Feminism 3.0: Praxis

MISS REPRESENTATION SCREENING TODAY, NOV 12 ON OWN NETWORK, 11:00 EST,

2011-11-12T06:34:00.000-08:00

Just a quick cross-post, tweet, FB share to get word out today for screening of Miss Representation. Will be showing on OWN at 11:00 EST. Set your dvr! Trailer looks great!

Multicultural America Media Projects: 2010-2011

2011-04-30T08:50:00.000-07:00

Just in time for UWM Institute of Service Learning's award ceremony honoring distinguished service learners, I put together a website that collected many of the student multimedia projects from this year's Multicultural America classes. Multicultural America (with media arts focus) has truly evolved from my first design of the course for the Cultures and Communities certificate program in 2005 (the course was then called FILM 150). It began as one small face to face seminar/lab integrating media arts theory/practice with community based service learning and is now a fully online, multiple sections (and very popular) course (now ART 150). I teach the fully online version, but still keep the commitment to service learning as well as theory/practice as you will see from our course projects. Shelleen Greene, my colleague at UWM has done great work on developing the face to face version for the Multicultural America class, by adding new critical/creative assignments on remix and digital storytelling. Shelleen will have some new projects to post next fall, and I look forward to seeing those (and will link). But I did want to note both our evolution of the class as well as our ongoing efforts to develop and reshape the class in line with the latest critical/creative tools and initiatives. Also I would be remiss if I did not note the incredible work of the Institute for Service Learning's work in developing the partners and set of best practices for us as we venture into this new area of research/teaching of online service learning. I also want to thank my new department home and colleagues in ART & DESIGN at UWM for being so incredibly supportive of the class and understanding the mission of arts and community engagement. I look forward to developing this class and others in line with our commitment to this emerging area in the arts.

The student projects are multimedia journals of their service learning experience, and the work here is uniformly excellent and inspiring. Here then is ART 150 MULTICULTURAL AMERICA, 2010-2011.

JR's TED Prize wish: Use art to turn the world inside out | Video on TED.com

2011-03-08T14:03:00.000-08:00

For International Women's Day! JR talks about his film WOMEN ARE HEROES as well as gives us much food for thought regarding and social justice.

Interview with Sasha Costanza-Chock

2011-03-07T11:15:00.000-08:00

Here's my latest NAMAC blog post. Topics are media literacy, media activism, new media curation.

Interview with Sasha Costanza-Chock

What Egypt Can Teach Us About (U.S.) Feminism

2011-02-24T19:57:00.000-08:00

As I reflect on the protests overtaking parts of Africa and the Middle East, I wonder, what would a feminist approach to these protests look like? Should we apply second-wave quota systems, counting the number of women who filled Tahrir Square and delimiting the roles they were allotted? Can feminism even be about this anymore since what once seemed a simple distinction - “men” v. “women” – is now a far richer terrain of fluid and novel identities?

In 2009, Iranian youth took to the streets en masse. They, like the residents of Cote d’Ivoire, were protesting the results of a rigged presidential election. Though Iranian students have been protesting in large number for years, these were the first protests to capture international attention. Why? Because they were largely organized through Twitter, Facebook, and the plethora of Iranian blogs currently online. News organizations were in fact more interested in the power of these social media tools than they were in dissecting these protests in great analytical detail by asking the deeper questions about what the Iranian people wanted and why they had not yet achieved it.

While the media may have been attracted to the “Twitter Revolution” for the wrong reasons, the connectivity that these social media tools allow can stand as a metaphor for a larger, more pressing connection: the connection of nation-states, economies, bodies. The connections of labor, of commerce, of agriculture. What happens in Egypt is not at all separate from what happens in the United States. In fact, some Egyptians believe that the nation’s protests are not only calling for an end to economic disparities, but that like the 1979 Revolution of Iran, they are also calling for an end to imperialistic rule by a puppet of the United States.

This, I believe, is where feminism must start. Not to just point the finger or watch from a cold distance, not just look out for the female heads in a crowd, but to ask why people are clamoring for change. What led to impoverished conditions? How have the powerful exploited the less powerful and how have those dynamics created the kind of quality of life that is no longer tolerable? How is the United States to blame? How can we, as individuals in the United States, as political bodies, as feminists with a history of fighting for change, become instruments in the fight against injustice? Not just gender injustice, but injustice across all intersections: class, nation-state, sexual orientation, literacy, access to digital technology, education, religion, and so on.

Feminism is in essence a tool through which we can deconstruct systems of power. Somewhere along the way, feminism became pigeon-holed as a man versus woman issue, perhaps a clever means of stultifying what has the potential to be a revolutionary paradigm. Rather than allow it its full scope of vision, its full incisive scope, feminism came to be about battles in individual domiciles, in individual office buildings. Certainly, these battles exist, but they are not distinct from, and are often symptoms of, other battles. Battles regarding access to resources. To land. To health care. To all that a human life needs in order to feel fulfilled, but often lacks due to inequitable distributions. It is our job to draw attention to these inequities, to unearth them, analyze them, and work to right them.

On a recent episode of Real Time with Bill Maher, Maher began a spirited debate with Tavis Smiley about Muslim men’s treatment of women. Maher insisted that Muslim men are pathologically patriarchal, that they are just simply “worse” than American men. Smiley was not convinced and tried to sway Maher away from “demonizing” Muslim men by arguing that men in the U.S. can be just as wretched as men anywhere else.

Somewhere in the middle of this stalemate, in a rare television moment, a (male) voice bellowed from the audience with enough force to interrupt the men duking it out on stage: “BILL! HAVE YOU SEEN WHAT HELLFIRE MISSILES DO TO MUSLIM WOMEN?” The rest of this speech is unintelligible because the voice belonged to someone in the audience, off-camera. Also, panelist Kevin Smith butted in with a mediocre joke that was not nearly as interesting as the audience member’s speech.

That speech, that’s the voice of feminism. While Smiley and Maher quibble over which country has more domineering men, this young man in the audience calls on the panelists to consider the interconnections between nations, how women’s lives are shaped not only by the husbands with whom they live, but by the men in the Pentagon who meet with chief executives and who make decisions about which communities should be the targets of drone attacks and with what frequency. This voice reminds us that women are victims of a larger global order that, at least from the vantage point of a concerned citizen, seeks only survival of the order rather than of the precious bodies within it. This voice reminds us that we cannot think about women’s lives in any one country as separate and apart from women’s lives in any other country. Nor can we think about women’s lives without thinking about the international politics and economics that control all of our lives, every day.

