Join us for a performative lecture and discussion to launch the Cyberfeminism Index. Seu will be joined in conversation with artist Lee Blalock. Edited by designer, professor, and researcher Mindy Seu, Cyberfeminism Index gathers more than 700 short entries of radical techno-critical activism, feminist manifestos, hackerspaces, hardware, and wetware education and net art from 1991 to 2020, starting with an excerpt from Donna Haraway’s seminal essay “A Cyborg Manifesto.” Its online complement, cyberfeminismindex.com (2020), is a living, online index that was commissioned by Rhizome and premiered with New Museum. Its print form, published by Inventory Press, was supported by a Graham Foundation grant in 2021. 

ABOUT CYBERFEMINISM INDEX
In Cyberfeminism Index, hackers, scholars, artists, and activists of all regions, races, and sexual orientations consider how humans might reconstruct themselves by way of technology. When learning about internet history, we are taught to focus on engineering, the military-industrial complex, and the grandfathers who created the architecture and protocol, but the internet is not only a network of cables, servers, and computers. It is an environment that shapes and is shaped by its inhabitants and their use.

The creation and use of the Cyberfeminism Index is a social and political act. It takes the name cyberfeminism as an umbrella, complicates it, and pushes it into plain sight. Edited by designer, professor, and researcher Mindy Seu, it includes more than 700 short entries of radical techno-critical activism in a variety of media, including excerpts from academic articles and scholarly texts; descriptions of hackerspaces, digital rights activist groups, and bio-hacktivism; and depictions of feminist net art and new media art.

Both a vital introduction for laypeople and a robust resource guide for educators, Cyberfeminism Index—an anti-canon, of sorts—celebrates the multiplicity of practices that fall under this imperfect categorization and makes visible cyberfeminism’s long-ignored origins and its expansive legacy.

Advance copies will be available for purchase in the Graham Foundation bookshop during the event. Pre-order copies are available now on inventorypress.com. Follow the international Cyberfeminism Index book launch tour on tour.cyberfeminismindex.com

Mindy Seu (b. 1991, California) gathers the histories of technology to analyze and inform contemporary society. Trained as a graphic designer, she works collaboratively across the disciplines of design, art, and technology to document overlooked voices. These projects are expressed in a variety of forms, from archival projects and techno-critical writing to performative lectures and resource sharing. Seu’s ongoing Cyberfeminism Index (cyberfeminismindex.com), which gathers three decades of online activism and net art from 1991 to the present, was commissioned by Rhizome and presented at the New Museum in its online form. Its print form, published by Inventory Press, is a recipient of a Graham Foundation grant. Her work is both technological and interdisciplinary, marking the ways that online environments intersect with issues of race, gender, culture, and power. She is regularly invited to present on alternative archival projects and contemporary feminism by cultural institutions (Barbican Centre, New Museum), academic institutions (Columbia University, Central Saint Martins), and mainstream platforms (Google, Pornhub, SSENSE). Seu has been a resident at MacDowell, Sitterwerk Foundation, Pioneer Works, and Internet Archive, and holds an M.Des. from Harvard University Graduate School of Design and a bachelor of arts in design media arts from the University of California, Los Angeles. She is currently assistant professor at Rutgers Mason Gross School of the Arts and critic at Yale School of Art.

Lee Blalock is a Chicago-based artist and educator presenting alternative and hyphenated states of being through technology-mediated processes. Interested in how technologies support the idea of impossible anatomies, behaviors, and performances, her work is an exercise in body modification by way of amplified behavior or "change-of-state". Lee’s interests include embodied cognition, anatomy and biomechanics, bionics, mechatronics, human/non-human entanglement, and computational abstraction. She has presented work domestically, internationally, and virtually at many institutions including Ars Electronica, the wrong biennale, NYU Abu Dhabi Art Gallery, Experimental Sound Studio (Chicago), ICA (Philadelphia), 205 Hudson Gallery (NY), and the Art Institute of Chicago. Lee is an Assistant Professor in the Art and Technology Studies Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and practices various forms of embodiment as an everyday athlete.

Cyberfeminism Index is published by Inventory Press and distributed by Distributed Art Publishers and funded by the Graham Foundation, Rhizome, and Feral File, and is made possible in part by the Rutgers University Research Council, Pratt Institute, Pioneer Works, and Cita Press.

Related Graham Foundation supported projects:
2021 grant to Mindy Seu for the publication Cyberfeminism Catalog

The Graham Foundation is pleased to partner with the Chicago Architecture Biennial to host the Chicago Design Summit, led by the Floating Museum—artistic team for CAB 5, the fifth edition of the Chicago Architecture Biennial, This is a Rehearsal, opening September 2023. The Summit convenes leading practitioners to explore emerging ideas in contemporary architecture and design and serves as a forum for research and the development of the CAB 5 program.

Introduction by the Floating Museum
10:30 a.m.

Session 1: Rehearsing Critique
11 a.m.–12:30 p.m.
This panel explores rehearsal as a practice of systemic and structural critique—living with and within systems to identify what has been overlooked, unconsidered, and uninvestigated—to establish a duty and standard of care as a prerequisite to performative, political, organizational, or environmental engagements or actions.

