Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto

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Legacy Russell named Executive Director of the Kitchen". Artforum. 8 June 2021 . Retrieved 22 August 2021. As a conceptual framework, glitch reconfigures the typically pejorative way we view failure, brokenness, and the refusal to function. Instead, as Russell convincingly invites us to do, glitch should be welcomed — “the error a passageway” to constructing better worlds. [2] This is because, and here Russell situates glitch feminism in queer-of-colour theory by quoting José Esteban Muñoz: “…this world is not enough, that indeed something is missing.” [3] Russell draws on Shaadi Devereaux’s analysis of social media as a tool for marginalized women to reach each other, build collective support, and engage in conversation where they might usually be excluded in AFK domains. [4] To break, to dismantle, to fail fantastically in the face of a machine that expects us to keep carrying on as if it isn’t stifling and isn’t programmed to reward some and marginalize others. It is to carve fissures in existing, oppressive systems and its limitations on who we might be and what realms we might inhabit. You write in the book, “Glitch is anti-body, resisting the body as a coercive social and cultural architecture.” That brought to mind all the discussions since the pandemic about what it means to be an “essential worker,” that it’s actually a privilege to have access to digital work and not have to show up as a body for work. That’s a question that your manifesto opens up for me: How do you balance embracing the liberating possibilities of cyber identity with the realities that some people’s means of survival make those inaccessible?

Victoria Sin, performance at “Glitch @ Night” organized by Legacy Russell as part of “Post – Cyber Feminist International,” 2017, ICA London, courtesy of ICA London, photograph by Mark Blower. In thinking about how this work lives on, my hope is that it can be a strategic tool. The moments that have been most rewarding, in the journey from 2012 to the publication of this book, have been the moments where it has gone out into the world and intersected with people’s lives and living, been made real because it becomes tangible, becoming more than theory for theory’s sake. There are people who have so generously written to me and told me their personal stories about how these texts have been resonant for them, how they’ve opened up new understandings. That, for me, is the most important thing. In 2019, The Carl & Marilynn Thoma Art Foundation awarded Russell the Arts Writing Award in Digital Arts, which offers awardees a spot in the Rauschenberg Residency fellowship. [8]

May 2014

a b Mitter, Siddhartha (8 June 2021). "Legacy Russell Is Named Next Leader of the Kitchen". The New York Times . Retrieved 22 August 2021. Russell writes about art, gender, race, and technology, particularly as they intersect with histories of cyberculture. In 2012, Russell coined the term "Glitch Feminism", [11] which Russell says "embod[ies] error as a disruption to gender binary, as a resistance to the normative". [12] Travis Alabanza quoted in Lola Olufemi, Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power(Pluto Press, 2020) p. 49. Russell worked at the online platform Artsy, expanding the company's gallery relations across Europe. [10] She has worked at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Whitney Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and CREATIVE TIME. [ citation needed] She is a contributing editor at BOMB Magazine. [10] Writing edit Russell, Legacy. "Prayer? Or Practice? Social Shrines and the Ritualized Performance of Reality in Contemporary Art". Academia.edu.

You connect it to the earlier moment of ’90s Cyberfeminism. How do you consider what you’re doing as developing or correcting that tradition? When someone says to you “body,” what comes to mind? I’ve lectured at different institutions, and it’s always interesting to see how they are or are not defining what a body is. When I’m at the London School of Economics there is one definition, but then you go over to an art space and it’s a whole different kettle of fish. No one comes up with the same idea. So many people bring very real and devastating bias into shaping this “body” and shaping how it should work, who it should serve. a b Armstrong, Annie (2018-08-09). "Studio Museum in Harlem Names Legacy Russell Associate Curator". ARTnews.com . Retrieved 2020-06-17. This is where I think it’s useful to talk about the personal again. In the early days of grad school, when I was getting my MRes at Goldsmiths or even during my undergraduate study, I’d present papers and research and end up on stage with folks who were absolutely brilliant but really narrow in terms of their understanding of Cyberfeminist history.

Issue No. 2

How can glitch, which at its core is refusal, be reworked as something wonderful in our feminist, queer, and anti-racist utopic envisioning and collective mobilizations?