Over the past few weeks I’ve taken FeministOnlineSpaces on the road, introducing audiences to my ideas about building the Internet we want to live in by bringing to it (and adapting) the values, methods, practices, and theories of feminism and other well-honed movements.
At Concordia University, UCLA, Rutgers University, and Occidental College (see the Gallery: perhaps to their dismay), I’ve chosen not to simply give my invited talk about my recent projects Learning from YouTube and PerpiTube as planned, but have instead performed a loud and sometimes distracting show that both expresses and models the practices and structures which are my current goals, most importantly focusing upon moving (the Internet) from reception to production, and linking it to offline feminist spaces in principled, focused, interactive dialogue(s).
After watching myself go at it now four times, I’d suggest that three tactics have been most useful and/or provocative in this strange new pursuit:
- Transforming audiences into producers by making a time and a place for media production as the conclusion of the show thereby raising questions of privacy, safety, voice, community and visibility in practice and in linked on/off line environments
- Creating a feminist chain-letter (thanks Joanie 4 Jackie), or call and response, where one community asks a question for the next, thereby having “users” influence in some small part both the direction of the road trip while also linking this audience/community together (with weak ties)
- Self-reflexive performativity focusing on process, interaction, authority and feeling thereby enacting amongst present people the type of academic and political thinking, community, and presence I wish to imagine both on/off line
And here’s where you come in!
In point of fact this website is actually an online community waiting to happen, awaiting its members, begging to be used, and thus my post here. People can join it and write blogs, or add things, raise questions, post answers, change its structure or talk about its forming rules. I invite you to do so.
