subRosa is a
cyberfeminist
Cyberfeminism is a feminist approach which foregrounds the relationship between cyberspace, the Internet, and technology. It can be used to refer to a philosophy, methodology or community. The term was coined in the early 1990s to describe the wor ...
organization led by artists
Faith Wilding
Faith Wilding (born 1943) is a Paraguayan American multidisciplinary artist - which includes but is not limited to: watercolor, performance art, writing, crocheting, knitting, weaving, and digital art. She is also an author, educator, and activ ...
and
Hyla Willis.
In the late 1990s at
Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...
,
Faith Wilding
Faith Wilding (born 1943) is a Paraguayan American multidisciplinary artist - which includes but is not limited to: watercolor, performance art, writing, crocheting, knitting, weaving, and digital art. She is also an author, educator, and activ ...
organized an on-campus reading group that discussed digital culture and technologies,
feminisms,
postcolonial theory
Postcolonialism is the critical academic study of the cultural, political and economic legacy of colonialism and imperialism, focusing on the impact of human control and exploitation of colonized people and their lands. More specifically, it is ...
, body- and
bio-politics, and
reproductive health
Sexual and reproductive health (SRH) is a field of research, healthcare, and social activism that explores the health of an individual's reproductive system and sexual wellbeing during all stages of their life.
The term can also be further de ...
. It was from this reading group in 1998 that the cyberfeminist collective subRosa formed, with founding members María Fernández, Wilding,
Hyla Willis, and Michelle M. Wright. As outlined by members of subRosa, challenging the utopian ideas associated with technology and the internet is the foundation of subRosa’s practice. subRosa’s work is connected to – but differs from – the broader cyberfeminist movement of the 1990s and
Donna Haraway’s cyborg theory. Many of subRosa’s works are
performance
A performance is an act of staging or presenting a play, concert, or other form of entertainment. It is also defined as the action or process of carrying out or accomplishing an action, task, or function.
Management science
In the work place ...
-based and participatory, and encourage members of the public to think deeply about technology and its role in their lives. As the group consisted of artists, activists, and scholars, the collective’s practice reflected the individual backgrounds of its members. Other participants in the reading group at Carnegie Mellon (and at different points, members of subRosa) include Emily de Araujo, Krista Connerly, Steffi Domike, Camilla Griggers, Christina Hung, Carolina Loyola,
Laleh Mehran Laleh Mehran (born 1968) is an Iranian-born American digital artist, and professor. She is the graduate director and a professor in emergent digital practices at the University of Denver. Mehran is known for her interactive digital installation art ...
, Elizabeth Monoian, Ann Rosenthal,
Suzie Silver, Lucia Sommer, and Rebecca Vaughan.
At The Next Five Minutes 3 Festival in Amsterdam in 1999, subRosa introduced their manifesto, outlining the collective’s histories, purpose, and practices:
"subRosa's name honors
feminist
Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...
pioneers in art, activism, labor, science, and politics:
Rosa Bonheur
Rosa Bonheur (born Marie-Rosalie Bonheur; 16 March 1822 – 25 May 1899) was a French artist known best as a painter of animals ( animalière). She also made sculpture in a realist style. Her paintings include '' Ploughing in the Nivernais'', fi ...
,
Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg (; ; pl, Róża Luksemburg or ; 5 March 1871 – 15 January 1919) was a Polish and naturalised-German revolutionary socialist, Marxist philosopher and anti-war activist. Successively, she was a member of the Proletariat party, ...
,
Rosie the Riveter
Rosie the Riveter is an allegorical cultural icon in the United States who represents the women who worked in factories and shipyards during World War II, many of whom produced munitions and war supplies. These women sometimes took entirely new ...
,
Rosa Parks
Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was an American activist in the civil rights movement best known for her pivotal role in the Montgomery bus boycott. The United States Congress has honored her as "the ...
and
Rosalind Franklin
Rosalind Elsie Franklin (25 July 192016 April 1958) was a British chemist and X-ray crystallographer whose work was central to the understanding of the molecular structures of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), RNA (ribonucleic acid), viruses, co ...
.
subRosa is a reproducible cyberfeminist cell of cultural researchers committed to combining art, activism, and politics to explore and critique the effects of the intersections of the new information and
biotechnologies
Biotechnology is the integration of natural sciences and engineering sciences in order to achieve the application of organisms, cells, parts thereof and molecular analogues for products and services. The term ''biotechnology'' was first used b ...
on women's bodies, lives, and work.
subRosa produces artworks, activist campaigns and projects, publications, media interventions, and public forums that make visible the effects of the interconnections of technology, gender, and
difference
Difference, The Difference, Differences or Differently may refer to:
Music
* ''Difference'' (album), by Dreamtale, 2005
* ''Differently'' (album), by Cassie Davis, 2009
** "Differently" (song), by Cassie Davis, 2009
* ''The Difference'' (al ...
; feminism and
global capital; new bio and medical technologies and women's health; and the changed conditions of labor and reproduction for women in the integrated circuit.
subRosa practices a situational embodied feminist politics nourished by conviviality, self-determination, and the desire for affirmative alliances and coalitions.
Let a million subRosas bloom!"
Hyla Willis writes: "subRosa is a mutable (cyber)feminist art collective combining art, social activism and politics to explore and critique the intersections of information and bio technologies on women’s bodies, lives and work. Since its founding in 1998, subRosa has developed situated, trans-disciplinary, performative, and discursive practices that create open-ended environments where participants engage with objects, texts, digital technologies, and critical learning experiences interacting with each other and the artists."
