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ArtFem.TV

ArtFem.TV is an online television programming presenting Art and Feminism. The aim of ArtFem.TV is to foster Women in the Arts, their art works and projects, to create an international online television screen for the creativity, images and voices of Women. ArtFem.TV is a non-profit artist run ITV and media art portal about Art and Feminism and has been founded in the year 2008.

 

For inquiries please contact foundress, curator and editor Evelin Stermitz [es@mur.at].

 

 
ArtFem.TV Honorary Mention


2010 Special Mention, IX Festival Internacional de la Imagen, VI Muestra Monográfica de Media Art, University of Caldas, Manizales, Colombia

 

 

ArtFem.TV Public Presentations

 
2020 First Look: Cyberfeminism Index, Online Exhibition, New Museum, New York, NY, USA
2019 F is For – Feminism and the Female Form, Hyperflexion Contemporary Art, Port Elizabeth, South Africa
2015 (binders full of) Women Artists, hosted by Evanna Folkenfolk and Nine Yamamoto, Sonnenallee, Berlin, Germany

2014 queerograd Festival 2014, Volxhaus Graz, Graz, Austria

2014 Gislaveds Konsthal / Gislaved Art Gallery, Gislaved, Sweden

2014 ArtFem.TV: Feminismo y Videoarte, Taller de Curaduría de Videoarte y Feminismo, CCD Centro de Cultura Digital, Mexico City, Mexico

2013 The Femail Project, ARTicle Gallery, School of Art, Birmingham City University, Birmingham, UK

2013 Art/Feminist Video, Feminists@MIT Club Meeting, MIT Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

2012 Art is No Luxury, 5th Women's Film Festival Elles Tournent - Dames Draaien, Botanique, Brussels, Belgium

2012 Mnemonic Mirrors, curated by ArtNetLab, Galerija SC, Studentski Centar u Zagrebu, Zagreb, Croatia

2012 Oslo Screen Festival, International Festival for Video Art, Oslo, Norway

2011 Graduate Student Conference, Critical Information: Mapping the Intersection of Art and Technology, MFA Art Criticism and Writing Department, School of Visual Arts, New York, NY, USA

2011 Bluestockings, New York, NY, USA

2011 International Conference, Doing Women's Film History: Reframing Cinema Past and Future, Centre for Research in Media and Cultural Studies, University of Sunderland, Sunderland, UK

2011 Civilmedia 11: Community Media For Social Change: Low Threshold - High Impact, University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria

2011 La vie sur écran / Life on the screen, curated by Perry Bard, Joyce Yahouda Gallery, Montréal, Canada

2010 Besides the Screen, Moving Images during Distribution, Exhibition and Consumption, Goldsmiths College, University of London, London, UK

2010 CIMUAT Congreso Internacional Mujer, Arte y Tecnología en la Nueva Esfera Pública / International Congress on Woman, Art and Technology in the New Public Sphere, Valencia Polytechnic University, Valencia, Spain

2010 Open Video Conference, Fashion Institute of Technology, New York, NY, USA

2010 Vox Feminae 4, AKC Medika, Zagreb, Croatia

2010 internetart, Die Plattform, a lecture series curated by Jana Wisniewski, k/haus kino videogalerie Künstlerhaus Wien, The Association of Austrian Artists Künstlerhaus Vienna, Vienna, Austria

2010 ISEA2010 RUHR, 16th International Symposium on Electronic Art, Dortmund, Germany

2010 f r a u e n CIRCUS museum_phase 01, ACRYL, forumKLOSTER, Gleisdorf, Austria

2010 Frieze, ArtNetLab Ljubljana at MKL Medienkunstlabor, Kunsthaus Graz, Graz, Austria

2010 IX Festival Internacional de la Imagen, VI Muestra Monográfica de Media Art, organized by the Departamento de Diseno Visual de la Universidad de Caldas, CCC Centro Cultural y de Convenciones Teatro los Fundadores, Manizales, Colombia

2010 KAPSULA, New Space for Contemporary Art, in the frame of Rdece Zore / Red Dawns, 11th International Feminist and Queer Festival, Ljubljana, Slovenia

2010 [Ne]mocne / [Un]empowered, curated by Ana Grobler, DDT Delavski dom Trbovlje, Trbovlje, Slovenia

2009 Videomedeja, 13th International Video Festival, No commercial value!, Museum of Contemporary Art of Vojvodina, Novi Sad, Serbia

2009 NODES: a smart exhibition, InfoArt presents ArtNetLab, Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe / Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design, Karlsruhe, Germany

2009 Curatorial Initiatives by Artists, organized by KOLEKTIVA (Vesna Bukovec, Lada Cerar, Metka Zupanic), Photon Gallery, Ljubljana, Slovenia

2009 International Conference VIDEO VORTEX 4, Split, Croatia. Organized by Dan Oki, Department of Film and Video at the Academy of Arts University of Split and Platforma 9.81, in collaboration with the Institute of Network Cultures in Amsterdam.

2009 Panel discussion Zenske prihajajo! / Women are coming!, SCCA Center for Contemporary Arts – Ljubljana. Organized by Ana Grobler in the frame of Rdece Zore / Red Dawns, 10th International Feminist and Queer Festival, Ljubljana, Slovenia.

