C2X: The television will not be revolutionized.
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Thiaw, Rama
dia
From Cyberfeminism to XenoFeminism - a short history of radical appropriations of media. This discussion will question how media is made (for whom and for what) and how meaning is produced through different contexts. it will feature media hacks and productions spanning a century and three continents.
 This talk, like basically Rama and I met during the Cinemagrantha Film Festival, she's done an experimental documentary about a hip-hop group in Senegal and Gambia, which started to produce very highly engaged political lyrics and use those lyrics in order to affect political change. And the documentary follows this group, their support of a one party in particular, their disillusionment with that party, and then their ongoing commitment to political change and using music for that and then using different channels to share the music. And it was super interesting for me because it was like something related very much to the work that I've done with Philip Assesar and Sananada on Luta Kakabainda, which is Creole for the Struggle is Not Over Yet, and that's basically rooted in guerrilla filmmaking movements of Guinea-Bissau of the 60s, which was something initiated by Amilcar Cabral, who many of you are probably not familiar with. He was one of the important leaders of African independence movements, not only in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde, but he operated as an underground agent while employed by the Portuguese government as an agronomist, so going out and doing land surveys and research on farming across the different Portuguese colonies. So while he was employed by the Portuguese state, which then had many colonies, he was actively working to organize resistance, which later, for example, in Guinea-Bissau, turned into armed resistance and the Declaration of Independence of Guinea-Bissau. This is, I'm giving you a little bit of information. One of the more interesting things about that movement is that when Fidel Castro offered military support, Amilcar Cabral basically said, no, what I need is to train my population to become teachers, doctors, and filmmakers. And if you're looking at something that happens in 1968, of course it's before internet, but basically his understanding was the need for a nation, a newly born independent state, to have education, health care, and a control of the media. And so these are the things which, like what you start to see emerging is in a very important militant form of filmmaking, which was used to not only educate the public about other parts of the country, but as well as to educate people about, like, new farming techniques and give them access to, I guess, other forms of narration, so not following the Portuguese models. In any case, it ended up in very important films. So the stuff that Rama works on today follows in those footsteps of people using the media that's closest to them. We started talking about, like, militant filmmaking within the context of Cinemagranta, which is a feminist-run film festival dealing mostly with issues of migration. It's fairly global in its scope, and it happens in Buenos Aires and Barcelona. So it's, yeah. I think the context was important last year because of the independence movement in Barcelona, that during the festival we were there in exactly those days. So I can say that our inspired conversation had lots and lots of, like, inputs, starting points and, like, points of departure. What we had sort of planned now was to carry on in a tradition of something which is from cyber feminism, cyber feminism, to xenofeminism. I think I hope most of you have some notion of cyber feminism, which is, like, breaking away from a concept from Donna Haraway of cyborg. She wrote the cyborg manifesto in 1983, which if you sort of imagine that 1983 the internet existed but not as most people know it today and not as most people knew it in 1993. So her notion was, like, I think very revolutionary then. This was then taken up by VNS Matrix, who wrote the cyber feminist manifesto in, I think, 1991. Donna, is that 1991? And before, like, yeah, an Australian group of, like, feminist protagonists that were mostly busy in online user environments, like MUDs and Moos. But they took, so that even again that internet was something very, very different. The reason I'm saying this is that each of these things is located within a specific time and space, and each of those politics gets played out in a very different media. So like the media that people are using is part of where they are and when they are. I think it's very easy for us, like it's 2018, almost 2019, for a lot of, like, not just millennials, for a lot of people that use media, how we use media today, we often forget what it was like 10 years ago or even like 20 years ago. And yet each of these media is definitely informed how we operate and how, like, even what we do with the media is defined by how the media informs us of what the media can be. I hope I'm not going too fast for the translators. So anyhow. So this is something, it's like I'm spiraling around. Anyhow, that's, I think that's a hope that's enough of cyber feminism for you. I mean, and then there was a, like, later movement in the 90s European cyber feminism. I won a small mailing list called Faces, which is an online space for women doing art, gender, and technology. It's also 20 years old. That's a long time. And that way we hosted some of the early cyber feminist discussions. Again, it's something, you know, in the 90s it was, it was, I think, a reasonable response to the kind of, I would say, like eclectic and utopic moments of early net school tour in Europe. I don't know, like, basically it's something like CCC was happening, but it was in communication with things like trans mediala or arse electronica and then all kinds of alternative types of internet culture were building up, not only in Europe, but in Canada. Something like tele, I know I see some telecommunist here. So yeah, telecoministas. So like, like these, that, that cyber feminist of the 90s in Europe was really connected with other things going on, but it was also, I think, fulfilling a kind of role for a need to have a feminist, a visibly feminist movement within this otherwise very male dominant, like very white male dominated culture of IT stuff, which, I mean, it's very present here. I don't think anybody would be shocked if I say that. And so, or is anyone shocked? So yeah, I'm still hoping that Rama shows up. Yeah, so that's like, there's cyber feminism. Xeno-feminism has come up in the last couple of years, mainly it's an international group. Mostly, I think it's, it's, it attempts to be an interdisciplinary group. I think they have changed themselves from collective to working group and they try to combine things like programming with literature, with theory, and then with a mathematics practice. They're based in London, Australia, and Berlin, and somewhere in Canada, I forget. And like, I think, I think it's sort of, it's another point of departure. It borrows a lot from the cyber feminism on the cyborg ideas of Haraway, the VNS matrix cyber feminist work, and then the other, like, OBN work of the cyber feminist international. So it, it builds on all of those things, expands, it borrows a lot from science fiction and refers a lot to people like writers like Octavia Butler. So those, I kind of think it's an interesting alphabet. And it's a series of things that, like when Rahman and I started talking, these were the things we were talking about. It's like, what would, for her as a filmmaker based in Dakar, what would those things sound like? And then of course in Dakar today, something like cyber feminism or Xeno-feminism sounds quite interesting. So ideally we would have Annie Goh from London who does a lot with sound and cyber feminism or Ala Mitrofonova who's a feminist Russian philosopher who's I think quite, quite well known. She's extremely important in Russian. I think intellectual and left circles. Like for example, she's a huge influence on pussy riot. And I do have to, like always mention, even when, when we had the, when Ala and I had the discussion about the chance of her coming here, she herself thought it would be more important for, sorry, my computer's actually with Rahmah. So that's, anyhow, I'm trying to remember the woman's name. Do you know the project, Sci Hub? Science Hub? So Sci Hub is a very important project that's programmed by a young, she's based in St. Petersburg, a programmer who is coming out of, I think, Kazakhstan. Does somebody know? Can someone say that? Like, anyhow, she's basically created an online database of medical, if anybody knows more, please just feel free to correct me. I think it's like, this is my one sort of credit to Ala is that she's really pushing this project, Sci Hub, because we were sort of looking at what would be science, current and contemporary techno feminist practices and the generation of this archive of medical research and basically taking journals that are usually very costly and only available in rich countries or available to people with access to expensive private or academic medical journals. This woman has figured out a way to make this database available to lots of people for free. I think at last count, she's been convicted in US courts for copyright violations and she would be immediately imprisoned in the US and with, like, she has fines, I think, up to $2 million. Like, yeah, it's a $2 million. Are you? Yeah? Alexandra. Alexandra, yeah. Alexandra. Albakian. Albakian, yeah. So, anyhow, I have to say this is something I really have to mention that as often as possible. If anybody has any way to help her or offer her $200 million, like $2 million, that would be fine. So, this is the frame of where Rama and I are talking because it's going back and forth through lots of different, like, times and movements, like, political movements, social movements, and it's always, it is always about access to education, access to healthcare, and then access to media. And this is where we would start to talk about what for, and that would go into revolution. And then it gets important because not every, like, we were talking last night just casually, like, I know a lot of people here do very important, like, technology-based work for change, but as I think we all know, hacking has also got this hobby aspect to it. So for a lot of people, it's a fun, free-time activity. And there is something where I think, I would love to be able to live in a world where in my free time I could just, you know, fool around and it didn't matter. Like, I would love to live in a world where there was no need for doing anything important. And for, like, I would prefer to just get drunk and dance all the time. But like, it's really weird. I don't live in times where I do get drunk and dance a lot every time I get, don't get me wrong. But we, like, there are things that are going on in the world