Sure, we know this all already. But how easily we forget. Just as the off-screen voice in Maher's studio was - kicking and screaming - carried out and away from the very microphones that could carry his voice, so too do we as feminists get carried out of purview. Sometimes, we even leave on our own. But as Sheryl Sandberg (COO of Facebook) points out, we as women must stay at the table, must keep our hands raised and our voices lifted as we speak truth to the system that hates to see its own nature reflected back. A nature that divides us along constructed lines so we forget how united we are in the struggles for increased justice, increased consciousness, increased compassion.

Who better to assert the fundamental, universal feminist power to re-unite than prominent Egyptian feminist and public intellectual, Dr. Nawal el-Sadaawi:

Remix and Media Literacy: An Interview with video artist Elisa Kreisinger

2011-01-31T11:49:00.000-08:00

I just started writing for a new series with NAMAC (National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture). I kicked off my contributions for the series with an interesting and fun interview with Elisa Kreisinger. We are talking on remix, feminism, and media literacy issues. I hope you enjoy!

Remix and Media Literacy: An Interview with video artist Elisa Kreisinger

About the NAMAC Bloggers

2011-01-14T17:09:00.000-08:00

Just signed on as a NAMAC blogger -- will be focused on media literacy, media activism, and emergent media forms/formats (especially transmedia). I should be getting my first post out there soon, and I am going to start out with an interview of remix artist, Elisa Kreisinger of Pop Culture Pirate, which should be a blast.

For more info on the NAMAC bloggers, check out these bios here:

About the NAMAC Bloggers

Brainquake Returns!

2010-10-25T17:03:00.000-07:00

In April 2010 Golbarg Bashi and Negar Mottahedeh started a movement they called Brainquake in celebration of women's lives and achievements. They have now started a YouTube channel where they plan a series of interviews to build on these earlier efforts. Here's the introductory video -- this looks promising and I look forward to viewing!

Social Media Week -- IML E- Corpse, an experiment in collaborative storytelling

2010-09-26T18:32:00.000-07:00

As part of Social Media Week, my students from USC's Institute for Multimedia Literacy participated in a collaborative storytelling event, an online exquisite corpse.

We crowd-sourced our basic structure and ground rules amongst the students taking part and got rolling. Students have produced some pretty cool installments so far and the project will be ongoing until Thursday of this week. We had a few technical glitches getting going and I guess wordpress was misbehaving at one point, but the story has unfolded pretty well. You can see the story up to now, right here.

Reclaiming the Archive, first interview with Suzanne Leonard available

2010-09-19T14:23:00.000-07:00

Reclaiming the Archive, first interview with Suzanne Leonard available

UP IN THE AIR and The End of "Filmmaking"

2010-07-27T13:18:00.000-07:00

I. The Moral Quandary

About halfway through Up in the Air, an anonymous African-Amercian woman whom George Clooney and Anna Kendricks have just fired tells them that there is a “beautiful bridge” close to her home, and that she now plans to go there and jump off of it.

In response to this, Anna Kendricks’ character, Natalie, has a moment. She staggers from the meeting room, shaken by this confrontation with authentic suffering. George Clooney as Ryan follows her out and assures her that this is just how the newly-fired talk; they never follow through, and don’t let it get to you.

The anonymous African-American woman is never to be seen again.

Now, about two-thirds of the way through the film, just as George Clooney’s Ryan is reaching the apex of his moral development, his boss, Jason Bateman comes to him with the news that someone named “Karen Barnes,” whom George/Ryan apparently fired on his last road trip, has committed suicide, and the company is facing some unanticipated consequences. Does this name mean anything to Ryan, the boss asks. Does he remember her, remember firing her, remember any comments she made that might have suggested what was to come?

Ryan shakes his head no, and on persistent questioning by the boss reiterates that this name means nothing to him.

The problem for me here is that, the way George Clooney performs this exchange with Jason Bateman, it is impossible for a viewer to tell what he is “really” thinking. Clooney maintains a perfectly blank visage through the entire scene, with no inflection tucked in—no clenched jaw, no glance downward, nothing for the audience to grab on to—that would let us know whether, in fact, he does know who Bateman is talking about, does remember the woman and her threat. And so, we cannot understand his motivation, or the meaning of this scene in the fabric of the story: is he stupid? Is he so morally awash that he truly wipes clean his memory slate after every firing, and “I’m going to jump off the bridge” registers with him no more than “you suck?” Is he nobly saving Jason Bateman and the company by pretending not to remember, and if so—why? Why, at this point in the film, when his character is supposed to be starting to get it, to feel the pangs of his fellow human beings, and have some longings of his own? Our narrative resumes, with the dead Karen Barnes no more than a blip on the radar screen of Ryan or the film.

That is the first problem with this film: It is glib. It is false. It is probably amoral.

Amoral? Yes. Do you remember the fuss made by those who love this film, about the interviews conducted by director Jason Reitman with actual people who had recently been fired? Those interviews are cut into the film as samples of real suffering, real pain, whenever George/Ryan and Anna/Natalie conduct their firing sessions.

But the interviews are not our story, they are not even, really, tangential to the story. They are like an alternative universe within the film—the story(s) that might have been told, but aren’t. Yes, George Clooney’s character is in the business of firing people. And yes, Jason Reitman was serendipitously lucky to be shooting his film when American economies were collapsing, so that these nameless former employees were available for interviewing and pasting onto the wallpaper of his film, thus bringing the aura of topicality to Reitman’s enterprise. But the story, the heart of this film, is about one man’s rootless lifestyle—and the fact that he fires people for a living has nothing to do with the story of his accumulation of frequent flyer miles, his romance with a fellow frequent flyer, his mentoring of Natalie, or even his niece’s wedding that almost doesn’t happen. He could just as easily be flying around the country selling moving boxes as firing people, and frankly the film would be more honest if that were the case, because then no one would have to care about Karen Barnes—but I do. (And, unless I missed someone, or unless there are some black TSA employees in the repeating scenes of airport security checks, the African-Americans among the interviewees are the only black people in the entire film.)