Panelists: Ionit Behar, associate curator, DePaul Art Museum (Chicago); Andrea Carlson, artist (Chicago); Ibrahim Mahama, artist (Tamale, Ghana); Anjulie Rao, journalist (Chicago); Florencia Rodriguez, director, School of Architecture at the University of Illinois Chicago (Chicago)
Facilitator: Kerry Cardoza, journalist (Chicago)

Lunch Break
12:30–1:30 p.m.

Session 2: Rehearsing Relations
1:30–3 p.m.
This panel explores rehearsal as a practice of individual and collective attunement to build organizational power through mutual understanding.

Panelists: Jha D Amazi, director of the Public Memory and Memorials Lab, principal, MASS. (Boston); Skyla Hearn, cofounder, The Blackivists (Chicago); Erin Harkey, commissioner, Department of Cultural Events and Special Affairs (Chicago); Asad Jafri, cultural producer/artist (Chicago); Ujijji Davis Williams, landscape architect, founder, JIMA Studio (Detroit)
Facilitator: Megha Ralapati, program director, fellowships, CEC ArtsLink (Chicago)

Session 3: Rehearsing Production
3:15–4:45 p.m.
This panel explores rehearsal as a practice of production through improvisation, speculation, and iterative development in response to social and climatic change.

Panelists: Meida Teresa McNeal, artistic/managing director, Honey Pot Performance (Chicago); Dan Peterman, artist, founder, Experimental Station (Chicago); Vyjayanthi Venuturupalli Rao, anthropologist (New York); Chris Reed, landscape architect, founding principal, STOSS (Cambridge); Feda Wardak, architect, director, Aman Iwan (Paris)
Facilitators: Karla Sierralta and Brian Strawn, cofounders, Strawn Sierralta (Honolulu)

Closing performance and reception
5 p.m.

The Summit is made possible with support from the National Endowment for the Arts and Graham Foundation.

Click here to learn more about the Chicago Architecture Biennial

Through February 25, 2023
Gallery and Bookshop Hours
Wednesday–Saturday, 12–5 p.m.
On view: Pidgeon Audio Visual: Architects Speak for Themselves and Barbara Stauffacher Solomon: Exits Exist

For gallery hours and timed-entry reservations, click here to book on tock.com/grahamfoundation

Visitor Guidelines
Please note: The audio component of the Pidgeon Audio Visual installation is only accessible to stream in the galleries through the exhibition's dedicated website on a mobile device. The use of a personal mobile device is encouraged and headphones are required. Headphones and chargers are available for use as needed.

The first-floor galleries and bookshop are accessible via outdoor lift. Please call ahead to make arrangements. The second-floor galleries and the third-floor ballroom, where events are held, are only accessible by stairs.

Group tours available by request

For more information on the exhibition, Pidgeon Audio Visual: Architects Speak for Themselves, click here.

6 p.m. Introductory talk by curator Florencia Alvarez Pacheco, followed by a conversation with Felicity Scott and Mark Wasiuta
Reception to follow

Join us for a reception and introductory remarks to celebrate the opening of our fall exhibition Pidgeon Audio Visual: Architects Speak for Themselves in the second-floor galleries. The conversation with curator Florencia Alvarez Pacheco begins at 6 p.m. in the third-floor ballroom. Alvarez Pacheco will be joined by Felicity Scott and Mark Wasiuta, co-directors of the Critical, Curatorial, and Conceptual Practices in Architecture (CCCP) program, at Columbia University, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP).

Mining the Pidgeon Audio Visual (PAV) series—a collection of over 200 mail order tape/slide talks initiated in 1979 by renowned editor of London-based magazine Architectural Design, Monica Pidgeon—this exhibition features a selection of the talks and accompanying slide presentations by leading architects and designers produced between 1979 and 1989. At the Graham, talks by Reyner Banham, Roberto Burle Marx, Charles Correa, Balkrishna V. Doshi, Frank Gehry, Myron Goldsmith, Zaha Hadid, Lawrence Halprin, Kisho Kurokawa, Esther McCoy, Cedric Price, James Wines and Alison Sky (SITE), Alison & Peter Smithson, Stanley Tigerman, and Anne Tyng will be shown in their original format on slide projectors, with synchronized audio accessed on personal mobile devices. Drawing from the archives of Royal Institute of British Architects; the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution; and the Graham Foundation—which supported Pidgeon and PAV with a grant in 1983—the exhibition looks at the PAV series as an alternative education platform and a new model for the development and distribution of ideas in architecture and design.

Exits Exist, site-specific supergraphics by San Francisco-based Barbara Stauffacher Solomon (b. 1928) for the Graham Foundation’s Madlener House are also on view throughout the galleries.