actually demand a kind of action. And because, especially now, it's so much revolving around media. And it's, like, really basic things. It's not just about how you accumulate wealth. It's what kinds of things you can do with that wealth. And for most people on the planet, it's really access to very, like, basic things. And that's, like, education and healthcare follow. And the media is really important. And one thing is we were looking at how then is something like, for example, internet's super important across, like, okay, of course we know that in Germany, living in Germany. But in different poor countries, the, like, internets and media played different roles. And for example, we were talking about how microfinancing and micropayments via mobile phones was something developed by a Senegalese programmer. Rama would tell us the name and the longer story about this if she were here. Is she, okay, anyhow. But something like that that was developed in Kenya. And not because it was an app that someone could sell or hang out and talk about in any of the annoying cafes in Berlin, but because it was something that would be useful for people to use and, like, it's become a very highly used payment system in Senegal and in Gambia. And that's something which is, like, those are, like, little innovations and those are the models that sort of start to translate out into other things. So we tend to often think of Africa as being in need of technologies. But we don't often, like, and in this case I'm going to say we as people in wealthy countries are in the West, don't tend to look at what types of developments are happening there that then infiltrate and infect what we are doing and how we use technology. And my sort of favorite example is the payment for text messages on mobile phones. I think lots of people forget that was a free, it was a free forgotten feature of mobile telephones when they first became popular. And that it was because of the high use of text messaging in different African countries, I think primarily in Nigeria, where telephone, mobile telephone operators, what are they, there must be a better word for that, started to look at why they were selling so many mobile phones and had contracts and no one, like, was using that very, at that time, high cost telephony networks. And when they looked into it they realized there was a lot of data being exchanged but it was all going over text messaging. So that's when text messaging became a service that you paid for and not just a kind of built in like, forgotten feature. I don't know if you remember when text messaging was free, I do. So that's something that was, like, the reason we all pay for text messaging now is because it was so widely used and embraced across Africa. So you can blame Africa for paying for your text messages. These are things where it's like, how do, I mean, that might seem like it's a very stupid and small trivial thing but it points to how, like, the existing, like, technologies that we use can be exploited and basically those exploits, which could be called hacks, are also based on what people need and like their own realities. And those realities vary, like, no matter what kind of time we share, they're also the other conditions that we don't share. And then it's interesting to see how things that come up in different contexts can be shared across those, like, different geospecific political social conditions. So I'm trying to stick to my script that Rama and I had in spite of her not being here with me. Ah, I hope that Nora or somebody can tell me when her film will be screened tomorrow. The revolution will not be televised, will be screened tomorrow at sometime in this big hall just over here to the... It's over there, I guess. So, you know, we were looking at, okay, what are the medias and then, like, what could be revolution be, why would we do that and then why would different media matter in that. And one of the things is looking at film, I had a talk with an old buddy from Amsterdam last night and we were talking, like, he doesn't watch movies for him, it's a waste of time and entertainment and we talked about how different types of narratives can open up a mind space and how those can be useful operators. And it's not just that they rely on technology to be built. I mean, this is something where if you look at how people... I mean, there's a lot of, like, a whole sort of new line of work in the area of something called digital storytelling. I'm not particularly keen on this particular term, but it's something where looking at how people can use new technologies to tell stories, right? But what kind of stories do you tell and what do they do? And so, for example, a film can do many things. And of course, a film like Rama's film or like the... When I met her, I was screening Spell Reel, which is based on the militant media of Guinea Basau. It's a project by Philippe César and Sanana and Hada. And those are things that get shown often in museums, in very, like, film festivals, in various sort of high and, like, arty-farty locations. But they also get shown in activist situations like Sanimigranta or in different public viewing scenarios in any number of places across, like, across Guinea Basau, across Gambia and Senegal. In other places, these films can be shown in all of those places and they will resonate very differently with all of those publics. And in order, like, creating a film that can tell, that can be coherent across all of those spaces is not a small feat, but it's like something that... It can activate different sets of knowledge. And I mean, this... I think it's fairly basic, but it's not unimportant to think about what it means for somebody to enter into the museum space. I think somebody like Rama, who's one of the very small number of African women producers and, like, film producers who is very comfortable working with activists, feminists across, you know, like South Africa, Senegal, Gambia, and also being very active and being able to inhabit the space of, like, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and have her work be shown there. This is something where it's a kind of social hacking. Once she has the credibility of being in a place like MoMA, it gives her credibility to raise money in order to do further work that can then later be shown in other completely different spaces. I think it's the same with Philippa Cesar and with Sana Anada, even my work, that the credibility that you get due to some kind of institutional support or affiliation can be then transferred into some kind of social power that can be utilized elsewhere. I think those are things that, it's very basic, but I think people don't, if you have a sort of set, if you have your own kind of power, ability to move, ability to speak, ability to do things, you often don't think, like, not many people often don't think about what that, like, how that's generated or how that can be used. So in a way, how that is a privilege and how it could be used to, like, open up privileges for other people. So this is, like, in the end, like, this is, how much time, wait just a second. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just taking a quick, a quick break. I wish I had a cell for you. And the film, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, will be screened tomorrow in the art and play area at 20 minutes past midnight. So you can come and have a look at the screening of the film tomorrow night at 20 past 12 and the art and play area. We still have half an hour of this presentation and there are two microphones in the room, that microphone number one and microphone number two. So when we have a Q&A, then you can stand up behind the microphones and we can then give you the word and have a dialogue with Diana. And there will also be the opportunity of having questions from the internet. Thanks. If anybody would like to come up and sing a small song, that would be very welcome. No, this is, yeah, sorry, I'm trying to, I'm doing my best to sort of stretch out our conversation. The other thing that, like, because this, like, something like CCC, but like Ram and I were talking, like, we've been, we've been having a very long ongoing discussion and our idea was just to share that with you. So anyhow, I'm hoping that she's not totally lost and or in trouble somewhere in Leipzig. So it's a, I believe her charger may have failed. I believe her phone may be not working. But in any case, the question of something like hacking, that we were talking about what, like, when we, when we first met, we were talking about what it means to hack and what it means to basically enter spaces where you're not allowed to be. And like, what it means to then inhabit that space, what it means to use that ability to be in that space in order to be then more powerful in other spaces. And I hope that's kind of clear. I think it's, it's like, I think everybody gets that, but it's like, I don't, I think it's easy to take it for granted and it's easy to take it for, it's easy to not recognize that not everybody has that ability to be, like, not just mobile in terms of geography, but in terms of social spaces and how you're, like, what it means to have a voice and what it means to have people listen to your voice. So what's one thing to be able to speak up. It's another thing to have people, to have an impact on what, for people to listen to you and that can be on a political level, social level, whatever. So, and those are things, it's like, it's very basic, but it's like hacking systems is one of the things you do is open up doors to make your, like, to make people heard. And this is very much in line with what CCC has been about, I think, from the very beginning, is creating, like, meaningful forms of communication, often exploiting technology for that. But I don't think it's ever been only about the technology. Like, this is something, it's very important that it's not, it's always been rooted in something else which has much more to do with how we live in a society. And so here we go with, like, that's where, Roman, I kind of agree, because we've had lots of, I think, very productive disagreements on what hacking is or what hacking could be. And that is, like, one of the things is, like, people playing around. And this is going to happen anywhere. And nothing against people that do make sort of entertainment-based film, music, et cetera. That's not a complaint on that, but it's something that, for those people that are working actively to create, like, I think, or to activate social change, not just as activists, but using different means to create awareness to not just educate people, but to get people, I think, to act in unison with their consciousness. It's a word that I find very difficult to say, concialization. And I would ask Francesca, but I think she's writing a blog. This is, the concialization is, like, how do you get people in touch with their own, like, not their lived politics and get people to realize how their daily life is also politicized. And