II. Un-pretty People

The second problem with all those real-life fired people, after the fact that they don’t really matter here any more than they do in their former corporations, is that they are not pretty. They are real people, and that is how we can distinguish them within the movie from the actors and actresses who inhabit Reitman’s story world. Now admittedly, this is tricky. A couple of times the newly-unemployed become actual bit characters in the film, and when that happens they are portrayed by real actors—but funny looking, character actors like Zach Galifianakis as “Steve,” and television’s J.K. Simmons as “Bob,” fire-ees who have complete scenes. (I was unable to find anyone credited with playing “Karen Barnes” on imdb—another sign of her erasure.) In this way the unattractive professional actor blends with the real person who re-enacts his or her actual firing for Reitman’s camera, dragging the film further into murky moral territory. Simmons and Galifianakis use their specific imperfect looks perfectly, as the skilled performers they are, whereas the stream of non-professionals simply offer up their uneven teeth, their blotched complexions, their un-made faces—and their authentic reactions to being let go.

They are not the only Un-pretty People in the film. Interestingly, George Clooney as Ryan seems to come from a whole family of the Un-pretty, thus raising questions about his paternity (we never see his character’s parents; I can’t remember whether they are supposed to be deceased, or are simply unaccounted for). But Ryan’s family is well-represented by his sister Kara, her daughter Julie, and Julie’s fiancé, Jim. These people all live in the dairy state of Wisconsin, and the niece’s impending wedding to Jim is one of the film’s plot strands—confronting another couple’s commitment is an opportunity for our hero, Ryan, to contemplate his own rootlessness and detachment, blah blah blah. It seems that Ryan has been largely absent from his sister’s and niece’s lives, so his arrival at the rehearsal dinner festivities is a big deal for the family and for the narrative. Kara is a plain woman with a heavily-lined face. Julie and Jim both sport unruly dark hair, are overweight, and share a certain lack of symmetry in their faces (Julie has a decidedly lopsided mouth) that is intended, I think, to make them adorable in our eyes while simultaneously poking fun at Wisconsiners.

III. George Clooney

At the center of it all stands George Clooney. George Clooney: now 49 years old, an Academy Award winner, a staple of American pop culture since the early 1990s, a man associated with liberal politics and good causes, handsomeness, womanizing, all-around good times and being cool. As has been observed of him many times, he is the next generation’s version of what Warren Beatty was to an earlier public. The problem that Clooney’s character, Ryan Bingham, confronts in the film is, as I’ve said earlier, one of alienation from his fellow humans. He flies all the time, and he loves it—he loves the anonymity, the constant movement, the perpetual excuse not to be tied down. It is supposed to be a real problem—a grave problem, a problem of loneliness that we, the viewers, can universally feel. But as personified by George Clooney, it doesn’t look all that bad. It looks carefree, it looks exciting, the movement and the anonymity are alluring to those of us who live those tied down lives that Ryan avoids. It is, ultimately, a glamorous looking and seductive lifestyle because it is embodied by a glamorous man. So what’s the real message? What is the moral center of this film?

Clooney’s presence brings a layer of irony to the film that the filmmakers do not seem to comprehend, or to harness. It simply escapes them, lending instead the air of amorality. Remember that when Ryan travels to Wisconsin for his niece’s wedding, there is a clash of the Pretty (Clooney) and the Un-pretty (Kara, Julie, Jim—basically anyone who’s in the Wisconsin portion of the film). It’s those Un-pretty people who are making good choices in life—getting married, working hard—Ryan sees that, he longs for it in some nebulous way, and we, too, are intended to identify with these people and to applaud their choices. But then, at the last possible moment—the morning of the wedding—Jim gets cold feet. And who is called in to bring him back around? Ryan. What are we to make of the scene where the pudgy Jim confesses his doubts to Ryan (in a litany of what happens to you once you are married; it is, admittedly, hilarious) and Ryan talks him back into going through with it? Who is the winner in this scene—the Un-pretty Jim, or the perpetually handsome Ryan, who will enjoy the wedding and then walk away from this snowbound Wisconsin life?

IV. Vera Farmiga

Some time before the fired woman threatens to jump off her bridge, the true plot complication has appeared in the film, in the form of Vera Farmiga as Alex, Ryan’s fellow frequent flyer. She is Ryan’s romantic interest and the story element that causes him to begin questioning his mobile lifestyle. Their relationship is based not only on great sex (she has managed to do it in an airplane bathroom, something which Ryan has not been able to accomplish, and it is this revelation that first heats up their relationship), but also on a mutual understanding of each other’s lifestyles and that slowly dawning realization that what they have between them upends what has come before. But Alex only exists from Ryan’s point of view, leaving plenty of room for the surprise twist about Alex: when Ryan decides he’s ready to commit he shows up unannounced at Alex’s home, where it is revealed through background noise that she has a husband and more than one child. Ryan is shocked—he blanches, he stumbles backward down her stoop. He has the moment that Anna Kendrick had earlier, when the fired woman threatened suicide.

Vera Farmiga is, naturally, another pretty person and an adept performer. In the film, all of her signifiers are about sexy intelligence: her straight, bob-cut hair, her conservative-sexy business outfits along with her spike heels, her shiny lipgloss and the many secret close-ups of her where we see, unbeknownst to Ryan, that she is falling hard for him, thinking about what this could do to her life. But once it is revealed that she is leading the biggest double-life of all, how are we to feel about her? And how does she even pull off such a complicated, full time ruse? The improbability of her double-lifestyle does not seem to matter for the narrative, or the ultimate meaning of this film. Again, she and her secret are merely tantalizing plot devices. For one thing, she is superwoman, and she must be the greatest super-compartmentalizer of all time. She seems to be out on the road almost as much as Ryan, yet there is never a complication from back home. How many children does she have? We don’t really know. How does she do it all, and stay in such great shape at the same time? What form of birth control does she use, since a woman, unlike famous two-family fathers such as Charles Kuralt and Charles Lindbergh, will be immediately betrayed by her changing body if she gets pregnant? After the revelation of her other life, Alex has just one more phone call with Ryan, in which she says that she thought he understood the rules, and if he wants to follow them then he should feel free to call her again. He probably won’t, we’re left to think. But at the end of film, after his metaphorical journey is over, Ryan is back where he started—about to board a plane, still caught up in the air. And for those of us who are largely earth-bound, it looks pretty damned glamorous, a life of meaningless sex and endless perks. I do not believe that this was the point that the filmmakers intended—but whatever was the point, it has been lost in a confused haze of professional acting by attractive people and real, unacted anguish by the anonymous interviewees.