Florencia Alvarez Pacheco is an architect and curator who teaches at the School of Architecture, Design and Urbanism at the University of Buenos Aires. She holds a master’s degree in Critical, Curatorial, and Conceptual Practices in Architecture from Columbia University, GSAPP. She was assistant exhibitions coordinator at the Arthur Ross Architectural Gallery where she acted as assistant curator for Environmental Communications: Contact High, Information Fall-Out: Buckminster Fuller’s World Game, Les Levine: Bio-Tech Rehearsals, 1965–1975, and cocurator for Every Building in Baghdad: The Rifat Chadirji Archives at the Arab Image Foundation, and Detox USA among other exhibitions. Her work has been exhibited at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, the Graham Foundation, the Istanbul Design Biennial, and LAXART. Her research focuses on the implications and challenges of diverse techno-pedagogical experiences from the postwar period at the convergence of politics, education, and media.

For more information on the exhibition, Pidgeon Audio Visual: Architects Speak for Themselves, click here.

Lea and Ben will present My Words Came Out Slow and Odd, a text-based composition for voices and electronics, trumpet, and reeds.

The duo's new work pushes the boundaries of language and intelligibility and extends the human voice through the aid of creative electronic processing. What new modes of communication emerge when language is in a constant state of morphology? How quickly can we recalibrate to allow for complex meaning to be projected onto abstraction? My Words Came Out Slow and Odd is a clattering, psychedelic whirl of heteroglossia, smears, and stutters.

Ben Vida and Lea Bertucci began collaborating during the summer of 2021, while living on opposite sides of the same mountain outside of Woodstock, New York. What started as a conversation between friends slowly developed into a unique form of nonhierarchical improvisation, one that examines the very nature of creative dialogue.

Since 2010 the Graham Foundation has partnered with Lampo to produce an international performance series held at the Madlener House. Lampo, founded in 1997, is a nonprofit organization for experimental music and intermedia projects.

Note that seating for this performance is very limited. Reservations are required for entry. If you make a reservation and then are no longer able to attend, please cancel your reservation through Eventbrite or email info@grahamfoundation.org to release the spot to someone on the waiting list. 

Ben Vida (b.1975, Dubuque, Iowa) is a composer, improviser and artist. His work explores aural phenomena, language, durations and systems. In the mid-1990s he co-founded the minimalist quartet Town & Country in Chicago. Later, after a move to Brooklyn, he shifted his focus to electronics and systems-based compositions that used psychoacoustics, aural phenomena and advanced synthesis techniques. Since 2015 he has composed pieces that combine his interest in experimental writing with his love of singing with people.

Slipping Control (2015), Vida’s multimedia composition for voices, video and electronics, premiered at Audio Visual Arts in New York and then traveled to Los Angeles and Athens. His six-hour performance piece for vocal ensemble and electronics, Reducing the Tempo to Zero premiered for Lampo in June 2016 and was staged at The Kitchen, New York; STUK in Leuven, Belgium; and Centro Pecci, Prato. And So Now (2018) was commissioned for the Brooklyn Academy of Music and performed at the BAM Fisher Space. Always Already, which was created in collaboration with the Yarn/Wire ensemble and vocalist Nina Dante, premiered for Lampo in March 2020 and was also performed in New York.

In addition to these works, he has developed projects with Marina Rosenfeld, Lucio Capece, and Lea Bertucci. He has released his music with many labels including Shelter Press, Kranky, PAN, iDEAL and 901Editions, among others. Vida teaches in the M.F.A. program at Brooklyn College.

Lea Bertucci (b.1984) is an artist who works with sound. Her projects describe relationships between acoustic phenomena and biological resonance. In addition to her longstanding practice with woodwind instruments, her work incorporates multichannel speaker arrays, radical methods of free improvisation, and creative misuses of audio technology. Recent projects have tapped into a space's unique acoustic properties, as in 2018’s Acoustic Shadows, a suite of compositions for the enclosed hollow body of the Deutz Suspension Bridge in Cologne.

She has released several solo albums and a number of collaborative projects, including Metal Aether and Resonant Field (NNA Tapes), and Phase Eclipse with Amirtha Kidambi (Astral Spirits). In 2021 she founded Cibachrome Editions and released A Visible Length of Light. Earlier this year the label issued Murmurations, her debut recording with Ben Vida.

Bertucci has performed her work throughout the U.S. and Europe, including at the Museum of Modern Art, Blank Forms, Gagosian Gallery, Issue Project Room, Pioneer Works, and The Kitchen, New York; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Tempo Reale, Florence; Muziekgebouw, Amsterdam; Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid; and at international festivals, including Brückenmusik, Cologne; Sound of Stockholm, Stockholm; ReWire, The Hague; and Unsound, Kraków, among others.

Additionally, Bertucci has been an artist in residence at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha; MacDowell, Peterborough, N.H.; Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, Calif.; and Issue Project Room, New York. Bertucci's work has been commissioned by the INA GRM in Paris, Quartetto Maurice in Turin, and ARS Nova Workshop in Philadelphia.

Lampo, established in 1997, supports artists working in new music, experimental sound and other interdisciplinary practices. The Chicago-based organization's core activity has been and remains its performance series. Rather than making programming decisions around tour schedules, Lampo invites selected artists to create and perform new work, and then the organization provides the space, resources and curatorial support to help them fulfill their vision. Lampo also organizes artist talks, lectures, screenings and workshops, and publishes written and recorded documents related to its series.

Photo: Peter Ganushkin

PREVIOUS POSTS NEW POSTS