that's something where you understand that the basics, like, your basic social position, the social infrastructures, the economic structures are part of a larger political system. And once you understand how you operate within that, you can then act more effectively politically. Like, once you understand the politics of every, like, how space is related, I mean, going to school, taking the bus, going to work, all of those things, what are the politics that inform those things? Then you can start to, for example, organize a union, organize a political movement. But you can only do that when you really understand, like, what are your basic conditions and how those can be a springboard for bigger movements. And this is, I think, these are things that are very, like, general, but in common across around places around the world. So nevertheless, we live in a kind of info bubble time when people have more access to information, they have more, like, means, media and so on. But nevertheless, we, like, people could easily get informed, but facts mean less than ever. So this is, like, this is sort of, I guess, ironic that in the moment when people could potentially be better informed, when more people could be better informed than ever because of having access to useful and meaningful information is exactly the moment when the notion of the fact dies, right? And it's, of course, conveniently parallels the rise of really hardcore right-wing movements all over. So Argentina, Turkey, you know what, I don't need to list them, right? We all know. We all know. So this is something where, like, how do you get people to understand, like, and it's, like, it's, like, activating different knowledge sets. So, yeah. And then that's, like, so I would continue with Rama discussing what is hacking, what is it good for, and what would it mean, like, what would, what would it mean, like, oh, how many of you guys would, like, like, go to Senegal and then, like, how would you share the stuff there because then she's like, yeah, all the computer freaks there would, okay, love to come here. And of course that would be, yeah, I think it would be funny and weird and useful, probably, probably not without tensions. So, yeah. I am going to, I think, oh, is that Rama? I kind of, like, I know it's early, but I think I'm, I think that's what I have to say about this and, like, maybe if you have questions, comments, if you have more factoids to add, I would be happy to allow you to share the stage complaints. So as I mentioned before, we have two microphones. We have microphone one and two. So if we have questions, comments, please join in the conversation. So go, go to the microphone that's in the middle of the room or on the side of the room. And then it's microphone number two in a couple of seconds. There you go. Microphone number two. Thank you, I still have a discussion, this is a couple of questions, but maybe two things that you mentioned, the lack of, or the maybe dominant people here, how can we change this? Do you, can you share strategies? How do we change the white male age audience in this kind of event? And second part, I'm interested about the, the topic about the colonizing technology, and I don't know maybe you can pick any part of it that would fit to the conversation. Thank you. Wow, that's great. First of all, I think we had Nora Badri and the CCC team, I think for many years has worked to try to make a more inclusive space. And I really applaud them for that. I have to really thank Nora especially here, so thank you Nora for really working on this and taking up this opportunity and also hacking this space for that. Because I think this is one of the first things is recognizing at what time, for any kind of grouping or social formation, when it's homogeneous, it tends to reflect the interest of those groups. And I've known really wonderful people from CCC for many years, but like I think in 19, 2001, like I know that when, when would they do the Hexen thing? When did the Hexen thing start? Like 2001, 2002? And this was like, I was in the room when a bunch of guys decided to do that and I sort of applauded the interest in having a space for women, but at that point I was like, I'm not interested in being at that table because I want to sit at the grown-up table, which is basically where the, like basically I was going to stay at the table where the boys were. And as, like I do feminist stuff, but when I want my own room, I'll ask for it, you know, sit loudly and so on. So this is one thing is like figuring out things and giving people, like people will make mistakes. That's something like when you talk about inclusive practices. One thing is we were having chats last night about like, what would it mean for my colleagues from We Are Born Free empowerment radio in Berlin, for example, who do work coming out of Iranian plots, which is a refugee movement, which was like the group that started to break out of the forced camps in Germany and went and occupied Iranian plots. For example, a lot of the guys there speak Walaaf, a lot of the different people that are active in that movement are coming out of Gambia and Senegal. Coming to this event, like for, even for a drama, as like one African woman, we were sort of counting last night, it's not a whole lot of black people here, let's be honest. And to be able to occupy a space like this, and maybe she got a little bit of, I don't want to speak for, maybe she got a little bit of stage fright today. So this is something like, actually we had lovely engaged conversations with many people and already some interesting unpleasant experiences. So this, which is going to happen and she knew that, like this is something, when she's been, she operates in enough different situations to know that coming to a space like this, there might be an unpleasant encounter. And so that's something which, that's a part of needing to invite, needing to have people that are going to be able to inhabit this kind of space, have enough thick skin to be able to deal with, like let's say, a different range of encounters and being able to still have a voice there. So that's one thing. Once you start to include like different, let's say, people working from different angles, and it's not just about, like it's not about ethnic differences or racial differences, it's about different types of ways of engagement. But once you start to mix up who is doing the talking and who is getting represented, that already is going to be a driving force for a different kind of public. And that's going to inform then who comes in the next, like the next generations. And this is, I would have shown you clips of we are born in flames, Lizzie Borden's film, I have a really crappy copy. If you're around later, I can give you a copy. She's given me permission to do this, the director. So it's a film from 83, which basically shows a lot of how people work and do social outreach. I am going to say, like, I will use Reboot FM in Berlin. It's an artist-run radio. We say free artist radio. I'm very proud because when we started in 2003, it's going to be like 15 years old as an actual running radio in Berlin next year, like in two weeks, I think. In any case, what we started doing was asking a bunch of different people. And because in that time I did a little bit of work with groups like Kanak Attack, which is a group of different people in Germany doing deconstruction of identity politics. And so asking different Afro-German groups, DJ collectives, art groups, activist groups, asking them what would they like out of a radio in order to do radio and in order to listen to it. This was the first thing, asking a whole bunch of different people. And this is working along the lines of basically feminist organizing, but also we developed a whole software. Seda Gursus is a feminist technologist. We used a lot of the same models. They actually did it and it impacted how a software got developed just by asking people lots of questions and then building that into a structure. So that's something we're doing outreach, but then having a lot of different interests represented in the thing and on different levels. And that means, like, who has a say, who gets represented and who is spoken to. Because these are things where it's like, once you start mixing that up, things get like, oh, oh good. Thank you. That's what we also do on the radio. I like the silent 15. Anyhow, I think there are a lot of different ways to do that. Until today, Reboot has a really very good mixed thing. We are going mixed across, like, for us, diversity is not a term we use. To the extent we use it, it means East West German, it means old young people, it means men, women, it means DJs, musicians, actors, artists, whatever. So that's, like, for us, it's like we use that term to, we use that term to sort of understand everything and not, because often, like, something like diversity or inclusion assumes basically a dominant cultural perspective, like, and that already is going to inform how people, what is understood in terms of whose need is fulfilled, right? So one thing is, do you want to have people meaningfully engaging with those, like, working across differences, social, political, economic, et cetera, gender? Do you want to have meaningful engagement or do you want to have decoration? Because often diversity is used to supply decoration and that means minority people, whatever, like, are then there to be counted and be representative of some kind of difference, but not actually to have a meaningful role or meaningful stake in anything. And I think that's, those are like, yeah, those are processes and I'm doing this sort of thing for a long time and I really think it's work, it takes a lot of time and energy. I think the results are better. So that's, I think that would be my long, although I'm very enthusiastic about that question because it's something, I think the results get better. And once we start, like, once we stop looking at what makes us different and start looking at what we have in common, that's, I think then you have a really potential to do more things and there's, there's, like, there are lots of things that we can work with. So, yeah. I loved your term, by the way. Please give me your name later of decolonizing technology. I think that's a wonderful, I didn't say that you did, so thank you for that. And this is something I think, oh, hmm. I can only say thank you, I think we should. It's like decolonizing technology on all areas because it's, for me, the technologies that we use media, it's really happening, like looking at how media, like something like Facebook comes out of its time. It was always built to not just, not just become a money earner, it was always meant to capitalize on things. It was, it's built from the ground up, not just to gain your access to your information, it's meant to use your, like, to inactivate you or the public to functionalize your own personal relationships, basically to monetize your social, your friends, family, et cetera, into contacts