V. The End of “Filmmaking”

Those of us who work in the film school industry swim in the gulf between established channels of film production and the ever-expanding, internet-and-cheap-equipment-driven world of new independent and “DIY” filmmaking. Jason Reitman is a second generation director, the son of Ivan Reitman, who is standing on the established side of the gulf as the coastline is eroding. From that side of the shore, I can understand why this project looked appealing, and why casting George Clooney seemed an intelligent choice. An intelligent actor for an intelligent project, adapted from a novel by an intelligent writer, Walter Kirn. Indeed, the early, warm critical reception given the film underscored all this intelligence, along with the much-discussed topicality of the interviews.

But it is these very elements that will, I think, turn Up in the Air into a dinosaur very shortly, and which illustrate why conventional filmmaking and distribution is on the wane. In five years, everything that made Up in the Air so 2009 will make it seem…..so 2009. The topicality and the intelligence are a trap, because what looks smart today can look stupid (dated, hokey, irrelevant, unfashionable, boring) tomorrow. It’s a good old-fashioned story, with a central, male main character and an attractive romantic complication. But the irony and the edges of the story are pulling hopelessly away from the center, and the center will not hold. The fragmentation of production and especially distribution opens up the possibility of expanding points-of-view. The points of view that are shut down in this film—Karen Barnes’, Alex’s family, Jim and Julie’s, those of all the other anonymous fire-ees—could be easily opened up in another format. Why tell this story, with this star? Much as George Clooney harkens back to an earlier version of Warren Beatty, so the film invokes the ghost of many “intelligent” films of the 1970s featuring an alienated hero (most likely, Beatty). But that was before the explosion of irony in popular culture and the explosion of economic suffering, moral angst and uncertainty that currently engulf us. I do not care very much about Ryan Bingham and his “problems,” and in all honesty I suspect that not many viewers cared about him, other than film reviewers who also fly a lot. But I do care deeply about “Karen Barnes” and all the unnamed interviewees in this film, and I wish that they had been given cameras, for that is where the real story lay.

Fair Use Victories on the DMCA | Center for Social Media

2010-07-26T14:19:00.000-07:00

reposting from Center for Social Media at American University. Good news for remixers, doc filmmakers, and all cultural workers!

Fair Use Victories on the DMCA | Center for Social Media

Bridging the Creative/Critical Divides

2010-07-19T13:58:00.000-07:00

Great Discussion over at Arts Journal all this week on issues concerning artists, arts and technology, and creative rights. There are 22 guest bloggers from artists/media makers, policy folks, and academics like myself. I was fortunate to be one of those invited to blog. Check out the blog all this week and participate/comment! The above link takes you to ArtsJournal's main page - to go directly to the group blog, see first entry below or go here.

Bridging the Creative/Critical Divides

Live Blog - "District 9" and "Avatar"

2010-05-04T06:35:00.000-07:00

Professor Shelleen Greene set up this live blog for students from our Multicultural America classes and my Concepts in Media Production course. We had very lively and engaged students participating -- we were all typing furiously to get our thoughts in there. We would love to experiment more with live blogging as part of "virtual classroom" as we could easily see the potential. CoverItLive is a very user-friendly and *free* software that I would highly recommend to anyone wanting to try out for a class. Thanks to all who participated and thanks to Shelleen for organizing and uploading here. DJZOE

Live Blog! District 9 and Avatar: Film 150 Spring 2010

The Negarponti files: #Brainquake and Boobquake: Reflections on two feminist social media campaigns

2010-04-29T14:15:00.000-07:00

The Negarponti files: #Brainquake and Boobquake: Reflections on two feminist social media campaigns

Strategy for Social Change Initiatives: Shirts and Boobs

2010-04-29T14:11:00.000-07:00

A couple of cross postings here on the recent Brain/Boob quake "face-off" that just went spinning through the social media orbit this past Monday, April 26. First, Lina Srivastava, my colleague from transmedia activism sets the stage for us and the following blog entry are post "quake" thoughts from the Brainquake organizer, the always amazing and inspiring Negar Mottahedeh.

Strategy for Social Change Initiatives: Shirts and Boobs

Filmmaker Summit -- Live Blog

2010-01-23T09:53:00.001-08:00

Filmmaker Summit (USC/IML stream)

Multicultural Milwaukee, Multimedia Explorations, Fall 2010

2009-12-31T14:46:00.001-08:00

Just a very brief update on an action packed fall semester of student praxis work in new media that spanned everything from multiculturalism to film noir to the war in Afghanistan. First up I wanted to link to work from UW-Milwaukee where my students worked on a Multicultural Milwaukee class site.

My UWM film noir students also were amazing, working on script treatments, storyboards, and even short videos that critically reworked and examined the genre. I hope to post some images from those projects once the end of term dust settles.

I also was fortunate to be involved with USC's Institute of Multimedia Literacy as visiting faculty this semester where we worked on remixes of Robert Greenwald's recent documentary Rethink Afghanistan as a part of a pioneer collaborative venture initiated by Mr. Greenwald Brave New Educators. I will be posting some student work from that project soon, but just wanted to make note of the link to the UWM site, which also includes a link to Prof. Shelleen Greene's related course on Multicultural America as well as past ventures in our collaboration with the Cultures and Communities program.

Best wishes for Happy New Year to all, stay tuned for more postings soon!

Notes on Narrative

2009-08-03T15:32:00.000-07:00

Recently I’ve had the opportunity to reflect on the impending “death” of conventional (read: three act, mainstream, centrist) narrative, and I have come to this conclusion: It is not dying. It is not in any danger of dying. Is it, in fact, stronger than ever? Probably not. But it is vigorous. It is flexible and adaptive, and it continues to thrive in the 21^st century.

At DIY days in Philadelphia, I listened to one speaker who likened conventional three act structure to the male orgasm ( a conceit I’ve heard before), and another who discussed all the ways that viewers can interact with a film after it’s over. But in the end that just seemed to be about gaming. If you’re into it, fine, but if you’re not—well the film is still there, and what about it? How does all that gaming affect the creative process of the filmmaker, the artist? Does one take the gamers’ results and work them into the next film, into some new product—a film, a text, a performance, a creation? Or do the games, the “interactivity” merely spin on and on, generating, perhaps, a new “community” of gamers with overlapping interests, and perhaps some fan fiction, some fan-something coming into existence, but existing none the less parallel to the original creator? The speaker who likened story structure to male orgasm wanted to replace it with a “sacred circle” into which we can all step and create some sort of new, democratic?, narrative structure.

