The Department of Tactical Feminism presents

Through an engaged feminist art practice, many of subRosa’s projects over the past 15 years have addressed the rapid development of digitized life and work in cyberspace, for example, techniques such as “life hacking,” “social networking” “crowd-sourcing” “lean production,” and “self-management”. This networked life promises to facilitate personal enhancement, enable smoother connections between humans and machines, and make life more fun in the high-speed, virtualized environments in which so many people live, work, and play.

In our research and art-making, subRosa pays close attention to what it feels like to live in this moment of compulsory self-management, self-marketing, and the enforced enhancement, upgrading, and “connectivity” of all aspects of our lives, including our reproductive capacities, and cradle-to-grave bodily optimizations. subRosa is keenly aware that this pressure to exceed the embodied self through novel gadgets, pseudo techno-sociality, useless technologies, and distracting techno-spectacle, affects many people with chronic mental, emotional, and physical anxiety and stress.

What are the politics of a Feminist Server? Can we hack the very concept of a “Server” to think differently about how the collective itself is a Server? How do feminist theories of the reciprocity of the personal and the political shift our perspective, and craft feminist solidarity?

subRosa proposes that the Collective-as-Server can foment feminist struggle and practices in the public/virtual sphere, as well as in personal life. The Collective-as-Server can support solidarity and collective action, and make common cause with the many different struggles for environmental, economic, social and political justice.

What kind of server will be there, when the lights go out?

The performance Escapees from the Cyberswamp ist part of the installation Down with Self-management!
Re-booting Ourselves as Feminist Servers. Opening on Saturday, 27th September 2014, 2.30pm in the MINISTRY OF HACKING, steirischer herbst 2014