Dismantling the Patriarchy, Bit by Bit

In Dismantling the Patriarchy, Bit by Bit, Judith K. Brodsky makes a ground-breaking intellectual leap by connecting feminist art theory with the rise of digital art. Technology has commonly been considered the domain of white men but-unrecognized until this book-female artists, including women artists of color, have been innovators in the digital art arena as early as the late 1960s when computers first became available outside of government and university laboratories. Brodsky, an important figure in the feminist art world, looks at various forms of visual art that are quickly becoming the dominant art of the 21st century, examining the work of artists in such media as video (from pioneers Joan Jonas and Adrian Piper to Hannah Black today), websites and social networking (from Vera Frenkel to Ann Hirsch), virtual and augmented reality art (Jenny Holzer to Hyphen-Lab), and art using artificial intelligence. She also documents the work of female-identifying, queer, transgender, and Black and brown artists including Legacy Russell and Micha Cárdenas, who are not only innovators in digital art but also transforming technology itself under the impact of feminist theory. In this radical study, Brodsky argues that their work frees technology from its patriarchal context, illustrating the crucial need to transform all areas of our culture in order to achieve the goals of #MeToo, Black Lives Matter (BLM), and Black and Minority Ethnic (BAME) representation, to empower female-identifying and Black and brown people, and to document their contributions to human history.

Judith K. Brodsky is Distinguished Professor Emerita, Department of Art and Design, at Rutgers University, USA. A celebrated artist and curator, she has also held leadership positions at ArtTable, The College Art Association and the Women's Caucus for Art. In 1986 she founded the Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper (RCIPP), to provide opportunities for artists from underrepresented communities to collaborate with master printers and papermakers; it was renamed The Brodsky Center in 2006 and is now located at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. She is the author of Dismantling the Patriarchy, Bit by Bit: Art, Feminism, and Digital Technology (Bloomsbury, 2019).

List of Illustrations Preface Introduction 1. Reinserting Women into the History of Digital Art: Pioneer Feminist Artists 2. The 1970s: Feminism and Digital Art Inside and Outside the Academy 3. Reimagining the Binary Nature of Digital Technology 4. Using Websites and Browsers to Deliver Social Justice Messages 5. Provoking the Patriarchy Through Digital Language 6. Queerness, Race, and Digital Art 7. The Avatar 8. The Female Body Disappears 9. Creating Feminist Paradigms of Knowledge through Digital Technology 10. Surveillance 11. Feminist Artists and the Gaming Industry 12. Japanese Feminism, Video Games, and Anime 13. Artificial Intelligence (AR), Facial Recognition, and Virtual Reality (VR) 14. Digital Public Art and Augmented Reality (AR) Conclusion Bibliography Index