and understand that as an accumulation of wealth. So, that's, that, I'm sure that's also reflected in the code, but that's, that's why it's there. It's meant, it's meant to encourage people to, yeah, find, like, monetize or, oh, no, I had a better turn, I'm sorry. Anyhow, it's, it's, it's, capitalize on your own, like, social connections, you know, with, with people. It's, I think it's, it's kind of sick and I'm sure that's also reflected in the code. So one thing is understanding, like, what's, what's on the layers that you don't see that you use, and I think that's very important for programming, who uses it and what they use it for and then what gets communicated. And all of those things are very important in terms of understanding, like, what's, what's media. So that's, but thanks. I'm really happy. Can you say your name? No, just say it. Can you just shout? She said later? Yeah, your name's not, just, what? Orale. Orale, orale. Okay. So thank you. So there you get, this is, I'm sure there are thousands of people listening on the internet right now. So that's, you know, and we have another question on microphone number two. Thanks. That was a bit of a chunk, but you mentioned xenofeminism earlier and also in your title. And I've tried to wrap my head around this, especially the xenofeminist manifesto, which is a quite decisive criticism of many established feminist practices, especially those turning towards representation of different groups and so on and so forth, and rather focus on the body biohacking and all that stuff. So I would be really curious to hear what you as a filmmaker and radio person, if I got that right, what you take out of that movement or how that inspires your work. Thank you. Okay. I am a radio, like whatever, I only work with filmmakers, so I'm a cosmic advisor. It doesn't inspire my work at all. So I think like it's, my work has inspired that stuff. And I don't want to be like, I'm not being like even arrogant here. It's absolutely clear like the xenofeminists are drawing on lots of things, like the kind of stuff I've been doing with the internet for 20 years and many other things. So that's like to be clear, like many, many other things. So my, like I have had lots of heated debates. For example, any go like Xeno is, it's a mathematical term, but nevertheless it has, it resonates, it has like for many people when they hear Xeno, they hear xenophobia. And for example, only a group of white women wouldn't hear that. You know, like, like consider and say, we're going to call something Xeno feminism and not hear xenophobia. And this is like, I have to say that, yeah, of course, this is, this is one of the criticisms that comes out of black feminists that are interested in like tech, techno feminism or something like that. Yeah, I think that they have drawn a lot of things together. The Xeno feminist manifesto is what is it? It's, can you get, can you get, what is the name of it? The actual name is like, hmm? The name, the Xeno feminist manifesto has, it's like, how? A politics for, yeah, thanks. Yeah, this is, yeah. And I think it's a, I think it's a, I think it's a useful read. But I think it's inspiring and interesting. And I think it can, because one of the things, it's, it's, it's denial of, basically it's, it has a certain denial of identity politics in it, in term, like, which I find a very difficult term. It has a denial in it of a fixed notion of identity. And that is a deconstruction of identity politics. Nevertheless it has many problems in it. So this is something, but this alienation, understanding alienation as a positive space to work from. So I think it's something that it's useful to read and it's useful to think about. But as a manifesto, I don't think it's, it's not offering anything like specific to do, but it's offering specific things to think about that should be hopefully a springboard to understanding, like how, yeah, something like gender, how gender race and class play, get played in and out of, like play in and out of and off of technology. So that's, but I, I, I also just think it's a, it's a kind of cool word. Like it's, I think it's, by the way, this is blatantly, we use it, we use it for, we've done a whole series of talks and we use it because it's a way of locating something like a 25, 30 year techno feminist idea range. And it's, if you go cyber feminist, it's xenofeminism. It's, it's a, we, like, when I say we face is different colleagues, we've done an anecdoted, anecdoted alphabet of, like feminist alphabet of media, stuff like that. So it's playing with how you work with linearity and technology, like linearity. So that's, it's a, it's also a cheap way to advertise something. Do we have any more questions? We still have about eight, seven minutes before we need to wrap up. Are there any questions from the inside? Signal angels? Nope. Well, I think it's been very inspiring and great talk. There's one. Yay. Come up to the microphone. Microphone number two. Hi, I just want to thank you for a really amazing inspiration, especially having come from Hamburg, a forest where we experienced third largest police action in the history of Germany and the largest in the history of North Rhine Westphalia. And after being evicted from 11 forest occupation, 63 houses, we experienced an incredible flow of outpouring of support, a 50,000 demo and a reoccupation of the forest. And regardless, the narrative of cases like this is so minimal in the mainstream media that's what really recharged us was the phenomenal amount of activist, documentarians and filmmakers who have come to the forest, who've explored the narrative, especially from the anarcho-feminist perspective, which is one of our foundation of our struggle. And I wanted to ask you, how could we actually reach out to more people from the artist community, from the political, documentarian community and bring them and invite them to the struggle, speaking of which I would also like to invite you as well to come and visit us in the forest as well. Thank you. Yeah, Bravo. Yeah, okay, sure, I'm there. Like, yeah. Actually, like a group of us would like to visit you anyway. So that's, yeah, we are like, I mean, time is time. It's like, where are you able to focus on things? But actually, what I think is interesting about those things is like figuring out, like, building up, I hate the term networking, but I think it's very important to build up coalitions and alliances and look for people with shared interests. And out of that, you, like, it's very much, it's like, there is no sort of local regional issue that doesn't have a kind of mirror somewhere else. And it is very important to build up alliances and share information and out of that game strength. But, yeah, that's, and I don't know, use the internet. I, you know, it's great to send people emails and ask them to do that, open calls. That's what I would suggest. And of course, why not find your local smallest radio and broadcast. So. Is there anybody hiding in their seats with a burning question? Please get up to the microphones so that everybody can hear your questions. Okay, I'm going to say just like, since I'm just here now and like, I believe, I hope, I really hope Arama is fine. Like, that's something. I do run a small mailing list for women in media. And this is one of the things that, like, please do, if you're interested, it's called Faces-L.Net. That used to stand for, like, List. So it's still, so that's why the URL is like that. You shoot us an email. We do check who you are. So like, it's for women. It's always been, since day one, it's been open to trans women, but basically women who identify, like people who identify as women and live that. It's been up for discussion several times over the last 20 years. It's not a, I'm going to say, it's not a huge, it's like, maybe 400 people. There's another 400 in the larger community, but it's a place where people can share information about their work. And this is, for example, like one of the things we do is just to build up a place where we can find each other. Like, there will be a little Faces gathering, I think, tomorrow around lunchtime. I guess that's at five o'clock here, right? So somewhere around. So if you're interested in getting in contact with more women and finding out about what women are doing with art, gender, and technology, Faces is a good place. But of course, I also want to say it was never, ever formed or founded with the notion that we would stay there. So it's a place where we can share information, exchange amongst the women, the ladies, the girls, whatever. But it's never with the idea that that's where we would stay. So it's one of the things that you do in order to have that place and then go out and be, you know, whatever, stronger, louder, angrier, funnier in the world. So anybody interested in that, please join in. We have a question for microphone number two. Hello. Hello. I'm one of the translators of the Cinefeminist Manifesto into Spanish. And I actually work with Luca Frazier, who's one of the members of the collective. I was wondering in your perspective, what kind of technologies do you see or strategies do you see forming that advance the Cinefeminist program or strategy? And they kind of took new technologies we should be looking out forward to. No. I actually think that the best technology that the Cinefeminist Manifesto inspires people to use is the one in your brain. That's actually what I think it's very effective for getting people to think a little bit differently about things. And that's, I think, in spite of the interdisciplinarity of the group. They're not really into technology. They're not programmers on that. They're not deeply embedded in any kind of technological movement. I don't think it matters. I think the ideas that are, the questions that it raises could be practiced in different ways in how we work with technology. And I think that would be the interesting thing to do. I guess it's at that point. But actually one of the members does work in artificial intelligence and return oriented programming. So I do think that they're embedded in technology. So yeah. Yeah, but I mean, nothing, I don't want to argue with you about this, but the group itself is not. Like, they're really not. Like, the group itself doesn't, there is no technological practice. And that's what I mean. So. There is. So computer scientists and Halifax. Yeah, but then maybe you want to name a practice that would be a xenofeminist practice. Sure. Genome editing, CRISPR, Elizabeth Prasiatto maybe self editing in terms of body mechanics. But that's okay. If you, if you call, if you want to call those xenofeminist practices, that's fine. I wouldn't. I wouldn't. So. Okay. Cool. I wouldn't sue you for it either. Good. I think we have about one minute left. So let's give Diana McCarthy a big round of applause for incredible presentation and talk.