This summer I have seen three films which demonstrate both the flexibility and the durability of conventional narrative: The Hangover, Orphan, and The Hurt Locker—radically different films, but each with a strong narrative spine. In The Hangover, the narrative predictability is delayed, thus making the pay off all the more enjoyable once our initial expectations are finally, finally met—but not until the very end of the film. Partly, conventions are toyed with simply by the non-chronological telling of the story, but more by the what-happened that is the story’s center—and the delay in answering that question as long as is possible in a theatrical film. In fact, if you leave the theatre before the credits are over, you still won’t know the (hilarious) answer to that question. It’s fun because it does what we expect, and exactly what we want it to—and yet, not on our expected time. The film plays with us, and allows us to have fun with it, too. As for Orphan, here we encounter a prime—one might say “classical” in all the senses of that word—example of a narrative which is utterly linear. A regular old, Hollywood film. And yet, again, completely satisfying in the manner in which it meets expectations while still offering plenty of surprises and rich content (I am aware that many viewers have objected to the theme of this film. I, for one, found it a hoot.) In the opening scene, our heroine, Kate, has a nightmare about the unborn child she lost. In scene two, Kate talks to her husband about her anxiety. In scene three she talks to her therapist about their upcoming plans to adopt, and about her recovery from alcoholism. And so on—Kate is, I believe, in every scene of the film, and one by one the scenes construct her story, her backstory (tons of backstory for poor Kate), and the closing in of the walls around her by the evil orphan and her numbskull husband, until the final, inevitable, multiple twists and extremely violent conclusion. Totally satisfying.

Then there is The Hurt Locker, Kathryn Bigelow’s brilliant exploration of the external and internal lives of EOD technicians in Iraq. The film opens with a title, a quote from Chris Hedges, about the drug of war and its dangers. And off we go—into the world of our EODs, during the last 38 days of their deployment in Baghdad. The life is monotonous, yet terrifying almost beyond imagining. Over and over, they venture into bomb searches, find them or don’t find them, and successfully dismantle them or don’t dismantle them. In the first sequence of the film, Thompson, who we think is the “leader,” is killed off, then replaced by James, the wild man who cannot get enough of this work. Why this opening sequence? Because it demonstrates, walking us through, step by step, what a bomb dismantling is supposed to look like, establishing the template which James then repeatedly violates, setting into place the conflict between his character and his comrades Sanborn and Wills. But mostly this conflict simmers below the surface, never motivating the “plot,” and only a couple of times boiling over into any sort of explicit action in the film. For most of the film, the plot is dictated simply by the daily lives and duties of the characters. And then….very late, far beyond the moment for the “first plot point”, something happens which deeply effects the internal life of the hotdogger James, and at that point, we come in close to him and follow his emotional arc for the remainder of the film. In other words, up until this point we seem to have almost escaped the constraints of three act structure, with a story about our three guys and some other guys too, and then—surprise!—the narrative structure that has been hiding in plain sight all along suddenly shapes the film and brings it, again, to a satisfying, provocative, incredibly moving ending.

At DIY days, one of the major beefs about conventional narrative seemed to be that it’s so 20^th, or 19^th, or 18^th century. This is a complaint which I frequently hear from my students, too, teaching screenwriting at Temple University. Everyone just seems to be waiting for it to die of its own accord, to go the way of the typewriter or the phone booth. But in class, something happens every semester which provides its own, blessed, teaching moment: inevitably, one student writes a script which is unabashedly conventional and hews close to perfectly crafted three acts. And inevitably, that is the script that, in our workshopping sessions, the whole class enjoys the most and always agrees is the best. Then it is up to me to point out the conventionality of the script in question, and then—my favorite rite of passage for students—silence falls in the classroom and their collective mouths fall open as they realize—yes!—conventional three act structure is still around because it still works. It satisfies us. It elucidates some aspect of life—no matter how small, or trivial, or unrealistic. The tightness of the form gives us a sense of control over our lives, our world, our stories—and that is not a bad thing, it is a good thing which offers the possibility of meaning in a world where meaning is often hard to come by.

Gaming is great, if you’re into it. And so is fan fiction, and so is product development, and so are all the sprouting alternative ways of interacting with existing stories and creating new stories. But they are not the next wave in narrative, and they are not the phenomenon that will replace conventional narrative. They are parallel, and that is just fine. Narrative is here to stay for a long, long time.

As a postscript, I want to mention the venue where I see more possibility for evolving narrative forms, and that is the newly fascinating world of series television. It didn’t start just with The Sopranos, (Strangers with Candy is a great, early example of this narrative subversion), but since then complex long-term narratives have burst forth all over the cable universe, from The Wire through Mad Men and my personal favorite, Breaking Bad. With the release of Petyon Place on DVD just this week, perhaps it is a ripe time to consider the possibilities of the television form for expanding conventional film narrative. But that is for another post.

DIY DAYS, Philadelphia, August 1, 2009

2009-07-23T09:15:00.000-07:00

From our friends at The Workbook Project a wonderful resource for all things media in digital age, comes the announcement of DIY DAYS in Philadephia, August 1, 2009. I will be attending the event and very excited to see the line-up of speakers engaging with issues around new forms of creativity, distribution, funding, technology, across an array of areas (film, music, gaming, design).

As part of DIY Days, Lina Srivastava and I will co-presenting a workshop at the conference on "transmedia activism" -- using cross-platform strategies for social change.

For more info on the conference see below. Hope to see you there!

DIY DAYS COMES TO PHILADELPHIA ON AUGUST 1ST
FREE CONFERENCE FOR THOSE WHO CREATE
WITH A DAY OF SPECIAL GUEST SPEAKERS & NETWORKING

(Philadelphia, PA – 07/13/09) The WorkBook Project and PIFVA present DIY DAYS Philadelphia on Saturday, August 1st at UArts on the 17th floor of the Terra Building. DIY DAYS is a FREE day of talks and networking centered on how to fund, create, distribute and sustain from your creative work. After a successful first year that included stops in LA, San Francisco, Boston, NYC and London, DIY DAYS returns with a series of day long conferences for creatives that enable the sharing of work and ideas while providing an important networking outlet with industry innovators.

Many of those working in film, music, design, gaming and software development wonder how to sustain themselves in challenging economic times. How does one monetize their creative work and get the word out? DIY DAYS aims to answer these questions with a day of speakers, panels, case studies, roundtable discussions and workshops presented by an impressive list of innovative thinkers and doers.

