feminism is a browser
installation, 11:50, 2019-ongoing

A video essay and an internet-based archive of video interviews conducted by the artist, are essential elements of Charlotte Eifler’s open, and growing, artwork. The work is the result of her research on women’s media art history, which aims to make visible the presence of female pioneers of digital art and culture and to expand the field of theoretical reflection on their contributions to the development and shaping of the field. Despite the presence of women in its many strands, technology is widely masculinized, and men are usually remembered as the creators of official milestones in its development. Also, female artists working with new technologies – as in official art history – tend to be overshadowed by their male counterparts. Eifler’s exploration of the matrilineal history of media art takes the form of a sophisticated, engaging narrative situated between cinematic fiction and documentary approaches. Yeva, a fictitious character and child of cyberspace, leads the audience on a journey to the early days of the Internet. Together, we traverse the folders and files within Yevas webspace Rosegarden and reach mail resources on frozen servers that resemble the sites of ancient archaeological digs. The intriguing metaphorical images of Yeva’s journey to their own past are accompanied by contributions from the “mothers of the Internet,” artists, researchers, and activists who in the early 1990s created FACES, an international cyberfeminist mailing list that has existed for over 20 years as a network of collaboration and communication founded by Diana McCarty, Valie Djordjevic, and Kathy Rae Huffman, among others.

Charlotte Eifler (DE)

Charlotte Eifler was born in 1986 in Rostock (German Democratic Republic back then) and presently lives and works in Leipzig and Berlin. Eifler is active in the fields of film, sound and technology. Her videos and media installations address the politics of representation, abstraction and computation. Focusing on feminist approaches and elements of science fiction, she explores processes of image production and imagination of alternative futures. She currently lectures on image politics and editing techniques at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design in the Department of Media Art.

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