arms and legs and thighs and hips and stuff like that. But like coming out of weird angles and mushed together in like really grotesque ways. Like I keep using that word because that’s, that’s all I see.

Quinn: It's just correct. And yeah, it's, it's all edited together. It’s on two black backgrounds and it's a way that even though these are scans of actual people's body parts you can't tell that they are from a scanner. They do look just, as you said, as if they've just been ripped off of bodies and placed together in unusual ways, which is fun.

Betty: Again, like I think similar to the other one you showed me, like it does have that aspect of like, rebelliousness of like, but like rebelling against society’s… I guess like preconception of what, like, you know, a beautiful woman should look like. What this one is, it’s almost like it's almost like screw society, we’re just going to tear our bodies apart and mush it back together. Like it, it has that sense to me. I don't know if that's what they were, they were getting what they were getting at.

Quinn: Yeah. It also reminds me of the way that female bodies are so objectified by media and by culture and reduced down to just body parts. I mean this, this piece deals with incredibly adult themes and incredibly like violent themes. And it also like strikes me in the way the imagery is used, not only with all like the red lips and the sort of bloody images with some of them, the way it creates this surreal violence which feels like the way that you might perceive your body or parts of your body after trauma and feeling this disconnect as if they are no longer part of you.

Betty: I feel like quite often in society or like in media or from what I see anyway there, isn't a lot of talk about trauma to a body or like, you know, a body after going through surgery and after having parts like cut off and that's what a lot of women eventually go through because of various illnesses and injuries and stuff like that. And I think this, this also is a way of reclaiming that, like, you know, you don't have to look like a perfect person in like a magazine in order to feel beautiful. Because like, to be quite honest, like some of this, again, I know I use the word grotesque, some of these images are kind of like grotesquely beautiful to me. Like that's, that's how I feel. It's like, there is, there is this like sense of beauty that I see, but it's like, it's not… like it's hard to describe, it's more so it's, it's more like I want to celebrate these like body parts just to de-objectify women or something like, I don't even know.

Quinn: Well, that's very good. Interesting. I have one more piece to show you and I want to send this over to you now. This is a piece I have conflicting feelings about. It is called Brandon. It was made by the artist Shu Lea Cheang. And it is about the story of a man named Brandon Teena, who was a transgender man who was attacked and murdered when he was very young, I believe he was 21.

Betty: And sorry, before you continue, is this a true story? Or is this a…

Quinn: Oh no, this is a true story. His story actually also inspired the movie Boys Don't Cry which I have not seen, but I have heard of, it was a 1999 Hilary Swank film. And it was a fictionalized story of, of his life and his death. His murder, as well as the murder of Matthew Shepard were two of the most high profile hate crimes that led to a re-evaluation of hate crimes and the way that especially hate crimes against LGBTQ people were sort of looked at and handled. And so this art piece, which I said before, it's called Brandon. It was an online, like website that had a narrative. It was kind of… it was actually the Guggenheim Museum’s first commissioned online piece. So it's actually like a really interesting piece of history here. This is in 1998 and 1999 was when this piece was created. And so it's this whole giant narrative on this website that also included like in-person installations and included like different discussion forums and included aspects of performance. It is a wide ranging piece of art that was created led by Cheang, but also like it also included input from lots of other kinds of people in institutions as well. It was actually recently restored like a couple of years ago, which was very interesting to me, in sort of commemoration of net art. And the whole point of the piece, not only to explore like specifically Brandon's life and his death, was also—it’s about these sort of ideas of like the way that people construct bodies online, the way that people construct bodies in real life. The way that oppression based on gender continues to exist, even while you're on the internet. So this goes back to a lot of things we talked about in the last episode, the tension between the utopian ideas of early cyber feminism, versus like the reality of you still carry your whole self on the, to the internet. And that has—we have not, not overcome that one.

Betty: So why do you have—I don't know if you're going to get to it, why do you have conflicting feelings about this one?

Quinn: Yeah, so I will say first of all, that I haven't been able to see, like, experience this full artwork obviously. Because it encompasses so much and I have also not gone through like a whole web experience for it or anything. This is another one that is extremely graphic. And honestly, I don't really want to. I feel conflicted about it in general, because on one hand, like this is a piece of, this is an art piece that is intended to like explore these ideas and explore these incredibly difficult ideas. And I completely believe that it intended to be like very respectful and honoring of Brandon. But it also just the entire thing feels… I mean, this is a very immature word, but it all feels very icky to me. Because like, this was a real guy who was murdered. And the artist is not, I believe she’s not trans, she's not publicly identified as trans at least. And she is queer. But it still feels like, it feels very weird to me. But again, you know, one more time, this was 1999, and the same time that this piece was coming out, like they made a movie about it starring Hilary Swank. So like by 1999 standards, this was like far and away, you know, progressive.