 This talk, like basically Rama and I met during the Cinemagrantha Film Festival, she's done  an experimental documentary about a hip-hop group in Senegal and Gambia, which started  to produce very highly engaged political lyrics and use those lyrics in order to affect political  change.  And the documentary follows this group, their support of a one party in particular, their  disillusionment with that party, and then their ongoing commitment to political change  and using music for that and then using different channels to share the music.  And it was super interesting for me because it was like something related very much to  the work that I've done with Philip Assesar and Sananada on Luta Kakabainda, which is  Creole for the Struggle is Not Over Yet, and that's basically rooted in guerrilla filmmaking  movements of Guinea-Bissau of the 60s, which was something initiated by Amilcar Cabral,  who many of you are probably not familiar with.  He was one of the important leaders of African independence movements, not only in Guinea-Bissau  and Cape Verde, but he operated as an underground agent while employed by the Portuguese government  as an agronomist, so going out and doing land surveys and research on farming across the  different Portuguese colonies.  So while he was employed by the Portuguese state, which then had many colonies, he was  actively working to organize resistance, which later, for example, in Guinea-Bissau, turned  into armed resistance and the Declaration of Independence of Guinea-Bissau.  This is, I'm giving you a little bit of information.  One of the more interesting things about that movement is that when Fidel Castro offered  military support, Amilcar Cabral basically said, no, what I need is to train my population  to become teachers, doctors, and filmmakers.  And if you're looking at something that happens in 1968, of course it's before internet, but  basically his understanding was the need for a nation, a newly born independent state,  to have education, health care, and a control of the media.  And so these are the things which, like what you start to see emerging is in a very important  militant form of filmmaking, which was used to not only educate the public about other  parts of the country, but as well as to educate people about, like, new farming techniques  and give them access to, I guess, other forms of narration, so not following the Portuguese  models.  In any case, it ended up in very important films.  So the stuff that Rama works on today follows in those footsteps of people using the media  that's closest to them.  We started talking about, like, militant filmmaking within the context of Cinemagranta, which  is a feminist-run film festival dealing mostly with issues of migration.  It's fairly global in its scope, and it happens in Buenos Aires and Barcelona.  So it's, yeah.  I think the context was important last year because of the independence movement in Barcelona,  that during the festival we were there in exactly those days.  So I can say that our inspired conversation had lots and lots of, like, inputs, starting  points and, like, points of departure.  What we had sort of planned now was to carry on in a tradition of something which is from  cyber feminism, cyber feminism, to xenofeminism.  I think I hope most of you have some notion of cyber feminism, which is, like, breaking  away from a concept from Donna Haraway of cyborg.  She wrote the cyborg manifesto in 1983, which if you sort of imagine that 1983 the internet  existed but not as most people know it today and not as most people knew it in 1993.  So her notion was, like, I think very revolutionary then.  This was then taken up by VNS Matrix, who wrote the cyber feminist manifesto in, I think,  1991.  Donna, is that 1991?  And before, like, yeah, an Australian group of, like, feminist protagonists that were  mostly busy in online user environments, like MUDs and Moos.  But they took, so that even again that internet was something very, very different.  The reason I'm saying this is that each of these things is located within a specific  time and space, and each of those politics gets played out in a very different media.  So like the media that people are using is part of where they are and when they are.  I think it's very easy for us, like it's 2018, almost 2019, for a lot of, like, not just  millennials, for a lot of people that use media, how we use media today, we often forget  what it was like 10 years ago or even like 20 years ago.  And yet each of these media is definitely informed how we operate and how, like, even  what we do with the media is defined by how the media informs us of what the media can  be.  I hope I'm not going too fast for the translators.  So anyhow.  So this is something, it's like I'm spiraling around.  Anyhow, that's, I think that's a hope that's enough of cyber feminism for you.  I mean, and then there was a, like, later movement in the 90s European cyber feminism.  I won a small mailing list called Faces, which is an online space for women doing art, gender,  and technology.  It's also 20 years old.  That's a long time.  And that way we hosted some of the early cyber feminist discussions.  Again, it's something, you know, in the 90s it was, it was, I think, a reasonable response  to the kind of, I would say, like eclectic and utopic moments of early net school tour  in Europe.  I don't know, like, basically it's something like CCC was happening, but it was in communication  with things like trans mediala or arse electronica and then all kinds of alternative types of  internet culture were building up, not only in Europe, but in Canada.  Something like tele, I know I see some telecommunist here.  So yeah, telecoministas.  So like, like these, that, that cyber feminist of the 90s in Europe was really connected  with other things going on, but it was also, I think, fulfilling a kind of role for a need  to have a feminist, a visibly feminist movement within this otherwise very male dominant,  like very white male dominated culture of IT stuff, which, I mean, it's very present  here.  I don't think anybody would be shocked if I say that.  And so, or is anyone shocked?  So yeah, I'm still hoping that Rama shows up.  Yeah, so that's like, there's cyber feminism.  Xeno-feminism has come up in the last couple of years, mainly it's an international group.  Mostly, I think it's, it's, it attempts to be an interdisciplinary group.  I think they have changed themselves from collective to working group and they try to  combine things like programming with literature, with theory, and then with a mathematics practice.  They're based in London, Australia, and Berlin, and somewhere in Canada, I forget.  And like, I think, I think it's sort of, it's another point of departure.  It borrows a lot from the cyber feminism on the cyborg ideas of Haraway, the VNS matrix  cyber feminist work, and then the other, like, OBN work of the cyber feminist international.  So it, it builds on all of those things, expands, it borrows a lot from science fiction and  refers a lot to people like writers like Octavia Butler.  So those, I kind of think it's an interesting alphabet.  And it's a series of things that, like when Rahman and I started talking, these were the  things we were talking about.  It's like, what would, for her as a filmmaker based in Dakar, what would those things sound  like?  And then of course in Dakar today, something like cyber feminism or Xeno-feminism sounds  quite interesting.  So ideally we would have Annie Goh from London who does a lot with sound and cyber feminism  or Ala Mitrofonova who's a feminist Russian philosopher who's I think quite, quite well  known.  She's extremely important in Russian.  I think intellectual and left circles.  Like for example, she's a huge influence on pussy riot.  And I do have to, like always mention, even when, when we had the, when Ala and I had  the discussion about the chance of her coming here, she herself thought it would be more  important for, sorry, my computer's actually with Rahmah.  So that's, anyhow, I'm trying to remember the woman's name.  Do you know the project, Sci Hub?  Science Hub?  So Sci Hub is a very important project that's programmed by a young, she's based in St. Petersburg,  a programmer who is coming out of, I think, Kazakhstan.  Does somebody know?  Can someone say that?  Like, anyhow, she's basically created an online database of medical, if anybody knows more,  please just feel free to correct me.  I think it's like, this is my one sort of credit to Ala is that she's really pushing  this project, Sci Hub, because we were sort of looking at what would be science, current  and contemporary techno feminist practices and the generation of this archive of medical  research and basically taking journals that are usually very costly and only available  in rich countries or available to people with access to expensive private or academic  medical journals.  This woman has figured out a way to make this database available to lots of people for free.  I think at last count, she's been convicted in US courts for copyright violations and  she would be immediately imprisoned in the US and with, like, she has fines, I think,  up to $2 million.  Like, yeah, it's a $2 million.  Are you?  Yeah?  Alexandra.  Alexandra, yeah.  Alexandra.  Albakian.  Albakian, yeah.  So, anyhow, I have to say this is something I really have to mention that as often as  possible.  If anybody has any way to help her or offer her $200 million, like $2 million, that would  be fine.  So, this is the frame of where Rama and I are talking because it's going back and forth  through lots of different, like, times and movements, like, political movements, social  movements, and it's always, it is always about access to education, access to healthcare,  and then access to media.  And this is where we would start to talk about what for, and that would go into revolution.  And then it gets important because not every, like, we were talking last night just casually,  like, I know a lot of people here do very important, like, technology-based work for  change, but as I think we all know, hacking has also got this hobby aspect to it.  So for a lot of people, it's a fun, free-time activity.  And there is something where I think, I would love to be able to live in a world where in  my free time I could just, you know, fool around and it didn't matter.  Like, I would love to live in a world where there was no need for doing anything important.  And for, like, I would prefer to just get drunk and dance all the time.  But like, it's really weird.  I don't live in times where I do get drunk and dance a lot every time I get, don't get  me wrong.  But we, like, there are things that are going on in the world actually demand a kind of  action.  And because, especially now, it's so much revolving around media.  And it's, like, really basic things.  It's not just about how you accumulate wealth.  It's what kinds of things you can do with that wealth.  And for most people on the planet, it's really access to very, like, basic things.  And that's, like, education and healthcare follow.  And the media is really important.  