TRANS//BORDER, Nathalie Magnan teachings MUCEM

This event produced by Kareron directed by Isabelle Arvers examines borders, all kinds of borders; it takes in navigation, cartography, networks, information, communication and media, human/animal/machine relationships, cyberfeminism, new families, modes of reproduction, communication between the living and the dead, the rights of nature, in a spirit of ecological concern and with feminist and emancipation perspectives.

TRANS // BORDER takes the work of Nathalie Magnan as its point of departure and looks at the relevance of her work through the creations and research of a number of artists, scientists, (h)acktivists and students who are continuing to cultivate the territories she was exploring.

TRANS // BORDER consists of:
– transdisciplinary meetings – arts, sciences, technologies,
– addressing a wide public,
– on contemporary issues,
– providing opportunities for exchange between artists, researchers, students and all citizens,
– uniting the efforts of some forty personalities from several European countries and the United States, and a dozen art schools (France and Belgium) associated with the event.

Nathalie Magnan (1956-2016)

A media theorist, pioneer of cyberfeminism, filmmaker and navigator, she was also a generous teacher with an undisciplined spirit: she communicated to young artists that art can be the practice of freedom.

Attached to Marseille and the Mediterranean by both birth and heart, she was constantly forging links between the United States, France and Europe.

Her studies at the University of California at Santa Cruz allowed her to join a chosen family that would stay close to her all through her life, a family of Cultural Studies, postcolonial studies, queer movements, tactical media and cyberfeminism.

Returning to France in 1990, she wrote for GaiPied magazine, made films for Canal +, published two books with the publisher Ensba, translated Donna Haraway into French, created and co-moderated forums and discussion lists, and organized cyberfeminist events. She taught at several universities, in France and abroad. She began teaching in art schools in 1998. In 2004, she created Sailing for geeks, a project in which she combined sailing on the sea and sailing (surfing) on the internet.

She was an artist of relationships. She worked on the permeability of borders, on land, at sea, between the sexes, between species … and in our hearts.

 Exhibition
 Roundtables, screenings and performances
 Evening events
Workshops

Exhibition

From March 16 to 18 from 11 am to 9 pm
Mucem – J4 Forum – Free admission

Les (Cyber)mondes de Nathalie Magnan
The (cyber)worlds of Nathalie Magnan

This exhibition invites us to meander through space and cyberspace to discover various works (films, photos, lectures, texts) by Nathalie Magnan and by others who share her approach: sound, film and digital works by Isabelle Arvers, Chloé Desmoineaux, Louise Drulhe, Maria Ptqk for the Virtual Space of the Jeu de Paume, Quimera Rosa, Ilana Salama Ortar, maps and videos of the anti-Atlas of frontiers selected by Isabelle Arvers (works by Harckiektura, Charles Heller, Simona Koch, Nicolas Lambert), as well as work by students of art schools in Aix-en-Provence, Arles, Brussels (Erg), Lyon, Metz, Poitiers, St. Etienne, Strasbourg, Toulon, Tourcoing-Dunkerque and the University of Rennes 2.

Roundtables, screenings and performances
From March 16 to 18, from 11 am

Friday March 16 from 11 am to 1 pm
Mucem – Auditorium – Free admission

Archives privées contemporaines : quel traitement ? quel devenir ?
(Contemporary private archives: what treatment? what future?)

Projection and round tables
The archives of Nathalie Magnan testify to the richness and diversity of her works (films, photos, texts, internet sites) as well as the originality of her sources (an outstanding library and a video library). They will be deposited at the BnF, National Library of France, and also in part at INA, the National Audiovisual Institute. An opportunity to open the debate on the treatment of contemporary private archives, through projection and discussion.

Nathalie Magnan, théoricienne des médias (Nathalie Magnan, media theorist)
Christophe Ecoffet, Cyril Thomas, Gilles Beaujard (France, 2012, 12 min)

Interview with Nathalie Magnan, done by the magazine Monstre as part of a carte blanche at the MacVal museum. Organized into four short sequences, this film is a very effective introduction to Nathalie Magnan’s thought and action.

Les Frontières du genre (Gender Frontiers)
With Emilie Blanc, Adam Evrard, Valentin Gleyze and Adeline Leménager (doctoral students, in history and art criticism – University of Rennes 2), Elvan Zabunyan (professor and historian of contemporary art – University of Rennes 2)

The PhD students at the University of Rennes 2 will talk about their work on Nathalie Magnan’s archives, and particularly her major role in disseminating North American feminist and queer thought in France, based on the articles she wrote for the magazine Gai Pied in 1992.

