Gender and Technology Symposium

Gender and Technology Symposium
University-Wide Art Studies UWAS

Thursday 5.5.2022
15:00–18:00 on zoom

In the symposium we want to examine how technologies and gender intertwine, the technological nature of gender, how gender is produced by different technologies, whether they be medical, social, communicational, architectural, larger infrastructures, or mundane everyday objects. We want to also consider the emancipatory possibilities that reside in our everyday technologies – how can we take hold of these technologies to provoke a rupture in the cycle of gender production? What kind of strategies do we need in order to thoroughly change the mechanisms and algorithms by which the gender-producing technologies of the binary heteronormative society are working?
 

Guests:
 

Associate Professor Mianna Meskus
https://miannameskus.net/

Mianna Meskus is Associate Professor of Sociology, Tampere University. She leads the study program in Science and Technology Studies (STS) at Tampere University. Her work has focused on scientific and technological modification of reproduction and aging; for example, through prenatal screening, genetic testing, IVF, biological medicines, and stem cell-based delaying of aging. She explores the societal implications of these practices from the perspectives of biopolitics, bioindustrialization, feminist new materialism, and speculative futures. Her work has been published in, e.g., Feminist Theory, Science as Culture, European Journal of Women’s Studies and BioSocieties. Her books include Craft in Biomedical Research (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) and the co-edited introductory handbook to feminist science studies in Finland Muokattu elämä (Vastapaino, 2014).
 

Performance and visual artist Teo Ala-Ruona
https://teoalaruona.net/

Teo Ala-Ruona is a performance and visual artist. His work is focuses on queer speculative fictioning mainly in forms of performances and texts. He explores topics of techno-trans-masculinity, sex, queer ecology and toxicity through re-defining language and narratives telling about pleasure and intimacy on a toxic Earth. By often using his own body as a site for the various speculative stories to take place, he is experimenting on how through fiction he can transform himself, as well as the perspectives from which the audience looks at his body. He approaches the trans corporeality as an arena, where various normative processes of naturalization become infeasible, and address queer ecological topics from explicitly sexual perspective to revoke the heteronormative biases that influence the research done on biology and ecology, gender and sexuality. Ala-Ruona's work has recently been shown in Baltic Circle -festival (Helsinki), Takomo-theatre (Helsinki), Bangkok Biennial (Bangkok) and NAVEL, Gas-gallery and Human Resources (Los Angeles). Ala-Ruona has graduated from Master's Programme in Art Education at Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture and from Master's Programme in Ecology and Contemporary Performance, at Helsinki Theatre Academy. Currently he is doing a residency at FABRIKKEN, in Copenhagen.
 

Performance and visual artist Artor Jesus Inkerö
https://artorjesusinkero.eu/

Artor Jesus Inkerö works with performance, video, text, audio, photography, installation, painting, and sculpture. Inkerö points at the Western notions of masculinity that shape the overall culture as well as their persona in an attempt to interpret and find refinement in conflicting ideals for the body. Inkerö examines how language, gestures, and, for example, a tone of voice can deny or allow access to specific groups. In asking you to look closer at structures of power, Inkerö creates space for a fantasy of norm defiance. Their works have been presented in the New Museum in New York, Kunsthal Charlottenborg in Copenhagen, Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki, Beursschouwburg Theatre in Brussels, Somerset House in London, and the Centre for Contemporary Photography in Melbourne. Inkerö graduated with MFA in Time and Space at the University of the Arts in Helsinki and has since then been a resident at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten artist residency in Amsterdam as well as an invited resident at the Somerset House in London.
 

Translator Anna Nurminen
https://tutkijaliitto.fi/yhdistys/

Anna Nurminen is a translator who graduated from Master's Programme in Philosophy at Tampere University in 2018. In her master's thesis she examined and compared the concepts of community in Jean-Luc Nancy's and Georges Bataille's works. After her graduation, Nurminen has been translating contemporary and 20th-century philosophy (Georges Bataille's Sisäinen kokemus, Jean-Luc Nancy's Singulaarinen pluraalinen oleminen, and shorter texts from several thinkers). Currently she is translating Paul B. Preciado's books.
 

Hosts: Kaisa Karvinen and Louna Hakkarainen
 

No registration is needed.
Just join via zoom: https://aalto.zoom.us/j/61759085314
 

The open symposium is part of the UWAS course Gender and Technology, designed by Louna Hakkarainen and Kaisa Karvinen in 2021, now in its second and last edition in Aalto University.

#gender
#biopolitics
#everydayresistance
#genderequity
#historyoftechnology
#materialityofpower
#natureculture
#cybercare