And one thing is we were looking at how then is something like, for example, internet's  super important across, like, okay, of course we know that in Germany, living in Germany.  But in different poor countries, the, like, internets and media played different roles.  And for example, we were talking about how microfinancing and micropayments via mobile  phones was something developed by a Senegalese programmer.  Rama would tell us the name and the longer story about this if she were here.  Is she, okay, anyhow.  But something like that that was developed in Kenya.  And not because it was an app that someone could sell or hang out and talk about in any  of the annoying cafes in Berlin, but because it was something that would be useful for  people to use and, like, it's become a very highly used payment system in Senegal and  in Gambia.  And that's something which is, like, those are, like, little innovations and those are  the models that sort of start to translate out into other things.  So we tend to often think of Africa as being in need of technologies.  But we don't often, like, and in this case I'm going to say we as people in wealthy countries  are in the West, don't tend to look at what types of developments are happening there  that then infiltrate and infect what we are doing and how we use technology.  And my sort of favorite example is the payment for text messages on mobile phones.  I think lots of people forget that was a free, it was a free forgotten feature of mobile  telephones when they first became popular.  And that it was because of the high use of text messaging in different African countries,  I think primarily in Nigeria, where telephone, mobile telephone operators, what are they,  there must be a better word for that, started to look at why they were selling so many mobile  phones and had contracts and no one, like, was using that very, at that time, high cost  telephony networks.  And when they looked into it they realized there was a lot of data being exchanged but  it was all going over text messaging.  So that's when text messaging became a service that you paid for and not just a kind of built  in like, forgotten feature.  I don't know if you remember when text messaging was free, I do.  So that's something that was, like, the reason we all pay for text messaging now is because  it was so widely used and embraced across Africa.  So you can blame Africa for paying for your text messages.  These are things where it's like, how do, I mean, that might seem like it's a very stupid  and small trivial thing but it points to how, like, the existing, like, technologies that  we use can be exploited and basically those exploits, which could be called hacks, are  also based on what people need and like their own realities.  And those realities vary, like, no matter what kind of time we share, they're also the other  conditions that we don't share.  And then it's interesting to see how things that come up in different contexts can be  shared across those, like, different geospecific political social conditions.  So I'm trying to stick to my script that Rama and I had in spite of her not being here with  me.  Ah, I hope that Nora or somebody can tell me when her film will be screened tomorrow.  The revolution will not be televised, will be screened tomorrow at sometime in this big  hall just over here to the...  It's over there, I guess.  So, you know, we were looking at, okay, what are the medias and then, like, what could  be revolution be, why would we do that and then why would different media matter in that.  And one of the things is looking at film, I had a talk with an old buddy from Amsterdam  last night and we were talking, like, he doesn't watch movies for him, it's a waste of time  and entertainment and we talked about how different types of narratives can open up  a mind space and how those can be useful operators.  And it's not just that they rely on technology to be built.  I mean, this is something where if you look at how people...  I mean, there's a lot of, like, a whole sort of new line of work in the area of something  called digital storytelling.  I'm not particularly keen on this particular term, but it's something where looking at  how people can use new technologies to tell stories, right?  But what kind of stories do you tell and what do they do?  And so, for example, a film can do many things.  And of course, a film like Rama's film or like the...  When I met her, I was screening Spell Reel, which is based on the militant media of Guinea  Basau.  It's a project by Philippe César and Sanana and Hada.  And those are things that get shown often in museums, in very, like, film festivals,  in various sort of high and, like, arty-farty locations.  But they also get shown in activist situations like Sanimigranta or in different public viewing  scenarios in any number of places across, like, across Guinea Basau, across Gambia and  Senegal.  In other places, these films can be shown in all of those places and they will resonate  very differently with all of those publics.  And in order, like, creating a film that can tell, that can be coherent across all of those  spaces is not a small feat, but it's like something that...  It can activate different sets of knowledge.  And I mean, this...  I think it's fairly basic, but it's not unimportant to think about what it means for somebody  to enter into the museum space.  I think somebody like Rama, who's one of the very small number of African women producers  and, like, film producers who is very comfortable working with activists, feminists across,  you know, like South Africa, Senegal, Gambia, and also being very active and being able  to inhabit the space of, like, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and have her work  be shown there.  This is something where it's a kind of social hacking.  Once she has the credibility of being in a place like MoMA, it gives her credibility  to raise money in order to do further work that can then later be shown in other completely  different spaces.  I think it's the same with Philippa Cesar and with Sana Anada, even my work, that the  credibility that you get due to some kind of institutional support or affiliation can  be then transferred into some kind of social power that can be utilized elsewhere.  I think those are things that, it's very basic, but I think people don't, if you have a sort  of set, if you have your own kind of power, ability to move, ability to speak, ability  to do things, you often don't think, like, not many people often don't think about what  that, like, how that's generated or how that can be used.  So in a way, how that is a privilege and how it could be used to, like, open up privileges  for other people.  So this is, like, in the end, like, this is, how much time, wait just a second.  Yeah.  Yeah.  Okay.  Yeah.  Yeah.  Yeah.  I'm just taking a quick, a quick break.  I wish I had a cell for you.  And the film, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, will be screened tomorrow in the art and play  area at 20 minutes past midnight.  So you can come and have a look at the screening of the film tomorrow night at 20 past 12 and  the art and play area.  We still have half an hour of this presentation and there are two microphones in the room,  that microphone number one and microphone number two.  So when we have a Q&A, then you can stand up behind the microphones and we can then  give you the word and have a dialogue with Diana.  And there will also be the opportunity of having questions from the internet.  Thanks.  If anybody would like to come up and sing a small song, that would be very welcome.  No, this is, yeah, sorry, I'm trying to, I'm doing my best to sort of stretch out our conversation.  The other thing that, like, because this, like, something like CCC, but like Ram and  I were talking, like, we've been, we've been having a very long ongoing discussion and  our idea was just to share that with you.  So anyhow, I'm hoping that she's not totally lost and or in trouble somewhere in Leipzig.  So it's a, I believe her charger may have failed.  I believe her phone may be not working.  But in any case, the question of something like hacking, that we were talking about what,  like, when we, when we first met, we were talking about what it means to hack and what  it means to basically enter spaces where you're not allowed to be.  And like, what it means to then inhabit that space, what it means to use that ability to  be in that space in order to be then more powerful in other spaces.  And I hope that's kind of clear.  I think it's, it's like, I think everybody gets that, but it's like, I don't, I think  it's easy to take it for granted and it's easy to take it for, it's easy to not recognize  that not everybody has that ability to be, like, not just mobile in terms of geography,  but in terms of social spaces and how you're, like, what it means to have a voice and what  it means to have people listen to your voice.  So what's one thing to be able to speak up.  It's another thing to have people, to have an impact on what, for people to listen to  you and that can be on a political level, social level, whatever.  So, and those are things, it's like, it's very basic, but it's like hacking systems  is one of the things you do is open up doors to make your, like, to make people heard.  And this is very much in line with what CCC has been about, I think, from the very beginning,  is creating, like, meaningful forms of communication, often exploiting technology for that.  But I don't think it's ever been only about the technology.  Like, this is something, it's very important that it's not, it's always been rooted in  something else which has much more to do with how we live in a society.  And so here we go with, like, that's where, Roman, I kind of agree, because we've had  lots of, I think, very productive disagreements on what hacking is or what hacking could be.  And that is, like, one of the things is, like, people playing around.  And this is going to happen anywhere.  And nothing against people that do make sort of entertainment-based film, music, et cetera.  That's not a complaint on that, but it's something that, for those people that are working actively  to create, like, I think, or to activate social change, not just as activists, but using different  means to create awareness to not just educate people, but to get people, I think, to act  in unison with their consciousness.  It's a word that I find very difficult to say, concialization.  And I would ask Francesca, but I think she's writing a blog.  This is, the concialization is, like, how do you get people in touch with their own,  like, not their lived politics and get people to realize how their daily life is also politicized.  And that's something where you understand that the basics, like, your basic social position,  the social infrastructures, the economic structures are part of a larger political system.  And once you understand how you operate within that, you can then act more effectively politically.  