[oldboys] CFP: DO NOT EXIST, Europe, woman, digital medium

[claudia reiche <office@claudia-reiche.net>]

thealit Frauen.Kulur.Labor Bremen
(Germany)
deadline:  june 23 2005

#First Announcment and Call for Contributions to a transdisciplinary 
European Project:

“do not exist :
Europe, Woman And The Digital Medium”

Symposium, workshops, exhibitions, netart, video, film...

This call addresses all artists, theorists, journalists, activists 
interested in participating in a (Eastern) European Project on the 
question of (non)existence – from a gendered, political or media based 
point of view. The project will be organized, by the thealit 
Frauen.Kultur.Labor, Bremen (Germany, http://www.thealit.de) and 
co-organized by the Estonian Academy of Arts, E-Media Centre, Tallinn 
(Estonia, http://e-media.artun.ee/) and the Institutum Studiorum 
Humanitatis (ISH) – Ljubljana Graduate School of the Humanities 
(Slovenia, http://www.ish.si/) and will take place from September 2006 
to September 2007 in Bremen, Ljubljana, Tallinn and probably other 
places (depending on funding).
We invite (women) presenters who epistemologically, politically or 
artistically pursue a gender-conscious approach through their works.
Send all proposals (for the symposium, workshops, exhibitions including 
film, video, netart) to the Frauen.Kultur.Labor thealit, Bremen, 
Germany: kontakt@thealit.de.
Proposals shall include descriptions of your artwork, film or abstracts 
of the paper you wish to present (maximum 2000 characters, images to 
2MB).
Deadline: Start sending from now on, until June 23, 2005.
  With any question, idea, or suggestion feel free to contact:
office@claudia-reiche.net
or:
sick@thealit.de
telephone thealit: 0049-421-701632.

The project’s title indicates our concept of how to approach the 
subject:
“do not exist :
Europe, Woman And The Digital Medium”

Question
Is it possible to speak of the non-existence of what is labelled 
“Europe”, “Woman” or “Digital Medium” and does this open up a new 
perspective in thinking and behaviour? The project "do not exist ...." 
is designed to examine his concept and experiment with it. The idea of 
a lacking, incomplete or imperfect existence of the three notions, 
conjectures or realities has already been undertaken in different ways 
by media and cultural studies, historical and political sciences as 
well as by psychoanalysis, gender studies and media art: however, the 
attempt has not yet been made to bring these different concepts 
together and into confrontation with each other. Our challenge is to 
perform this in full recognition of a female perspective, allowing the 
querying of the non-existence of woman from a female point of view.

What indeed is the Europe we speak of?
Although we need this illusory point of identity and reference, we are 
not at all capable of precisely identifying its meaning. Beyond the 
question of the multi-layered political and legal structures of the 
European Union, “Europe” in a more general sense is today neither 
distinctly defined in reference to a political unity nor to a 
historico-cultural or ‘ethnic’ one. In what way can ‘we‘ be defined as 
members of a certain union, bearers of certain rights, representatives 
of a certain culture? On the basis of which grounds and traditions is 
“fortress Europe” being erected against "invaders"?

“La femme n’existe pas”
thus spake Jacques Lacan in his much-quoted provocative formula, more 
accurately translated as: “The Woman (as a universal) does not exist”. 
(Encore, Le séminaire, volume XX). Julia Kristeva reaches the same 
conclusion: “Strictly speaking one cannot say that ‘woman’ exists at 
all” , as does Monique Wittig, putting it differently: “Lesbians are no 
women”, or “I am no woman” (both quoted in Judith Butler, Gender 
Trouble).
Apart from these deliberations on the excludedness of ‘woman‘ in 
universal statements and the unconscious, there is obviously the area 
of excludedness of individual women from their participation in social 
opportunities. The function of ‘women’ not only as symbolic objects of 
trade but of trafficking is drastically exemplified by the wave of 
female migrants from 'eastern’ to 'western’ Europe. And is it equally 
exemplified from another point of view in the potentiated exclusion of 
lesbian representation? Can these discriminations of the female be seen 
in relation to each other? And: does ‘the’ man (male identity) exist? 
Does 'being’ exist as 'all’ or always only in the particular? (cf Joan 
Copjek, Imagine There’s No Woman: "There is no whole of being, no 'all 
there is', there are only appearences in their particularity.")

The digital medium
is strongly linked with diverse assumptions of disappearance. Since 
Walter Benjamin's assertion of the disappearance of the aura by 
reproduction technologies (especially photography and film), notions of 
a disappearance of so-called reality, materiality, identity of the 
image and the body, or even of the visible, have been formulated since 
the development of digital and telecommunications media.
These descriptions have influenced many concepts of “cyberspace”, in 
net.art as well as in the popular mythologies of the world wide web. 
How to deal with these perceived disappearances? “What is today 
included in an pre-eminent sense of being, can on principle not be seen 
although - or because - the visible is seen first. In this sense the 
history of optical media is a history of disappearing,” suggests 
Friedrich A. Kittler (Optische Medien, Berliner Vorlesung 1999, p. 35). 
Can universal statements like this be made, taking sexual diffference 
into consideration?

"do not exist ... " intends to create opportunities where these three 
topics and threads of discussion can be seen in relation to one another 
in the arts and sciences.





office@claudia-reiche.net
Hamburger Berg 22
20359 Hamburg
040-48408524
0179-5300842

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