&Now 2015: Blast Radius

Type of event: a (performative) presentation & roundtable conversation with simultaneous anti-‐‐surveillance hair & makeup party demo 

Description: Situated somewhere between hands and screen, image and commerce, agency and narcissism, the body and its representation, six poets take up the tangled questions that surround feminist poetics and interventions online. Their diverse web-‐‐based projects address the politics of touch/gesture as we move to mobile platforms, the freedom and limits of "selfie poetics" as women commandeer the gaze and create social personae, cyborg feminism, the re-‐‐purposing of devalued feminine materials, passive aggressive performance, and ambivalent refusal of recognition. What are the possibilities and limits of FemTechNet, Women Poets Wearing Sweatpants, or the Anti-‐‐Surveillance Feminist Poet Hair & Makeup Party? How does speed and ephemerality—or a small sub-‐‐cultural poetry audience—shape these projects? Who are they for? What are the intersections of internet-‐‐based creative practices and identity writing [by women] [of color]? Where does the internet extend into the life of local communities when sexual violence is named there? As a tool for art making, consciousness raising, and social organizing, how are we using the internet now, and what else might be possible? What new forms of identity politics and gender performance are emerging in digital poetics projects? What forms of women's innovative digital writing have we already lost? How are women redefining poiesis for a virtual age?