Gendered Machines Zine Series, 2020
Created in partnership with the Internet Archives in San Francisco and printed in Berkeley at Tiny Splendor Press. Check out the release on the Internet Archive Blog for more info!
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Project Description:
Gendered Machines can be defined as any non-human, mechanical objects that are associated with, signifiers of, or assigned a gender. Through my project, concerned with understanding how this phenomenon manifests in both lived and fictional realities, a typical polarization is revealed in these relationships. Labeling that reflects limited understandings of gender is imposed onto the objects that people create, use, and identify with, where things are generally understood to be either objects of service or of domination, worshiped or feared for the power they possess. This is a patriarchal oversimplification that my work seeks to complicate.
A web of representations produced through repeated narratives in fiction have linked how we understand both object-hood and person-hood. The project’s title likewise reflects the culturally constructed mechanisms through which we learn to identify. Just as an ideal femininity is socially invented to serve male desires, technological artifacts, tools and media, have been built to fulfill the needs of the historically male-controlled landscape of invention. The interwoven histories of influence that are brought to light through this project are embedded in the computerized objects we use every day.
The GM Zine Series is an extension of these findings, synthesized into the accessible framework of a set of zines. The volumes will be focused within three scopes--Body, Voice, and Spirit—each acting as a nexus where patterns of signification are often located across time and media. Created using manipulated, found imagery sourced from media uploaded to the Internet Archives and printed at Tiny Splendor press, these works are both examinations and artifacts of knowledge production technologies. Possessing the capability to transfer between a digital and physical state, the zine format itself reflects the modes through which influential information is delivered and shared, as well as the liminal quality of the space between real and constructed existence.
Gendered Machines can be defined as any non-human, mechanical objects that are associated with, signifiers of, or assigned a gender. Through my project, concerned with understanding how this phenomenon manifests in both lived and fictional realities, a typical polarization is revealed in these relationships. Labeling that reflects limited understandings of gender is imposed onto the objects that people create, use, and identify with, where things are generally understood to be either objects of service or of domination, worshiped or feared for the power they possess. This is a patriarchal oversimplification that my work seeks to complicate.
A web of representations produced through repeated narratives in fiction have linked how we understand both object-hood and person-hood. The project’s title likewise reflects the culturally constructed mechanisms through which we learn to identify. Just as an ideal femininity is socially invented to serve male desires, technological artifacts, tools and media, have been built to fulfill the needs of the historically male-controlled landscape of invention. The interwoven histories of influence that are brought to light through this project are embedded in the computerized objects we use every day.
The GM Zine Series is an extension of these findings, synthesized into the accessible framework of a set of zines. The volumes will be focused within three scopes--Body, Voice, and Spirit—each acting as a nexus where patterns of signification are often located across time and media. Created using manipulated, found imagery sourced from media uploaded to the Internet Archives and printed at Tiny Splendor press, these works are both examinations and artifacts of knowledge production technologies. Possessing the capability to transfer between a digital and physical state, the zine format itself reflects the modes through which influential information is delivered and shared, as well as the liminal quality of the space between real and constructed existence.