 

 

ArtFem.TV in Context of Art and Feminism

 

Feminism and feminist art finally came to the forefront during the times of liberation and different political struggles in the late 1960s as a public debate, spurring a discourse to rethink the position of women in our society. Women were encouraged to act and react publicly, and art, as a primarily public issue, became a strong vehicle for this discourse. One of the main questions was - what makes women different from men, and in point of art - what makes women artists and their art different from male artists. This was a main discourse in the United States, Great Britain and Germany, which has spread over to many other cultures since the 1970s. Women reflected upon the patriarchal social system, in history, in art history and in current affairs. It was a great benefit for later developments and changes, although it was a big struggle. Feminist art cannot be understood apart from this struggle. The term ‘feminist art’ could be misleading, since the word feminism is often connected in its general and popular use - referring to fighting against men - but feminism is definitely not sexism. The term ‘feminism’ in connection with art should be used in the sense of understanding art works in a way of a female perspective, which, while not excluding the struggle, is more concerned with creating a recognition of a female position, in either counterpart or rather subject position. This position is a critical engagement with gender issues and views art as a socio-political matter.

 

It is a generally accepted fact that in Western culture’s patriarchal heritage the preponderance of art made by males and for male audience often transgressed against females, or used females as passive objects. The male studio system excluded women from training as artists, the gallery system kept women from exhibiting and selling their work, as well as from being collected by museums (albeit somewhat less in recent years then before). Linda Nochlin wrote her article “Why have there been no great women artists?” in 1971, and gave an impetus for numerous published histories of women artists. A tremendous momentum for feminist scholarship concerning women in the arts ensued, offering the work of many more women artists overdue recognition.

 

“We could say that the social conditions have changed enormously to facilitate more female participation in the arts and greater recognition of women artist’s merits. But some people might suspect instead we have watered down or altered old notions of greatness and genius.”[1] As the notion of genius became tied to men, there were intrinsic shifts and diagnoses of Rousseau and Kant. Feminists criticized canons as the enshrinement of traditional ideas about what makes for ‘greatness’ in art, “… and this ‘greatness’ always seems to exclude women.”[2] “The feminist asks how canons have become constructed, when, and for what purposes. Canons are described as ‘ideologies’ or belief systems that falsely pretend to objectivity when they actually reflect power and dominance relations. … Perhaps instead of creating a new and separate female canon, we need to explore what existing canons reveal.”[3]

 

The first two decades of art and feminism are seen as a revolt against male artists and their politics of production, consumption and targeting art, as well as the male-created gaze and male-dominated society. Female artists now find themselves concerned with evolving art in an aesthetics and with strategies including the social discourse. Feminist art has gained a relevant status and is highly approved and legitimated as an ongoing debate. These new ways of viewing the position of women and women artists in a socio-cultural context and in a critical philosophic manner is no longer defined as a revolt against patriarchal systems, rather it is accepted as a debate concerning disclosure and deconstruction of sex and gender in a patriarchal system, and reflects both construction and discourse within an historical context.

 

“Although there is little consensus among women at the present time about where to go next, and although many goals of the Women’s Movement have not been met – there is still violence against women, discrimination in education and employment, racism, and sexism in daily life – contemporary art by women reveals the formulation of complex strategies and practices through which they are confronting the exclusion of art history, expanding theoretical knowledge, and promoting social change.”[4]

 

ArtFem.TV as Cyberfeminist Action

 

New media offers new possibilities and chances, but also comprehends old restrictions and patterns. Works in the field of new media, feminism and art are a way to subvert the public economic tradition and offer new views, perspectives and possibilities to use new media with female agendas to undergo a shift from the male technocratic society, where knowledge, money and power go in one hand to strengthen male interests and visions. Cyberfeminism can be an answer to tech-malestream, as VNS Matrix (Francesca da Rimini, Josephine Starrs, Julianne Piercel, Virginia Barratt) the early Australian cyberfeminists stated: “mission to hijack the tools of the techno-cowboys and remap technoculture with a feminist bent”[5] in an active and not passive user role.

 

Core cyberfeminist actions are aesthetic/artistic strategies, not only as deconstruction of representations of gender, but also of traditional concepts on the net and in the institutions of tech-culture. Terms of these practices are to recode, remap, relocate, reconstruct. Cyberfeminist projects do not work as a massive front in a manner of counter cultural movements, they are subversive, infiltrating the mainstream with ironic breaks, citations and deformations.[6]

 

Within this context, ArtFem.TV is an attempt to break with a male dominated net-culture and media landscape to highlight women’s emphases in art and media works.

 

 

References:
1. Cynthia Freeland, Art Theory, New York: Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 88.
2. Freeland [1], p. 89.
3. Freeland [1], p. 90.
4. Whitney Chadwick, Women, Art and Society, London: Thames & Hudson, 2002, p. 422.
5. Claude Draude, Introducing Cyberfeminism, in: www.obn.org/reading_room/writings/html/intro.html
6. see: Draude [5].

 

 

 

ArtFem.TV Warranty Note

 

This web site was compiled with utmost care. We can nonetheless not vouch for the accuracy of the information provided. We hereby preclude all liability for damage resulting directly or indirectly from use of this web site. Although we take great care in posting information on our website, we assume no liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in the content. We do not accept liability for external links or the contents of any off-site pages referenced.

 

 

© Copyright 2008-2024 All rights reserved by the artists. Text, images, graphics, sound, animations and videos as well as the arrangement of the ArtFem.TV web sites are protected by copyright and other commercial protective rights by the artists. The content of these web sites may not be copied, disseminated, altered or made accessible to third parties for commercial purposes.