....{{{ The Panther
Moderns }}}....
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"The Panther Moderns differ from other terrorists precisely in their degree of
self consciousness, in their awareness of the extent to which media divorce the
act of terrorism from the original socio-political intent..."
-William Gibson "The Neuromancer"
In 1984 William Gibson's novel "The Neuromancer" was first released. His invented
term; "Cyberspace" would be picked up by the main stream circuit of media and
popular culture's hype. "Cyberspace" as a referent would mark the early years
of the Internet and computer reality's growing relationship to our daily lives.
These terms were to become the language of the newly emerging communications technology
that would bring us to our contemporary 'revolution.' This cultural incident would
forever place his career in one of those fast tracks synced to cultural myth status.
A case that any cultural-producer hopes to in some way have a dialogue with, the
production of a new idiom.
Gibson had the fortune of hacking the right versions of fiction and new machinery
to bring us up to speed with a culture that was not yet defined. A sub-routine
so deep in the margins that it was invisible to a larger portion of society. A
culture that would assist in creating a new economy of information. This new information
economy would renew the discriminatory standards feminists, identity politics
and affirmative action campaigns had fought so hard to begin to change.
By building an economic circuit faster than anything our generation has known.
The new computer culture has been successful in outrunning any large-scale critique
that would slow it down, give it a body or a solid relationship to anything we
understand fully. A socio-economic development of technology that we haven't as
a culture experienced since the turn of the century with it's inventions of speed
and communications tools; the telegraph, telephone and the train.
It is in this cultural climate that piles of left-over social debris collect.
Any economy that moves this quickly has consequences. The main stream media circuit
has, for the moment, spared us evidence of such consequences. We as a culture
barely have a grasp on what the mega-networks of the corporate enterprise and
the Hollywood reality engines would give us. However, these mega-engines are in
a similar state of misunderstanding when it comes to this new space of techno-culture.
It is here in this liminal space, between the material reality of the machines
we call computers, the Internet and the inability of large networks to harness
(in a robust way) the total flow between the three elements that the ultimate
Artificial Intelligence exists.
As the Ultimate AI of corporation networks and the Hollywood reality engines shifted
to capture instabilities of the new lateral economy. Small liminal cells between
first world circuts build spaces of critique, reassessment, re-evaluation and
mobilization. Three of the groups that have emerged came from separate global
positions and political trajectories: VNSmatirx, Mongrel, and The Electronic Disturbance
Theater.
Their agendas were varied but their reflection and targets would find a common
ground. Their commonality was in the drive to represent the margins of the first
world, within the media ether of the Internet. They would succeed in reflecting
the violence inherent in our cultural transformation as we started uploading ourselves.
In addition, they would find support from the same cultural institutions in Europe,
being invited to New Media Festivals at ARS Electronica, ISEA, DEAF, between 1996-1998.
The cultural circuit of the net would be their ultimate stage. They would reflect
the violence that trailed behind the speed economy as it bore a hole into our
workforce and the cultural imaginary. Their activities could be summarized by
another of Gibson's constructions, "the Panther Moderns."
In 1991 a group of four women (Virginia Barrett, Julienne Pierce, Josephine Starrs
and Francesca DiRimini) from a small suburb of Sydney, Australia would begin jacking
into the bare text based MOO and MUD spaces to build a space for women and sexuality
that was under- represented. They would call themselves VNS Matrix.
"...the impetus of the group is to investigate and decipher the narratives of
domination and control which surround high technological culture and explore the
construction of social space, identity and sexuality in cyberspace."
-Group Statement, 1994.
Their interests were in accessing the rest of the world via the newest form of
communication that existed. They accomplished this in part by aggressively subverting
language. One of their first actions was to disseminate their "Cyberfeminist Manifesto
for the 21st century" which was placed in public sites, published in various academic,
art and popular journals and broadcast on community television and radio.
"We wrote the Cyberfeminist Manifesto for the 21st Century, had it translated
into Japanese and Spanish (and later into French, Finnish, Russian, Italian, Dutch)
and began infiltrating cracks in the patriarchy, twisting the tender tentacles
of power of Big Daddy Mainframe to create a vision of the future which was technotankgirltopian.
We were ignorant of the work of Sadie Plant (in the UK) who was also constructing
a notion of cyberfeminism and when we finally heard of her work, started pumping
out new virii into the mainstream Australian media, describing this new wave of
brave new girls, machine queens and their perverse pleasures. Recombinants ruled...."
While we in New York were reading critiques on the lack of access and presence
the expanding World Wide Web had of women and non-first world cultures, this group
was creating solidarity and mobilization wherever it could. They held their meetings
in a combination of real time, real space and on-line MOO environments. A majority
of the material they created has filtered back into the sea of information from
which it sprung. Of the still existing on-line projects, is "Spiral Space" and
their website which has a brief outline of some of the projects their six year
collaboration initiated (1991-1997).
"Spiral Space" took place in Canada in September of 1995, hosted by one of Toronto's
leading video/media art spaces, YYZ Artists Outlet Gallery. This MOO based performance
was held in accordance with Internet workshops and an installation of VNS Matrix's
prototype-game "ALL NEW GEN." "ALL NEW GEN" is a CD Rom interactive artwork that
was one of the domainsof VNS's heroin;
"All New Gen is vaporware, a hypothetical, imaginal game. In this hypothetical
game the user assists our hero, All New Gen, anarchocyberterrorist, whose mission
is to sabotage the databanks of her arch enemy Big Daddy Mainframe. Her mission
will ultimately lead to the downfall of BDM, and the activation of the new world
disorder."
They intended their impact and projects to go beyond the borders inherent in the
cultural practices of art and technology. Part of their vision was to create a
new world by building an iconography infused with their "termination of moral
code." [5] VNS Matrix assumed a techno-saturated voice mixed with high-end feminist
theories and cyberpunk. Their cultural products were aimed at popular culture
to educate a new generation. They were able to reinvigorate a cultural discussion
of feminism that has been dormant for over a decade. In their work was the assumption
that they could impact this techno-culture by mirroring it's constructs of computer
games, installations and cultural artifacts.
"Cyberspace in VNS terms...is "in-filtration and re-mapping the possible futures
outside the (chromo)phallic patriarchal code." In this imaginative game of infiltration
and subversion processes, The DNA Sluts are imaged as sort of pumped-up Barbie
dolls ("muscular hybrids") with great laser beams shooting from their genital
area. These may be read as magical phalli (undecideably clitoral or penile). Spermatic
and penetrative metaphors are utilized in imaging the mutating female subject
as a virus which infiltrates/impregnates the techno-body of Big Daddy's imperialistically
and militaristically deployed data banks."
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-Diane Ludin
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