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Thesis Info
- LABS ID
- 00895
- Thesis Title
- All-Women Initiatives in Art and Technology 1986-2020. Atenea: Mentoring and Networking Project in STEAM
- Author
- Robles Mateo, Elena
- E-mail
- elenarobles AT zohomail.eu
- 2nd Author
- 3rd Author
- Degree
- PhD
- Year
- 2020
- Number of Pages
- 445
- University
- Universitat Politècnica de València
- Thesis Supervisor
- Lloret Romero, María Nuria
- Supervisor e-mail
- nlloret AT upvnet.upv.es
- Other Supervisor(s)
- Language(s) of Thesis
- English
- Department / Discipline
- Departamento de Comunicación Audiovisual Documentación e Historia del Arte / Digital Art Theory-History
- Copyright Ownership
- Robles Mateo, Elena
- Languages Familiar to Author
- English, Spanish, Italian
- URL where full thesis can be found
- Keywords
- All-women, self-organized, initiatives, new media arts, art, technology, mapping, alternative art spaces, collaboration, segregation, ICT, digital age, virtual, community, network cultures, feminism, cyberfeminism, Atenea, STEM, girls, organizational, cur
- Abstract: 200-500 words
- This dissertation explores a series of all-women self-organized initiatives that have emerged at the
intersection of art and technology internationally. These grassroot initiatives have continued to appear in
places where there is a new media arts scene, generally male-dominated and low in diversity. This research
work is a mapping of this techno-social and artistic phenomena, attempting to identity its earliest practices.
Through interviews, surveys and ethnographic research, this thesis seeks to comprehend the context that
has given rise to such initiatives along three decades and half, examining the different typologies by formats,
extension, space and structure that they have adopted to address the situation of women in these fields.
There is a void of references on all-women curatorial and organizational forms in art and technology.
Moreover, general literature points digital subcultures of the 1990s such as cyberfeminism and DIY
movement as first referents for women’s alliance and translocal activism in the digital age. However,
collaboration and segregation strategies in new media arts have not been discussed in feminist scholarship
from a deeper historical perspective. Therefore, this dissertation elaborates the linkage of such initiatives
to early history of all-women art groups and alternative art spaces, history of women in new media arts and
to network cultures. New information and communication technologies have enabled new forms of
communication and connectivity cross-borders; however, this work investigates in which measure these
initiatives are dependent upon ICT for the establishment of a community, compared to analog formats. With
the results, this dissertation aims to become a source of references that enriches the scarce bibliography on
the topic, providing a list of curatorial and organizational forms with the earliest and unpublished practices
that altogether contribute to current women’s historiography.
Lastly, while discussing the current situation of women in art and technology fields, this works presents
Atenea, a mentoring and networking project for women in Arts and STEM careers. Atenea is comprised of
a program having different organizational and curatorial activities and a networking platform. Additionally,the project has a program focused on teaching STEM skills to girls through new media arts with female
artists as mentors.