Panel: Hacking the Body - 6th February 2005, Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, Berlin, Germany
[Panel's Photos]

The panel 'Hacking the Body' is an inquiry into the meaning of cyberfeminism today after more than ten years since it was coined, reflecting artistic and activistic practices which play with the topics of body, identity and sexuality.
In 1991, along with new gender and identity utopias linked to a radical and collective use of technology, VNS Matrix, a group of Australian women wrote 'A Cyberfeminist Manifesto for the 21st Century' and, influenced by Donna Haraway, playfully developed the concept of cyberfeminism.
The cyberfeminist virus spread to Australia, Europa and America, combining radical use of body, enthusiasm for new technological utopias and hopes for subverting patriarchy through new hybrid identities, irony and political activism.
After ten years of individual and collective practices, where does cyberfeminism stand today? In which way is it possible to radically hack concepts like identity, the body and sexuality?
Currently, there is a new wave of radical body expression through independent pornography which, experimenting with the body and identity as well, tries to subvert dichotomies like male/female, gay/straight.
Is this the new body infected by the cyberfeminist virus?

Hacking the Body - 6th february, 4.00 pm
First section (4.00-5.30 pm)
- Cornelia Sollfrank, Old Boys Network www.obn.org (Hamburg, D)
- Agnese Trocchi, Candida TV www.candidatv.tv (Rome, IT)
- Public discussion
Video projection (5.30 pm)
- 'Bio Doll's Baby' by Franca Formenti www.francaformenti3.org (Varese, IT), video introduced by Dahlia Schweitzer www.thisisdahlia.com (New York, USA/Berlin, D) with the interaction of synusi@ virus by Casaluce - Geiger (Vienna, AU/Italy)
Second section (6.00-7.30 pm)
- Diana McCarty, Bootlab (www.bootlab.org Berlin, D)
- Betty, Sexyshock (www.ecn.org/sexyshock Bologna, IT)
- Public discussion
- Moderator: Tatiana Bazzichelli, AHA (www.ecn.org/aha Rome, IT/Berlin, D)

[Panel's Photos]

Cornelia Sollfrank – Old Boys Network (Hamburg, D)
She is an artist, lives in Hamburg, is lecturing at the University of Oldenburg. Central to her conceptual and performative works are the changing notions of art, the advent of a new image of the artist in the information age, gender-specific handling of technology, new forms of disseminating art, and communication and networking as art. She initiated the cyberfemininist organisation “Old Boys Network”. Her project Female Extension (1997) was a hack of the first net.art competition initiated by a museum, in which she flooded the museum's network with submissions by 300 virtual female net artists. Her net.art generator automatically produces art on demand. She published the readers “First Cyberfeminist International” (1998), “Next Cyberfeminist International” (1999) and “Very Cyberfeminist International” (2001). Sollfrank is currently producing work on the subject of female hackers.
www.obn.org - www.artwarez.org

Agnese Trocchi - Candida TV (Rome, Italy)
Agnese Trocchi was born as 'macchina', a digital entity, in AVaNA BBS (Bullettin Board System), and settled in Rome. She grew-up in techno organized disorder and she created a Web site focused on the illegal rave scene in Italy. She has developed counter-networks in Rome including www.thething.it. She is a co-editor of Torazine Magazine: Pills of Pop Counterculture. She is also co-founder of Candida TV, a video project for the infestation of mainstream television channels. Since 1999, she has been collaborating with Diane Ludin and Francesca Da Rimini in the net project Identity_Runners.
www.candidatv.tv - www.idrunners.net - ordanomade.kyuzz.org

Dahlia Schweitzer
Originally from New York, Dahlia Schweitzer has become Berlin's fastest rising ex-pat multi-talent, managing to both maintain her public profile as an extroverted, electro-punk diva and keeping up her other, more introverted passions of writing and photography. ExBerliner magazine wrote that she is "as driven as the snow, if not as pure," and one thing this girl doesn't do is take it slow. With shows from London to Berlin, New York to Rome, Dahlia Schweitzer is an artist, performer, and personality constantly serving up what's next in the worlds of music, editorial, photography, and nightlife. Dahlia's subjects, in all her various media, have consciously run from high and refined to down and dirty, exploring themes from sexuality to identity, fantasy and gender.
www.thisisdahlia.com

Franca Formenti
In the beginning Franca Formenti was active in trash and fibre art. In the last few years she has been dealing with issues about human cloning and the relationship between human beings and computers, with particular attention to the activities on the web and to the interaction between human beings and machines. After creating an installation called “Bio Bambino”, she creates “Bio Doll”, a sort of cloned android, at the will of the public's disposal, actually a “sex slave”. Bio Doll doesn’t have neither a navel nor uterus because they are by now considered useless. But a wish of conception stands still in her memory...
www.francaformenti3.org

Diana McCarty - Bootlab (Berlin, D)
Diana McCarty lives and works in Berlin. She is a co-founder of bootlab and co-initiated reboot.fm, an open source radio project. Together with Valie Djordjevic, Kathy Rae Huffman and Ushi Reiter, she runs the Faces mailing list for women in media. As part of the International Women's University sever development team, she worked with Seda Guerses, Barbara Schelkle, Prof. Heidi Schelhowe, and Heiki Pisch - and also worked to develop feminist pedagogical approaches to computing. In the mid-ninties, McCarty co-founded the Nettime Mailing list and as part of the Media Research Foundation, she co-organized the Metaforum Conference Series in Budapest. Her main interests are exploiting social and technological systems for cultural use; ie. piracy and open source software development for real life.
www.bootlab.org - www.faces-l.net - www.mrf.hu

Betty – Sexyshock (Bologna, Italy)
This is the first Italian independent sexshop managed by women. Sexyshock gives voice to the concept of sexuality and to technology through a feminine point of view. Sexyshock is not a commercial place, but a space of cultural and political action and play with bodies, far away from strict categories, roles and fixed identities. Betty is the name of the sexyshock collective.
www.ecn.org/sexyshock

Moderation: Tatiana Bazzichelli – AHA (Rome, Italy/Berlin D)
Independent art curator, communication sociologist and organizer of exhibition/events on hacktivism and net.art, she is the founder of the networking project AHA: Activism-Hacking-Artivism and owner of the mailing list on artistic activism aha@ecn.org hosted by Isole nella Rete Italian collective. She curated several exhibitions in Italy and was involved in different activist events in Berlin, where she lives since 2003. She writes on net.art and hacktivism for several Italian magazines (“Next Exit”, “Neural”, “Cluster”, “Digicult”, “Avatar”, etc). www.ecn.org/aha - www.strano.net/bazzichelli