Like, once you understand the politics of every, like, how space is related, I mean, going  to school, taking the bus, going to work, all of those things, what are the politics  that inform those things?  Then you can start to, for example, organize a union, organize a political movement.  But you can only do that when you really understand, like, what are your basic conditions and how  those can be a springboard for bigger movements.  And this is, I think, these are things that are very, like, general, but in common across  around places around the world.  So nevertheless, we live in a kind of info bubble time when people have more access to  information, they have more, like, means, media and so on.  But nevertheless, we, like, people could easily get informed, but facts mean less than ever.  So this is, like, this is sort of, I guess, ironic that in the moment when people could  potentially be better informed, when more people could be better informed than ever  because of having access to useful and meaningful information is exactly the moment when the  notion of the fact dies, right?  And it's, of course, conveniently parallels the rise of really hardcore right-wing movements  all over.  So Argentina, Turkey, you know what, I don't need to list them, right?  We all know.  We all know.  So this is something where, like, how do you get people to understand, like, and it's,  like, it's, like, activating different knowledge sets.  So, yeah.  And then that's, like, so I would continue with Rama discussing what is hacking, what  is it good for, and what would it mean, like, what would, what would it mean, like, oh,  how many of you guys would, like, like, go to Senegal and then, like, how would you share  the stuff there because then she's like, yeah, all the computer freaks there would, okay,  love to come here.  And of course that would be, yeah, I think it would be funny and weird and useful, probably,  probably not without tensions.  So, yeah.  I am going to, I think, oh, is that Rama?  I kind of, like, I know it's early, but I think I'm, I think that's what I have to say about  this and, like, maybe if you have questions, comments, if you have more factoids to add,  I would be happy to allow you to share the stage complaints.  So as I mentioned before, we have two microphones.  We have microphone one and two.  So if we have questions, comments, please join in the conversation.  So go, go to the microphone that's in the middle of the room or on the side of the room.  And then it's microphone number two in a couple of seconds.  There you go.  Microphone number two.  Thank you, I still have a discussion, this is a couple of questions, but maybe two things  that you mentioned, the lack of, or the maybe dominant people here, how can we change this?  Do you, can you share strategies?  How do we change the white male age audience in this kind of event?  And second part, I'm interested about the, the topic about the colonizing technology,  and I don't know maybe you can pick any part of it that would fit to the conversation.  Thank you.  Wow, that's great.  First of all, I think we had Nora Badri and the CCC team, I think for many years has worked  to try to make a more inclusive space.  And I really applaud them for that.  I have to really thank Nora especially here, so thank you Nora for really working on this  and taking up this opportunity and also hacking this space for that.  Because I think this is one of the first things is recognizing at what time, for any kind of  grouping or social formation, when it's homogeneous, it tends to reflect the interest of those  groups.  And I've known really wonderful people from CCC for many years, but like I think in 19,  2001, like I know that when, when would they do the Hexen thing?  When did the Hexen thing start?  Like 2001, 2002?  And this was like, I was in the room when a bunch of guys decided to do that and I sort  of applauded the interest in having a space for women, but at that point I was like, I'm  not interested in being at that table because I want to sit at the grown-up table, which  is basically where the, like basically I was going to stay at the table where the boys  were.  And as, like I do feminist stuff, but when I want my own room, I'll ask for it, you know,  sit loudly and so on.  So this is one thing is like figuring out things and giving people, like people will  make mistakes.  That's something like when you talk about inclusive practices.  One thing is we were having chats last night about like, what would it mean for my colleagues  from We Are Born Free empowerment radio in Berlin, for example, who do work coming out  of Iranian plots, which is a refugee movement, which was like the group that started to break  out of the forced camps in Germany and went and occupied Iranian plots.  For example, a lot of the guys there speak Walaaf, a lot of the different people that  are active in that movement are coming out of Gambia and Senegal.  Coming to this event, like for, even for a drama, as like one African woman, we were  sort of counting last night, it's not a whole lot of black people here, let's be honest.  And to be able to occupy a space like this, and maybe she got a little bit of, I don't  want to speak for, maybe she got a little bit of stage fright today.  So this is something like, actually we had lovely engaged conversations with many people  and already some interesting unpleasant experiences.  So this, which is going to happen and she knew that, like this is something, when she's  been, she operates in enough different situations to know that coming to a space like this,  there might be an unpleasant encounter.  And so that's something which, that's a part of needing to invite, needing to have people  that are going to be able to inhabit this kind of space, have enough thick skin to be  able to deal with, like let's say, a different range of encounters and being able to still  have a voice there.  So that's one thing.  Once you start to include like different, let's say, people working from different angles,  and it's not just about, like it's not about ethnic differences or racial differences,  it's about different types of ways of engagement.  But once you start to mix up who is doing the talking and who is getting represented,  that already is going to be a driving force for a different kind of public.  And that's going to inform then who comes in the next, like the next generations.  And this is, I would have shown you clips of we are born in flames, Lizzie Borden's  film, I have a really crappy copy.  If you're around later, I can give you a copy.  She's given me permission to do this, the director.  So it's a film from 83, which basically shows a lot of how people work and do social outreach.  I am going to say, like, I will use Reboot FM in Berlin.  It's an artist-run radio.  We say free artist radio.  I'm very proud because when we started in 2003, it's going to be like 15 years old as  an actual running radio in Berlin next year, like in two weeks, I think.  In any case, what we started doing was asking a bunch of different people.  And because in that time I did a little bit of work with groups like Kanak Attack, which  is a group of different people in Germany doing deconstruction of identity politics.  And so asking different Afro-German groups, DJ collectives, art groups, activist groups,  asking them what would they like out of a radio in order to do radio and in order to  listen to it.  This was the first thing, asking a whole bunch of different people.  And this is working along the lines of basically feminist organizing, but also we developed  a whole software.  Seda Gursus is a feminist technologist.  We used a lot of the same models.  They actually did it and it impacted how a software got developed just by asking people  lots of questions and then building that into a structure.  So that's something we're doing outreach, but then having a lot of different interests  represented in the thing and on different levels.  And that means, like, who has a say, who gets represented and who is spoken to.  Because these are things where it's like, once you start mixing that up, things get  like, oh, oh good.  Thank you.  That's what we also do on the radio.  I like the silent 15.  Anyhow, I think there are a lot of different ways to do that.  Until today, Reboot has a really very good mixed thing.  We are going mixed across, like, for us, diversity is not a term we use.  To the extent we use it, it means East West German, it means old young people, it means  men, women, it means DJs, musicians, actors, artists, whatever.  So that's, like, for us, it's like we use that term to, we use that term to sort of  understand everything and not, because often, like, something like diversity or inclusion  assumes basically a dominant cultural perspective, like, and that already is going to inform  how people, what is understood in terms of whose need is fulfilled, right?  So one thing is, do you want to have people meaningfully engaging with those, like, working  across differences, social, political, economic, et cetera, gender?  Do you want to have meaningful engagement or do you want to have decoration?  Because often diversity is used to supply decoration and that means minority people,  whatever, like, are then there to be counted and be representative of some kind of difference,  but not actually to have a meaningful role or meaningful stake in anything.  And I think that's, those are like, yeah, those are processes and I'm doing this sort  of thing for a long time and I really think it's work, it takes a lot of time and energy.  I think the results are better.  So that's, I think that would be my long, although I'm very enthusiastic about that question  because it's something, I think the results get better.  And once we start, like, once we stop looking at what makes us different and start looking  at what we have in common, that's, I think then you have a really potential to do more  things and there's, there's, like, there are lots of things that we can work with.  So, yeah.  I loved your term, by the way.  Please give me your name later of decolonizing technology.  I think that's a wonderful, I didn't say that you did, so thank you for that.  And this is something I think, oh, hmm.  I can only say thank you, I think we should.  It's like decolonizing technology on all areas because it's, for me, the technologies that  we use media, it's really happening, like looking at how media, like something like  Facebook comes out of its time.  It was always built to not just, not just become a money earner, it was always meant  to capitalize on things.  It was, it's built from the ground up, not just to gain your access to your information,  it's meant to use your, like, to inactivate you or the public to functionalize your own  personal relationships, basically to monetize your social, your friends, family, et cetera,  into contacts and understand that as an accumulation of wealth.  So, that's, that, I'm sure that's also reflected in the code, but that's, that's why it's there.  