Le Traitement des archives (Archive Processing)
With Ewen Chardronnet (artist), Alain Carou (BnF), Catherine Gonnard (INA), Pascal Neveux (director, Frac PACA), Catherine Lord (artist, writer),

After a presentation of Nathalie Magnan’s archives in data-visualization, this roundtable tackles, on a more general level, issues related to their collection, conservation and promotion. Questions everyone may have to face one day.

Friday, March 16 from 3 to 6.30 pm
Mucem – Auditorium – Free Admission
Frontières et technologies en mer Méditerranée (Frontiers and technologies in the Mediterranean Sea)
Concept, animation: Isabelle Arvers (curator)

Transborder/ MUCEM / Frontières et technologies en Méditerranée from orevo on Vimeo.

Round tables
A symbolic border and wall, but also a sea with a high media profile, the Mediterranean is today the tragic site of a migrant crisis. What laws are applicable at sea and to migrants? What confrontation is possible between the technologies for control of maritime traffic by the States, the open source and DIY technologies of artist and activist collectives, and those used by the migrants to communicate during their crossing?

3 pm
Les technologies de contrôle et le droit en mer (Monitoring technologies and the law of the sea)
With Charles Heller (Watch the Med), Malin Björk (MEP), Violaine Carrère (Gisti), Erwan Follezou (SOS MEDITERRANEE)

The European Union’s perception of its external (and internal) borders is increasingly governed by a paradigm of security: borders as barriers, which must be “protected”. The instruments to control and, in many cases, to close the borders are being developed: physical fences, biometric data, military technologies, etc. What is the law of the sea? And how is it applied?

5 pm
Les Technologies alternatives et open source (Alternative and open source technologies)
With Nicola Triscott (Arts Catalyst), Pablo DeSoto (architect and researcher), Tim Boykett (Time’s up Research), Marthe Van Dessel (Seed Journey Project)

The maritime and fluvial spaces, formerly places of exchange, trade and communication, are transformed into barriers and fences. Artists, researchers and activists analyze these security policies and experiment with alternatives (technological, cartographic, etc.) in order to reactivate the movement of people and knowledge.

Pablo DeSoto and Nathalie Magnan met in 2005 in the Strait of Gibraltar, an area that mirrors these transformations: DeSoto organized Fadaiat, an event linking the two shores of the Mediterranean, Magnan contributing with Sailing for Geeks, associating sailing on the sea and navigating on the web, with Nicola Triscott as crew.

Saturday March 17 from 11 am to 7 pm
Mucem – Auditorium – Free Admission
Zelig RTM – (H)acktivismes : l’information veut toujours être libre (Zelig RTM – (H)acktivisms: information always wants to be free)
Concept, coordination: Peggy Pierrot (independent researcher), Philippe Rivière (journalist)

What is the link between feminist/LGBT words and practices and technological issues (internet, software, technical tools)? Since the 2016 US election, the internet can be seen as a weapon of “mass disinformation”. The binary opposition of the years 1990-2000 between “mass media” and “alternative media” must today be reevaluated. In the age of omniscient social networks and “smart phones”, a critical analysis of the internet is essential.

11 h
Internautes (Web surfers)
by Nathalie Magnan (1995, 13 min)

Reflection on the internet, its history, its uses and its political consequences. An effective montage of interviews and archive footage, made in 1995 for Canal+’s La Nuit Cyber.

Communautés de médias tactiques actives aujourd’hui (Tactical media communities active today)
With Aris Papatheodorou (Samizdat Network), Philippe Rivière (visionscarto), Marie Lechner (Gaîté lyrique), Geert Lovink (media theorist)

In the face of an increasingly centralized and monitored internet, artists and hacktivists are devising multiple projects to get out of the cloud and reactivate the original idea of a peer network, by developing their own circumvention tools and their own local mini-grids.

3 pm
Chelsea
By Anne Laforet (artist)

Chelsea is a performance for, and about, Chelsea Manning, combining documentary and personal approaches. A symbolic performance dealing with issues related to gender, databases, the repression of whistleblowers and hackers.