Betty: I’m looking at some of the previews on net art, I haven't gone onto this to fully experience it myself either. And I also don't know if I'm going to cause I just get really queasy looking at graphic things and again, just me, like hearing the story, like now that you mention it, I have heard of the story. I also haven't seen the movie Boys Don't Cry, but I have heard of this. I have heard of the story before and background is like, I actually lived in the LGBTQ village here in downtown Toronto for many years, and I do have some trans friends and I just know that, yeah, this is a struggle that obviously continues today with a lot of, a lot of even close friends of mine. And that's why for me, I don't know if I'm going to go look at this because I have, I have a similar—again, like I'm not trans and I'm, you know, that's, this is also not something that I even, I could say that I'm like an expert in obviously either. So I do think it's important. And I do think I like that the fact that this is, this is an online experience. It's not like, even though it's commissioned by the Guggenheim, it's not something that you have to go into a museum to experience. So that's why I do think it's pretty progressive for it’s time. And I like the fact that it is a story that can be told on the internet that can be accessible to everyone.

Quinn: And, and to speak a little bit more positively about it, because I do, you know, I have mixed feelings. I'm not just like hating on it. But as I said before, like I do believe that this was made like with the intention of being respectful and honoring his life, not of exploiting his life. And they, the artist seemed to be like conscious of that. And she wanted to like be respectful of his life and, and of the trans community. It's just, it's weird—it feels off to me in general because you know, there's so much art out there that deals with like incredibly personal, incredibly difficult things. And often like, the art that I'm seeing is stuff that's made by people that, who either experienced that, or are like examining things that are happening to people like within their identity groups and are relating to them. And so it just is like, weird when it's like, there's a little bit of a disconnect here. That being said this as an art piece in itself as like a non-linear structure, as of, of the way that it explores use of interactivity use of the internet is definitely very cool. It's definitely like a very interesting piece of cyber feminist art. And it also like, again for the time centering a trans story and centering this deconstruction of biological sex by the standards of 1999, like was, was a very progressive thing to do. And it was like—and the way that this piece examines these ideas and like, I am not interested in like consuming this quite graphic content at this moment in time, but the way that it doesn't shy away from the graphic content in terms of images, in terms of frankly discussing what actually happened and what he was put through I think is also important in that it goes there, basically. This is like above all else it feels like it is trying to be real. And it is trying to, through this kind of like cyber fragmented experience, give a truer look at… at the difficulty and of the importance of these stories and of these ideas because they aren't linear and they aren't easy.

Betty: I definitely think it’s—these are really important stories. And again, like, even though I say that, like I generally shy away from, you know, graphic imagery and things like that, I definitely would encourage like anyone who is interested in checking it out. Cause I, yeah, I definitely agree that just because a subject matter is difficult doesn't mean, you know, it's a story that shouldn't be told. And even though this is like, I think you were mentioning earlier that summer cyber feminism gets the criticism of not really taking on intersectionality and not taking on you know, being more than just about like women. Like this is about someone who's a trans man. At the very least this is not, this is not a part of this movement that's trans exclusionary.

Quinn: Well, that is going to be all for today. Thank you for chatting about these pieces with me, got a lot of complicated feelings about them and their sort of—and how they fit into both this period in art history, but also this period in gender politics and reflecting on something that, you know, like what these pieces are mostly within our lifetime…s. Lifetimes. [laughs]

Betty: They span the period between me and you from when I was alive to when you were alive and youngish.

Quinn: Yeah. So it's so interesting to see that even though these are like fairly recent, things have also changed so much and so rapidly because of social change, but also because of the technology since these were created. And for pieces that were focused on pushing the boundaries of culture and pushing the boundaries of the technology that was available at the time, they are such fascinating snapshots of these very particular years. 

Betty: Yeah, these are definitely super interesting. Thank you for sharing these with me. I'm like, I am a little bit disturbed, but also very glad that I was able to explore these pieces.

Quinn: Well, then my work here is done.

Betty: Yay! Disturbed, but glad.

Quinn: As we're wrapping up here, I want to tell you about another show on Relay FM that you might like, and that is a Top Four. Top Four is hosted by Marco and Tiff Arment. And it's a monthly show that is about opinions, lists, and loosely enforced rules. So in every episode, they pick a different topic and they rank their top four in that topic. It might be Pop-Tarts, it might be Pringles, it might be woodland creatures. They really just talk about whatever they want. It is such a fun show. You will argue with them as you listen to it, you will find yourself agreeing on certain things and absolutely horrified at some of their other opinions. I really recommend it.

Betty: Yeah, and the really good thing about Top Four is you can start listening at any episode. You don't need any context, so you can listen to this week's episode. You can go back six months ago and listen to whatever. They could talk about like instant coffee or card games, TV couples, apparently misheard Eddie Vetter lyrics, which is something that I'm actually very interested in. So I might look up that episode and go listen that.

Quinn: You can find Top Four at relay.fm/topfour or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you for listening to this episode of Pictorial, you can find our show notes at relay.fm/pictorial. And you can also find us on Twitter or Instagram @pictorialpod. You can also find me on Instagram @aspiringrobotfm.

Betty: And you can find me on Twitter or Instagram @articulationsv. And you can also find me on YouTube as ARTiculations. And speaking of YouTube, but we do upload these episodes to YouTube, usually a few weeks after the audio version is out. So this one we will be putting in some imagery. Again, it won't be too graphic, but if you're watching a YouTube version of this, you will have already seen some of the disclaimers. So I won't have to repeat it again. Thank you. 

Quinn: Thanks for listening, art enthusiasts!