Round the Virtual Table - roundtable debate

About

Over two days, invited artists, curators, and arts professionals working within digital and technology-driven arts will debate the future of the digital realm and the web. They will discuss digital transformations. Putting a feminist view at its heart will provide new avenues for empowerment, contributing to greater gender equality, giving all complete access to opportunities, greater access to knowledge, and creating platforms for creativity.

Joining us to start the debate will be: 

Lee Weinberg (England)

Ailie Rutherford (Scotland) 

Sabrina Logan (Scotland)

Padmini Ray Murray (India) 

Libby Odai (Scotland)

Skye Quadling and Karin Tan (South Africa)

Roxana Vilk (England)

Elinor Carmi (England)

Tsila Hassine (Israel)

Ofri Cnaani (England) 

and other artists to be announced ...

"How do we move beyond the patriarchal imperialist prism of the web 2.0 to build a new and better world online?” “What will a feminist internet look like?"

In the past decade, much has been discussed around the idea of a feminist internet. The Feminist Internet Manifesto 1.0created by https://feministinternet.com/ in 2017 questions our bodies’ relentless commodification for capitalist profit motives. And The Feminist Principles of the Internet offer a gender and sexual rights lens on internet rights, drafted at first Imagine a Feminist Internet meeting in Malaysia in April 2014. Bot Populi has continued this work on digital justice with their Feminist Digital Futures series, asking what a new kind of feminist decolonial social media might look like.

So, where are we now? 

In the last year, we have seen surveillance capitalism accelerate at an alarming rate through the pandemic, with corporations like Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook accruing unprecedented levels of power and an ability to control people like never before. Alongside this, more & more people are becoming aware of the problems of data harvesting, understanding that this is mass surveillance and mass control by unelected and powerful institutions owned and controlled by white western men. We’re seeing more people choosing to leave Facebook-owned platforms to stop using apps that employ facial recognition tech to harvest our data for profit and control. Meanwhile, more and more open-source, non-profit alternatives are emerging. 

How do we now build alternative ways of disrupting, occupying and connecting online? If the master’s tools will never dismantle the masters' house then let’s refuse to pick up the tools that are being used to oppress us and build the tools we need to move beyond the patriarchal imperialism of web 2.0 and create the feminist internet we’ve been imagining.