Libertés et surveillance à l’ère du numérique (Freedoms and surveillance in the digital age)
With Seda Gürses (researcher, member of the artists’ collective Constant), Nicolas Malevé (artist, developer), Jean-Marc Manach (investigative journalist), Rayna Stamboliyska (consultant and independent researcher)

How can recent developments in software engineering practice force us to change our concepts of surveillance? Is the idea for software manufacturers to get to know users better, or to capture and “mercantalize” their behavior? Are machines better able than humans to detect our sexual orientation through the use of facial recognition technologies? Is the world we live in Orwellian or Kafkaesque? Points of view may diverge. They will be discussed. These questions concern us.

5 pm
Atlas critique d’Internet (Critical Atlas of the Internet)
by Louise Drulhe (artist)

Louise Drulhe presents her plastic and theoretical research work through her Critical Atlas of the Internet: the objective is to use spatial analysis as a key to understanding social, political and economic issues on the internet.

L’Internet critique, entre (des)illusions et spéculations (The critical internet, between (dis)illusion and speculation)
With Patrice Riemens (geographer), Jacques Servin (The Yes Men), Spider Alex (Gender and Technology Institute), Valentin Lacambre (internet pioneer, co-founder of the website, altern.org)

Criticism of the internet and “patriarchal and capitalist” ICTs is not simply the domain of mini-communities of specialists. Beyond criticism, the current panorama of post-colonial cyberfeminisms shows how new ways of inhabiting cyberspace are being imagined and how innovative movements are developing that we should pay attention to – and join.

Sunday, March 18, from 11 am to 5 pm
Mucem – Auditorium – Free Admission
Very symbiotic ! Pour des savoirs situés (Very symbiotic! For situated knowledges)
Concept, animation: Chloé Desmoineaux (artist)

The notion of “situated knowledges” is taken from an article by Donna Haraway. She defends “the privilege of the plural perspective”. In her last essay Staying with the Trouble, the American zoologist and philosopher draws on Ursula Le Guin’s science fiction novel, The Author of the Acacia Seeds, to think about emerging from the Anthropocene (the geological epoch of humans’ irreversible impact on their environment) and entering the chthulucene (a time when the planet is considered a sympoietic system associating all manifestations of life). Difficult, but possible.

11 am
Donna Haraway: Story Telling for Earthly Survival
by Fabrizio Terranova (France / Belgium, 2016, 2h01)
Fabrizio Terranova will be present.

A distinguished philosopher, primatologist and feminist, Donna Haraway has shaken up the social sciences and contemporary philosophy. She is an incredible storyteller who has depicted in her books fabulous worlds populated by transfuturist species. Nathalie Magnan was her student and assistant at the University of California at Santa Cruz. She introduced her work in France by translating the Cyborg Manifesto.

3 pm

Donna Haraway Reads the National Geographic of Primates.

by Nathalie Magnan (1987, 27min.)

National Geographic is a magazine but also an institution. What image of the world does it convey through the analysis of a series of articles about primates in Africa?

Humains, machines, fleuves, algues et vers marins : vers une nouvelle symbiose ? (Humans, machines, rivers, algae and marine worms : towards a new symbiosis ?)

With Ewen Chardronnet (artist), Xavier Bailly (research engineer), Emilie Hache (philosopher), Vinciane Despret (philosopher, present at the debate via skype), Jean-Paul Fereira (mayor of Awala-Yalimapo)

This round table brings together five personalities, five clearly “situated” points of view for a feminist approach of ecological and scientific themes. The idea is to think about symbiosis and blur the boundaries between nature and culture, male and female, human and animal, organism and machine, body and spirit, between the living and the dead, between reality and fiction; to question identities and modes of reproduction, etc.

Evening events

Friday March 16 at 8.30 pm
Mucem – Auditorium – Free Admission
Écosexe

Artists and partners in life, Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens contribute to the development of the ecosexual movement through art, theory, practice and activism. They are working to make the environmental movement a little sexier, more fun and diverse. Since 2005 they have “performed” their marriage to the Earth: huge ceremonies inviting everyone to unite with earth, sky, sea, coal, sun, snow, etc. An original approach and thought, illustrated with a screening of Goodbye Gauley Mountain.

Une introduction à l’écosexualité (An introduction to ecosexuality)
With Paul Preciado (philosopher), Eric Noulette (Emmetrop association), Isabelle Carlier (Bandits-Mages association)

What if we change our relationship to the Earth, no longer considered our “mother” but as our love-object, or even our lover? Three personalities from the art world, variously involved in this movement, talk about their research and their actions.