Acclaimed author and filmmaker, Douglas Rushkoff (Life Inc., Get back in the box: innovation from the inside out) will open the conference with a keynote on storytelling. Other speakers include Scott Kirsner (Friends, Fans and Followers), Dan Goldman (Shooting War), Lance Weiler (Head Trauma, The Last Broadcast). Michael Monello (co-founder of Campfire Media & Blair Witch Project producer), Brian Clark (GMD Studios) Esther B. Robinson (ArtHome), Ana Domb (MIT) Arin Crumley (Four Eyed Monsters), Scott Macaulay (Producer Gumo, Raising Victor Vargas, editor Filmmaker Mag), Don Argott (Rock School), Eugene Martin (Diary of a City Priest), Alex Johnson (WBP Labs), Anita Ondine (STM) Brian McTear (record producer Miner Street Studios), Geoff DiMasi (founder of P’unk Avenue),and many more.

Lance Weiler, a resident of the greater Philadelphia area and founder of the WorkBook Project and DIY DAYS explains the genesis for the project. “DIY DAYS is an attempt to pull back the curtain on a once closed industry - to share the process of what it takes to make work and sustain from one’s creative efforts. Philadelphia has so many talented people working in different areas, and our hope is that DIY DAYS can help to bring some of them together and, maybe in the process, spark some new collaborations.”

The conference runs from 8:30am to 6:30pm on Saturday, August 1st and will be followed directly by an after party/ mixer to be held at the Brandywine Workshop located at 730 S. Broad Street.

Registration is now open http://diydaysphilly.eventbrite.com but space is limited.

For more information and a full program visit http://www.diydays.com. For more on the WorkBook Project visit http://workbookproject.com.

Lance Weller is available for interviews.

Press Contact:

Julia Pontecorvo, Conference Coordinator
Email: julia.pontecorvo@gmail.com
201-693-3210

NAMAC Conference August 26-29, 2009, BOSTON

2009-07-11T13:51:00.000-07:00

The National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture, NAMAC, will be holding their conference August 26-29, 2009 in Boston. The organization holds these events every other year and they are not to be missed bringing together a diverse array of media makers, activists, scholars, and policy makers. I attended the 2007 conference in Austin and really had my eyes opened about the changing media landscape as well as met amazing people. You should check out NAMAC's website as the conference program is still unfolding. The NAMAC site is a great resource for all those interested in media arts and policy.

From IIACI: Jules Engel documentary

2009-06-06T18:03:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone:

Just wanted to let everyone know about the documentary in the works from Janeann Dill (our kindred spirit in praxis) of The Institute for Interdisciplinary Art and Creative Intelligence. The documentary, currently under production, is part of a much larger project exploring the work of the experimental artist, Jules Engel. The Jules Engel Project will include a film, book, and website, and I would encourage everyone to take a look at the Institute's site for more info on this very cool project. Below is a clip from her documentary -- Enjoy!

Open Video Conference, NYC JUNE 19-20, 2009

2009-05-26T18:15:00.000-07:00

The Open Video Conference in NYC, June 19-20, 2009 should be a great event bringing together artists, activists, academics, tech types, and assorted culture jammers. It will be an opportunity to discuss issues around access, fair use, obstacles and vehicles to collaboration, decentralization, and democracy in the area on online video. Lots of cool speakers are lined up including: Clay Shirky (NYU), Yochai Benkler (Harvard's Berkman Center), Ted Hope (Film producer, Adventureland, Brett Gaylor (RIP Manifesto), Lance Weiler (The Workbook Project), and Sam Gregory, Program Director of Witness.

On the Saturday morning of the conference (June 20), Lina Srivastava, Lotje Sodderland (Planet of Slums, a multi-authored web documentary in production), and myself will be leading a workshop on transmedia activism: how to use cross-media platforms in social activist campaigns.

It should be a exciting event with many of the innovators in the online video arena packed in this two day session. Hope to see you there!

2009-05-26T15:00:00.001-07:00

Check out this great video on Fair Use! This issue came up many times this semester as we were working on the Multicultural America class blogs, and I think the video would have been a wonderful quick introduction to topic for my students -- clear and concise as well as an advocate for importance of using found materials in our creative and critical projects.

video platform video management video solutions free video player

Computers and Writing Conference 2009: Online Sessions Feb 17 - March 1

2009-02-24T18:12:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone -- this is just a very quick note to point out a conference going on right now (and which I will be participating in Sunday, March 1). The Computers and Writing Conference has some online sessions currently running through both synchronous and asynchronous events that you might want to check out here.

There are all sorts of cool things from blogs to wikis to Second Life sessions on teaching with new media tools. To top that off, all online events are FREE!
On Sunday, March I, there is a afternoon full of interesting panels at the New Media Consortium's Conference Center in SL, which you can find here.

Here's a list of the day's events, starting off with Virginia Kuhn and Holly Willis, who are both from USC's Institute of Multimedia Literacy, and yours truly.

Sunday, March 1: Noon to 3 pm PST//3:00-6:00 pm EST

12:00-1:30 pm PST//3:00-4:30 pm EST
Breaking Down Classroom Walls: Media for Social Change
Virginia Kuhn, University of Southern California
Vicki Callahan, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Holly Willis, University of Southern California

1:30-2:00pm PST//4:30-5:00 pm EST
Teaching Business Writing in Second Life: Using a Virtual World to Facilitate
Angela M. Rogers, Clemson University

2:00-2:30 pm PST//5:00-5:30 pm EST
Technical Challenges Educators Face Integrating New Technologies
Ruth Couch, Owens Community College

2:30-3:00 pm PST//5:30-6:00 pm EST
Second Reiff: Architectural Investigations in 3D
Mark Frohn, w-i-s-e.net
Sascha Glasl, RWTH Aachen School of Architecture

3:00 pm PST//6:00 pm EST
Visit to IML Honors Program graduate Matthew Lee’s SL space, Rivenscryr

For more info on the Computers and Writing Conference including the face to face conference, June 18-21, 2009, see:
http://writingprogram.ucdavis.edu/cw2009/overview.htm

FINAL SESSION

2009-02-13T12:40:00.000-08:00

Final Session

Making Your Media Matter, Afternoon Session

2009-02-13T10:04:00.000-08:00

Making Your Media Matter, Afternoon Session

Making Your Media Matter

2009-02-13T07:16:00.000-08:00

Making Your Media Matter

Update on MULTICULTURAL AMERICA class multimedia site!