Major works and themes
Most of subRosa’s works are performances and workshops at university campuses, museums, and gallery spaces. As a part of the performances, supplementary material such as pamphlets, surveys, posters, and website domains were circulated and distributed amongst the crowd. Frequently, subRosa members would wear white lab coats to signal their role as facilitators in science, art, and technology. subRosa’s works provided feminist critiques of biotechnologies and Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART). In an interview with Ryan Griffis, subRosa explains that through their work, “we have critiqued the appropriation of the feminist notion of "choice" to support commodified development of ARTs (Assisted Reproductive Technologies).” subRosa’s art practice focused on facilitating intersectional and collaborative approaches by inviting scholars from international communities to contribute to ongoing projects.
''SmartMom''
This project was created by Wilding and Willis prior to the official formation of subRosa in 1998. ''SmartMom'' is a form of
appropriation, presented as a promotional website, that critiques the ''Smart T-shirt,'' a military technology that surveils soldiers’ bodies for medical purposes. Wilding and Willis created a website to show how the military technology could be used on pregnant bodies for use in research in reproductive technologies.
''The Sex and Gender Education Show''
As one of subRosa’s first performances, the members presented a sex-educational class on Assisted Reproductive Technologies to participants. Members of subRosa posed as corporate salespeople and government representatives and organized the participants into cohorts to deliver presentations on reproductive health and technologies using accessible language. ''The Sex and Gender Education Show'' was performed in 2000 at the ''Digital Secrets'' conference at Arizona State University and in 2002 at the ''Hardware, Software, and Wetware Conference'' at St. Mary’s College of Maryland.
''Expo EmmaGenics''
''Expo EmmaGenics'' was an installation and performance organized as a tradeshow, where subRosa members presented satirical products from the biotech industry that enhance fertility. subRosa appropriated marketing strategies used in Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART) that relied on the idea of ‘choice.’ One of the products in the show, the ''Zygote Monitor,'' uses technology from baby monitors to surveil the IVF process. Another product, ''Palm XY'' facilitates heteronormative pairings of participants for procreation. At the tradeshow performance, subRosa members provided a step-by-step process of ART procedures.
''Cell Track: Mapping the Appropriation of Life Materials''
''Cell Track: Mapping the Appropriation of Life Materials'' is an installation and website that depicts a human body. Organs and body parts are labelled and hyperlinked to information that liken stem cell research to colonial practices. ''Cell Track'' draws attention to government and legal intervention into medical research. The installation was featured in the exhibition ''YouGenics'' at the Betty Rymer Gallery at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2005.
Responses to subRosa
Scholars have addressed subRosa’s works in broader feminist discourses in the 2000s and 2010s. For example, feminist scholar Federica Timeto establishes a connection between subRosa methods of information distribution and collective mobilization to that of second-wave feminisms in the 70s. Technology and design specialists
Mary Flanagan
Mary Flanagan is an artist, author, educator, and designer. She pioneered the field of game research with her ideas on critical play and has written five books. She is the founding director of the research laboratory and design studio Tiltfactor ...
and Suyin Looui conceptualize subRosa’s activist art as a modality to visualize and critique data informed by body politics. Further, media specialist Carolyn Guertin argues that subRosa effectively spreads activist messages as they use digital and print forms of distribution.
Publications
subRosa’s earliest works in the late-1990s were pamphlets, which read: “Research! Action! Embodiment! Sociality!” and included their manifesto. Another early publication by subRosa was ''@SecondOpinion'' (1999), which were distributed in hospitals and appropriated the idea of getting a second opinion as an activist strategy. subRosa continued to circulate publications and created websites as radical alternatives and channels to provide information to the public.
''Domain Errors! Cyberfeminist Practices''
''Domain Errors! Cyberfeminist Practices'' is an anthology edited by the members of subRosa (Wilding, Fernández, and Wright). The anthology uses reproductive health as a case study to weave critical race theory into cyberfeminisms. The contributing authors to the anthology examine racism and technology, histories of cyberfeminisms, second- and third-wave feminisms, reproductive health and technology, online/offline spaces and identity, and activist art.
Residencies
subRosa, ''Bodies Unlimited'' in ''Soft Power II Art and Technologies in the Biopolitical Age'' (exhibition). Bilbao Spain, Nov 2–6, 2010.
subRosa, ''Look! Listen! A Week With, Out Women,'' University of Zagreb, Croatia, May 31-June 8, 2008.
----subRosa works have been exhibited around the world at: ArtUp, Bootlab, Mass Moca and Amarika.
Further reading
* Flanagan, Mary, and Soyin Looui. “Rethinking the F Word: A Review of Activist Art on the Internet.” NWSA Journal 19 (2007): 181-200.
* Motter, Jennifer L. “Feminist Virtual World Activism: 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence Campaign, Guerrilla Girls BroadBand, and subRosa.” Visual Culture and Gender 6 (2011): 109-119.
*subRosa
“Bodies Unlimited: A Decade of subRosa’s Art Practice.”n.paradoxa 28 (2011): 16-25.
References
External links
ArtUpBootlabMass MocaAmarikasubRosa's pagesubRosa – a cyberfeminist art collectiveHyla Willislinks , home.refugia.net
{{Authority control
Third-wave feminism
Feminist organizations in the United States
American artist groups and collectives
Feminist artists