Goodbye Gauley Mountain
by Beth Stephens (United States, 2014, 1h10) (English with French subtitles)

With forcefulness, humor and artistic imagination, Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle, two ecosexual lovers, pledge to save the mountains of West Virginia, threatened by the coal mining industry. This film tells of their love, their activism, their struggle, culminating in their marriage to the Appalachians.

Courtesy of Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens

Saturday March 17, from 9 pm to 1am
Mucem – J4 Hall – Free Admission
VJing

This evening devoted to the art of VJing, a hybrid and transdisciplinary practice, combines creation and manipulation of images in real time, in synchronization with sound. With its counter-current artistic and esthetic choices, this type of visual performance offers an alternative to dominant discourse, even in the party sphere. It commits us to shared responsibility for images.

Lesborama
by Nathalie Magnan (1995, 30 min)
Presented by Alain Burosse, producer

Is there a lesbian culture? This is the question explored in this film, a brilliant montage mixing images from all periods (1912-1995) from both auteur and mainstream films with interviews of famous (or not) lesbians from all over the world. A film aired in 1995 as part of Canal+’s first Gay Night.
Presentation by Alain Burosse, producer of the film and of Gay Night.

VJing Party
With the students of the Metz art school, A-li-ce (artist) and Violaine Higelin (artist)

During this evening, A-li-ce, Violaine Higelin and the students of the Metz art school will each present a mix of material consisting of the visual and sound archives of Nathalie Magnan, selected during a workshop led by Isabelle Carlier (Bandits-Mages).

Sunday, March 18 at 7 pm
Mucem – Auditorium – Free Admission
Despentes

Baise-moi (Rape me)
by Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh Thi (France, 2000, 1h15).

Virginie Despentes will attend (to be confirmed).

Adapted from the eponymous novel by Virginie Despentes, this bloody road movie follows Nadine and Manu, two young women determined to emerge triumphant from a rape. No justification, no victimization. Highly controversial when it was released, threatened with an X rating, the film prompted the July 12, 2001 decree that amended the censorship committee rules. Baise-moi is a female film, violent and liberating.
Adults only (18+)
With the kind support of Pan-Européenne

Workshops – March 12 to 15 (Mucem/I2MP and Zinc)

March 12, 13, 14 and 15 from 6 pm to 9 pm

Mucem /i2MP

Free admission (within limits of available places)

Registration required (for two sessions minimum) to: i2mp@mucem.org

Very symbiotic! Introduction to Donna Haraway’s thought

Presented by Helen Torres (social scientist, educator, Barcelona)

American biologist, philosopher and science historian Donna Haraway invites us to think about the Anthropocene, the geological epoch of the irreversible impact of humankind on the environment, and to bring on the Chthulucene, the era when the planet is appreciated as a sympoetic system associating all manifestations of life.

March 12 session

Figuration in Donna Haraway’s thought: diffraction as a metaphor for a critical consciousness engaged in the creation of difference(s).

March 13 session

The acronyms SF: string figures, science fiction and speculative fables as a method of thought and action.

March 14 session

The Chtulucene Manifesto: chthonic forces, Gaia, symbiosis and responsibility.

March 15 session

Make kin not babies! Haraway’s tentacular thought in art: other poetics and politics for the coming world.

March 14 and 15 from 11 am

Outside the walls at ZINC (Friche la Belle de mai)

Admission free (within limits of available places)

Registration required at: transborder@zinclafriche.org

Frontières et technologies et Rencontres Zelig LTS <!DOCTYPE intersectional>

Borders and technologies and Encounters Zelig LTS <! DOCTYPE intersectional>

With Paula Pin (performance artist), Rayna Stamboliyska aka Malicia Rogue (consultant and independent researcher), Femke Snelting (artist and designer), Natacha Roussel and Agnez Bewer (Samedies), Louise Drulhe (artist), Valentin Lacambre (internet pioneer, co-founder of gandi.net), Philippe Rivière (webmaster and journalist), Peggy Pierrot (webmaster, researcher and journalist) and the association Reso-nance numérique.

These two workshops aim to experiment, reflect and collectively produce a thought, an object, a performance. How to identify and counter sexism and racism in technology? How to appropriate the medical investigation technologies? How to power a phone, GPS or camera from a car battery? What feminist alternatives to personal quantification tools?