2009-01-08T06:23:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone, when last we left our ongoing adventures in technology and education, my Multicultural America's final class project, a multimedia "archive" for our community partner, Kids Matter, Inc. had just emerged from Google limbo. I wanted to update folks on how things were going.

We might have a few more tweaks and additions, but we finally went "live" with the site yesterday and you can check out here.

I am really proud of my class and all we worked through this term, both as scholars and as media makers. Most of us knew very little about foster care when we started the semester, but we definitely increased our awareness and knowledge on that front -- truly an eye opening and life changing event for many of us. The work of Kids Matter, Inc as advocates for children's rights was inspiring and indeed humbling.

On the technical front, we gave the new(ish) Google Sites a spin. It promises to be an easier space for these sorts of collaborative projects than Blogger, which is designed more for single and chronological posting (you can set up to do more than that, obviously, but certainly not "out of the box"). That said, not sure if I am going to use Google Sites again this term as it still seems rather "in process" and the collaborative aspect does lend itself to potential formatting meltdowns if not everyone is working at same skill level. The temporary shutdown of the website for a couple of days right before the final project was due also did not endear me to this new software. Ultimately though, everything worked and looks good, so I am still thinking this over as we gear up for another round of Multicultural America and our next "archival" project this semester.

Hope you get a chance to take a look at the site!

Making Your Media Matter Conference, Center for Social Media, Feb 12-13, 2009

2009-01-06T10:30:00.000-08:00

The Center for Social Media at American University is having its 5th annual Making Your Media Matter Conference, Feb 12-13, 2009. It has a great focus on the connections between ethics, aesthetics, and funding for media makers -- an important issue for all of us working in media during these tough economic times. The conference features keynotes by the noted documentary film makers, George Stoney and Gordon Quinn. Sessions planned include: a special focus on the often perilous balance between money and mission in social issue media (speakers include, Danny Alpert, Executive Producer of See3 and Kindling Group, Julie Goldman, founder of Cactus Three Films, Diana Barrett of the Fledgling Fund and Alyce Myatt, Executive Director of Grantmakers in Film + Electronic Media); a panel on outreach (panelists include, Andrew Mer of Snagfilms, Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar, film makers of Made in LA; Scott Kirsner, author of CinemaTech; Wendy Levy, Director of Creative Programming of the Bay Area Video Coalition), and a session on art, ethics, and mission (with Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine, film makers of War Dance, Cara Mertes, Director of the Sundance Documentary Film Program, Thomas Allen Harris, Director of Chimpanzee Productions, Sky Sitney, Programming Director of SILVERDOCS).

Here's a link for more information on this important event.

By the way, the website for the Center for Social Media is a great resource for those of us interested in Media Literacy education, with all kinds of information on fair use and public policy issues related to media.

Site to Check Out: Institute for Interdisciplinary Art and Creative Intelligence

2008-12-30T09:00:00.000-08:00

Here's a cool new site to check out, the Institute for Interdisciplinary Art and Creative Intelligence that is very much in spirit with our feminism 3.0 mission of connecting the creative and critical, or as noted on the site a commitment to engage "the intuitive and the intellectual in simultaneity." The Institute's Director is the artist/scholar, Jeananne Dill, who will be offering seminars on creativity through the site. Also of interest on the site is a link to a forthcoming project/site on the artist and filmmaker, Jules Engle.

We welcome all of these exciting and innovative efforts to forge new paths in theory/practice/research/archives/education so a big shout out to IIACI! Below is an image from Professor Dill's film, Paris is a Woman.

Adventures in Praxis

2008-12-14T13:45:00.001-08:00

Coming down the homestretch for the semester here at UWM and my Multicultural Amercia class was given the ultimate challenge as they were working on their final projects -- an online archive devoted to the child's advocacy group, Kids Matter Inc. . Using the fairly new and usually nifty app, Google Site, somehow the class was trapped in a spam filter that shut down the entire site ONE DAY BEFORE the classroom presentations of their work. We all had a collective gasp and kept working and looks like the site is now emerging from the Google limbo intact. We are still working away on our collective project given the mini setback, but I wanted to give a shout out to my UWM students' resilience and good humor throughout the experience.

I ask a lot from my students in the class, building basic to mid range multimedia making skils, media analysis, critical skills on multicultural issues, AND a service learning experience. I am excited to see their final projects and the archive completed. Their earlier assignment, a photo essay and interview, demonstrated enormous self-reflection as well as concern and respect for their subjects. I have learned so much from my students this semester and just wanted to send them a big thank you in this blog post. I will put a link up here when the archive is available, but in the meantime here's to our adventures in praxis.

A big thanks is especially directed to our course tech assistant, Dale Kaminski, who labored all afternoon creating a parallel website for the class and then received a note from Google informing us of our release from exile.

Foto.Synthesis -- Social Justice Film Showcase!

2008-11-30T10:55:00.000-08:00

Hey all -- From our friends at University of Arizona we have news of Foto-Synthesis, a student run film showcase dedicated to issues of social justice. The festival is open to undergrad, grad, community college students. The deadline is February 16, 2009.

Here are some details:

REQUIREMENTS FOR SUBMISSIONS:
• Topic must focus around an issue of
social justice, for instance how things
like race, ethnicity, gender identity,
ability, class, religion, sexual
orientation, nationality, etc. relate to
health, law, policy, economics, art, and
other social institutions and themes
• Submission open to undergraduate
and graduate students at four year
universities or 2 year community
colleges, from all departments and
areas of study
• Film must be submitted in DVD format:
DVD clearly marked with title, name of
filmmaker, running time, which will be
kept in a permanent file
• Documentary, experimental, narrative,
animation, live action features and
shorts accepted
• Please include the informational sheet,
filled out in full, with your submission:
Download the sheet at our website,
www.u.arizona.edu/~ksad
• Submissions must be postmarked by
February 16, 2009.

Submissions must be mailed to:
Katelyn Sadler, Room 232
1000 N. Park Ave.
Tucson, AZ 85719

To learn more, email ksad@email.arizona.edu
or visit the website at
www.u.arizona.edu/~ksad

Upcoming Events

2008-09-27T05:53:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone -- Vicki Callahan signing on this Saturday morning. I have been a bit MIA here as I have been working on other parts of the fem 3.0 website: the live blog, a podcast with the artist Cecelia Condit (check it out, a really wonderful insight into her artistic process). I will be posting in next couple of weeks about conferences I will be attending: IMAGINING AMERICA (in LA, Oct 2-4); FLOW (Austin, Oct 9-11) and THE CONVERSATION: THE FUTURE OF CINEMA, GAMES, AND ONLINE VIDEO. I have some links on the page so check these events out. I am excited to have the opportunity to hear all the ideas out there on new media tools and the transformation it is producing.