It's meant, it's meant to encourage people to, yeah, find, like, monetize or, oh, no,  I had a better turn, I'm sorry.  Anyhow, it's, it's, it's, capitalize on your own, like, social connections, you know, with,  with people.  It's, I think it's, it's kind of sick and I'm sure that's also reflected in the code.  So one thing is understanding, like, what's, what's on the layers that you don't see that  you use, and I think that's very important for programming, who uses it and what they  use it for and then what gets communicated.  And all of those things are very important in terms of understanding, like, what's, what's  media.  So that's, but thanks.  I'm really happy.  Can you say your name?  No, just say it.  Can you just shout?  She said later?  Yeah, your name's not, just, what?  Orale.  Orale, orale.  Okay.  So thank you.  So there you get, this is, I'm sure there are thousands of people listening on the internet  right now.  So that's, you know, and we have another question on microphone number two.  Thanks.  That was a bit of a chunk, but you mentioned xenofeminism earlier and also in your title.  And I've tried to wrap my head around this, especially the xenofeminist manifesto, which  is a quite decisive criticism of many established feminist practices, especially those turning  towards representation of different groups and so on and so forth, and rather focus on  the body biohacking and all that stuff.  So I would be really curious to hear what you as a filmmaker and radio person, if I  got that right, what you take out of that movement or how that inspires your work.  Thank you.  Okay.  I am a radio, like whatever, I only work with filmmakers, so I'm a cosmic advisor.  It doesn't inspire my work at all.  So I think like it's, my work has inspired that stuff.  And I don't want to be like, I'm not being like even arrogant here.  It's absolutely clear like the xenofeminists are drawing on lots of things, like the kind  of stuff I've been doing with the internet for 20 years and many other things.  So that's like to be clear, like many, many other things.  So my, like I have had lots of heated debates.  For example, any go like Xeno is, it's a mathematical term, but nevertheless it has, it resonates,  it has like for many people when they hear Xeno, they hear xenophobia.  And for example, only a group of white women wouldn't hear that.  You know, like, like consider and say, we're going to call something Xeno feminism and  not hear xenophobia.  And this is like, I have to say that, yeah, of course, this is, this is one of the criticisms  that comes out of black feminists that are interested in like tech, techno feminism or  something like that.  Yeah, I think that they have drawn a lot of things together.  The Xeno feminist manifesto is what is it?  It's, can you get, can you get, what is the name of it?  The actual name is like, hmm?  The name, the Xeno feminist manifesto has, it's like, how?  A politics for, yeah, thanks.  Yeah, this is, yeah.  And I think it's a, I think it's a, I think it's a useful read.  But I think it's inspiring and interesting.  And I think it can, because one of the things, it's, it's, it's denial of, basically it's,  it has a certain denial of identity politics in it, in term, like, which I find a very  difficult term.  It has a denial in it of a fixed notion of identity.  And that is a deconstruction of identity politics.  Nevertheless it has many problems in it.  So this is something, but this alienation, understanding alienation as a positive space  to work from.  So I think it's something that it's useful to read and it's useful to think about.  But as a manifesto, I don't think it's, it's not offering anything like specific to do,  but it's offering specific things to think about that should be hopefully a springboard  to understanding, like how, yeah, something like gender, how gender race and class play,  get played in and out of, like play in and out of and off of technology.  So that's, but I, I, I also just think it's a, it's a kind of cool word.  Like it's, I think it's, by the way, this is blatantly, we use it, we use it for, we've  done a whole series of talks and we use it because it's a way of locating something like  a 25, 30 year techno feminist idea range.  And it's, if you go cyber feminist, it's xenofeminism.  It's, it's a, we, like, when I say we face is different colleagues, we've done an anecdoted,  anecdoted alphabet of, like feminist alphabet of media, stuff like that.  So it's playing with how you work with linearity and technology, like linearity.  So that's, it's a, it's also a cheap way to advertise something.  Do we have any more questions?  We still have about eight, seven minutes before we need to wrap up.  Are there any questions from the inside?  Signal angels?  Nope.  Well, I think it's been very inspiring and great talk.  There's one.  Yay.  Come up to the microphone.  Microphone number two.  Hi, I just want to thank you for a really amazing inspiration, especially having come  from Hamburg, a forest where we experienced third largest police action in the history  of Germany and the largest in the history of North Rhine Westphalia.  And after being evicted from 11 forest occupation, 63 houses, we experienced an incredible flow  of outpouring of support, a 50,000 demo and a reoccupation of the forest.  And regardless, the narrative of cases like this is so minimal in the mainstream media  that's what really recharged us was the phenomenal amount of activist, documentarians and filmmakers  who have come to the forest, who've explored the narrative, especially from the anarcho-feminist  perspective, which is one of our foundation of our struggle.  And I wanted to ask you, how could we actually reach out to more people from the artist community,  from the political, documentarian community and bring them and invite them to the struggle,  speaking of which I would also like to invite you as well to come and visit us in the forest  as well.  Thank you.  Yeah, Bravo.  Yeah, okay, sure, I'm there.  Like, yeah.  Actually, like a group of us would like to visit you anyway.  So that's, yeah, we are like, I mean, time is time.  It's like, where are you able to focus on things?  But actually, what I think is interesting about those things is like figuring out, like,  building up, I hate the term networking, but I think it's very important to build up coalitions  and alliances and look for people with shared interests.  And out of that, you, like, it's very much, it's like, there is no sort of local regional  issue that doesn't have a kind of mirror somewhere else.  And it is very important to build up alliances and share information and out of that game  strength.  But, yeah, that's, and I don't know, use the internet.  I, you know, it's great to send people emails and ask them to do that, open calls.  That's what I would suggest.  And of course, why not find your local smallest radio and broadcast.  So.  Is there anybody hiding in their seats with a burning question?  Please get up to the microphones so that everybody can hear your questions.  Okay, I'm going to say just like, since I'm just here now and like, I believe, I hope,  I really hope Arama is fine.  Like, that's something.  I do run a small mailing list for women in media.  And this is one of the things that, like, please do, if you're interested, it's called  Faces-L.Net.  That used to stand for, like, List.  So it's still, so that's why the URL is like that.  You shoot us an email.  We do check who you are.  So like, it's for women.  It's always been, since day one, it's been open to trans women, but basically women  who identify, like people who identify as women and live that.  It's been up for discussion several times over the last 20 years.  It's not a, I'm going to say, it's not a huge, it's like, maybe 400 people.  There's another 400 in the larger community, but it's a place where people can share information  about their work.  And this is, for example, like one of the things we do is just to build up a place where  we can find each other.  Like, there will be a little Faces gathering, I think, tomorrow around lunchtime.  I guess that's at five o'clock here, right?  So somewhere around.  So if you're interested in getting in contact with more women and finding out about what  women are doing with art, gender, and technology, Faces is a good place.  But of course, I also want to say it was never, ever formed or founded with the notion that  we would stay there.  So it's a place where we can share information, exchange amongst the women, the ladies, the  girls, whatever.  But it's never with the idea that that's where we would stay.  So it's one of the things that you do in order to have that place and then go out and be,  you know, whatever, stronger, louder, angrier, funnier in the world.  So anybody interested in that, please join in.  We have a question for microphone number two.  Hello.  Hello.  I'm one of the translators of the Cinefeminist Manifesto into Spanish.  And I actually work with Luca Frazier, who's one of the members of the collective.  I was wondering in your perspective, what kind of technologies do you see or strategies  do you see forming that advance the Cinefeminist program or strategy?  And they kind of took new technologies we should be looking out forward to.  No.  I actually think that the best technology that the Cinefeminist Manifesto inspires people  to use is the one in your brain.  That's actually what I think it's very effective for getting people to think a little bit differently  about things.  And that's, I think, in spite of the interdisciplinarity of the group.  They're not really into technology.  They're not programmers on that.  They're not deeply embedded in any kind of technological movement.  I don't think it matters.  I think the ideas that are, the questions that it raises could be practiced in different  ways in how we work with technology.  And I think that would be the interesting thing to do.  I guess it's at that point.  But actually one of the members does work in artificial intelligence and return oriented  programming.  So I do think that they're embedded in technology.  So yeah.  Yeah, but I mean, nothing, I don't want to argue with you about this, but the group  itself is not.  Like, they're really not.  Like, the group itself doesn't, there is no technological practice.  And that's what I mean.  So.  There is.  So computer scientists and Halifax.  Yeah, but then maybe you want to name a practice that would be a xenofeminist practice.  Sure.  Genome editing, CRISPR, Elizabeth Prasiatto maybe self editing in terms of body mechanics.  But that's okay.  If you, if you call, if you want to call those xenofeminist practices, that's fine.  I wouldn't.  I wouldn't.  So.  Okay.  Cool.  I wouldn't sue you for it either.  Good.  I think we have about one minute left.  So let's give Diana McCarthy a big round of applause for incredible presentation and talk.
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