I had a productive summer with lots of travel and of particular interest was a trip to the BADLANDS and Lakota country. Off the beaten path housed in small trailer was the Lakota Visitor's Center to the Badlands National Park. I had the good fortune to enter into the park from this direction due to a hotel worker's information that this was the best way into the park rather than the "main entrance." The area was minus the tourist cabins and gift shop we see at the "official" site and not far from Wounded Knee. To get to the Lakota center you travel down "Bombing Run Road," which is land the US government took from the community for practice bombing runs in WWII. There are still warnings to leave any potential unexploded projectiles alone.

On a much more inspiring note, within the Lakota Visitor Center was a wonderful media archive of the history of the region. Photographs and text told of the community's resilient efforts to maintain their culture and their language over the years despite external interference. The Lakota Center is great tribute to the community's spirit and a wonderful example of an explicit counter history of the region (the "official" center focuses on geology and other scientific/technological domains, with little on the people in the area).

One last image from this stunning landscape.

YouTube and Rogue Wave Feminism

2008-05-02T11:35:00.000-07:00

Kathleen Sweeney here!

The term Rogue Wave Feminism came to me after attending the WAM! conference at MIT at the end of March 2008, which brought 600 multi-age, multicultural women (and some men) under the big tent of journalism, media, women and activism. This conference has been in exisitence for five years now, the brainchild of the former executive director of the Cambridge, MA bookstore/community center/activist site, Center for New Words. It occurred to me that the very multi-platform atemporal nature of Internet, blog/vlogosphere communities renders the chalk-in-the-sand delineation between feminism generations obsolete. The intergenerational inspiration matrix of WAM! reflects this rogue sensibility in which activism can be inspired by historical evidence of movements from the First Wave, Second Wave and Third Wave but also reverberates between these ideologies and occasionally rides a wild tsunami over all the waves. In fact Rogue Wave feminism on the Internet has a possibility to transform media making practices across gender lines as an end run around corporate media's celluloid ceilings. Can YouTube uploading have an impact on the images out there of women and girls, or do we need our own Girl-i-vision network on the Web?

I tossed out the term Rogue Wave feminism at the recent Console-ing Passions Conference hosted by UC Santa Barbara's Film and Media Studies Department, and some girl-pirates of the waves seemed kindred with the language. Surf's up, girls!

Email me if you have some thoughts about this: video-text@verizon.net or check out my blog: maidenusamuseblogspot.com.

To situate me, I make media and teach media as a video artist, visiting artist (NEA residences at Reel Grrls and other projects at DIA:Beacon) and Adjunct Professor (The New School most recently)....I recently wrote Maiden USA: Girl Icons Come of Age, a book that explores Girl Culture since the 90s.

Conference on Cultural Diversity in the Curriculum, UW System, April 17-18, 2008

2008-05-01T10:08:00.000-07:00

A report from my trek to the conference on "Cultural Diversity in the Curriculum" held by the University of Wisconsin's system-wide Institute on Race and Ethnicity at the UW-Milwaukee campus. It was an instructive conference from the first evening's keynote address by Kevin Kumashiro of the University of Illinois-Chicago and the Center for Anti-Oppressive Education to the many fine panels focused on the theoretical and practical details of teaching about cultural diversity and social justice issues. Dr. Kumashiro's remarks on the different lenses that both teachers and students bring to the classroom were particularly instructive for heightening our awareness to the multiple perspectives and modes of communication possible and typically unrecognized within our classes.

The jointly offered panel, "Confronting Whiteness" (Jill Pinkney Pastrana and David Shih) and "Confronting Difficult Issues in the Classroom" (Salah Bassiouni, Brandon Fetterly, Renee Gralewicz, and Julie Tharp) offered many great ideas for class assignments, especially in contexts where the students are predominantly white. A key component in the suggested assignments was to bring into view invisible components of racial and ethnic identity, whether in assumptions about different cultural experiences or in the student's own personal history. One assignment I found especially useful (discussed by Salah Bassiouni) asked students to research and write on four generations of their family's ethnic heritage. Students often discovered that their seemingly homogenous background was in fact quite diverse and many had close connections to immigrant experiences that had become forgotten or erased as time passed. Crucially, students learned they had a history at all, which enables them to appreciate both their own families within a richer context, but importantly the complexity of traditions for all Americans.

The value of history, and the intersection of personal and community stories in a shared history, was underlined for me in my class, Film 150, Multicultural America. I had the opportunity to talk about the transformative effects of that class -- on both the students and the teacher -- at this conference. My students were asked to interview individuals within the Walnut Way community, a predominantly African-American community near the university. Their interviews were to be visually documented and placed in photo essays and later a web archive (the link can be found on this site). The result was extraordinary -- students moved from an initial response to images as representations "out there" to be critiqued (often as "good" or "bad") to an understanding that images can speak to us and can even build bridges between us. The students ongoing engagement with images as a record of a neighborhood history and their reflections on this history moved their analysis from a distanced to a passionate one. Moreover, their visualization of multi-perspectives on a neighborhood -- two points of view of a local business, seen below for example - translated into a more complex critical engagement with the neighborhood, its history, and economic conditions.

You can see some of the photos throughout this blog from my students Lawrence Nichols, William Ramirez, Phoua Xiong, and Elias Bello. The tipping point I believe was the conjunction of the camera plus the conversation, the verbal and visual, the creative and the critical. Originally I had hoped the students in Film 150 would learn something about media literacy, but they truly surpassed all my expectations, and instead offered a fluency with the images, that spoke with unusual insight and compassion.

Feminism 3.0

2008-01-29T17:31:00.000-08:00

Welcome to our feminism 3.0 blog devoted specifically to theory/practice experimentation: this area is still very much under construction, but we hope will provide a lively place for information and connections. Feminist educators and activists have long advocated collaboration, networking, and new forms of critical and creative expression as central components their practice. How do new media tools enhance or indeed transform these feminist objectives? In an era when the definitions and the goals of feminism are matters of considerable contention, how might digital technology and networked media create a space where we might move past paradoxes and problems and engage with what feminist scholar Elizabeth Grosz calls "thinking the new." This feminism 3.0 blog is designed as space of dialogue amongst artists and scholars committed to theory/practice interventions.