The Feminist XResistance Project: Reflections and Commentary

Galit Ariel; Sarah York-Bertram; Kacie G. Hopkins; Aparajita Bhandari

Authors

Galit Ariel York University
Sarah York-Bertram York University
Kacie G. Hopkins York University
Aparajita Bhandari University of Waterloo

Keywords:

activism, augmented reality, digital methods, embodied resistance, embodiment, extended reality, feminism, feminist community, feminist resistance, interdisciplinary, research-creation

Abstract

On May 31, 2023, we showcased the Feminist XResistance project at the Women and Gender Studies et Recherches Féministes (WGSRF) conference under the apt thematic “Take Back the Future.” The project started on July 9, 2022, when a group of international, interdisciplinary, early career feminist scholars convened on Zoom for the Feminist Digital Methods (FDM) Drop-in Virtual Lab hosted by York University’s Centre for Feminist Research (CFR). The drop-in took place two weeks after the United States Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to an abortion and became a digital space to express our fears and anger over rising gender essentialist fascism, worries about the future, and to imagine feminist digital methods for resistance. In this reflection and commentary, we share our observations and processes for the Feminist XResistance project, starting with our first exploratory workshop, our co-creative analysis and outputs, the development of our AR installation, and, finally, our conclusions and insights.

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Author Biographies

Galit Ariel, York University

Galit Ariel is an award-winning researcher, author, and new media artist exploring the wild & imaginative side of bleeding-edge technologies. Galit is a creative technologist and PhD candidate at York University, where her “Biodigital Being(s)” research-creation project explores how embodied technologies, culture, and politics forge new body fictions. She is part of the Feminist Digital Methods Research Cluster, a graduate research fellow in York’s Sensorium Centre for Digital Arts and Technology, and the recipient of the OGS Scholarship and the Susan Mann Dissertation Excellence Scholarship. Galit authored the book Augmenting Alice: The Future of Identity, Experience and Reality (BIS Publishing); her critical writing appeared as articles and book chapters in Humanity-in-between and Beyond (Springer Nature Volume on Posthumanism), Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture & Social Justice, Global Perspectives (University of California Press), DAMN Magazine, Wired, and more. Galit’s creative work spans across location-based Augmented Reality art, subversive animation, speculative interactions, and art curation. Her work was presented as public art installations in international film & animation festivals and academic conferences, including the Dutch Design Week (EU), Opera Beyond (FI), Digital Arts Resource Center (CA), TED (US), The European Union (FI), the Humanities Congress (CA), HASTAC (US), and the International Symposium of Electronic Arts (Australia).

Sarah York-Bertram, York University

Sarah York-Bertram (she/they) is a historian, a qualitative researcher, a recent graduate of York University’s Gender, Feminist, and Women’s Studies doctoral program, and is currently an H. Sanford Riley Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Winnipeg. Their postdoctoral research is a history of emotions examining the affective basis of judgments and narratives surrounding sexual commerce during Canada’s westward expansion in the nineteenth century and western Canadian colonial worldmaking in the twentieth century. Sarah has sixteen years experience in intersectional, transnational, and community-based feminist research and twelve years experience in queer and feminist digital methods. She is a member of York University’s Centre for Feminist Research’s Feminist Digital Methods Research Cluster. Sarah is a settler born in Treaty 6 territory and the Homeland of the Métis in what is currently called Saskatchewan. Currently, Sarah lives in St. Catharines, Ontario which is the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe peoples. St. Catharines is covered by the Upper Canada Treaties and is within the land protected by the Dish with One Spoon Wampum Agreement.

Kacie G. Hopkins, York University

Kacie G. Hopkins (she/her) is a PhD Candidate with expertise in community economies, feminist social enterprises, and geographies of rural women’s handmade crafts and creativity. She studies in the Communication and Cultural Studies program at York University and Toronto Metropolitan Universities. She is also a storyteller, creative writer, artist/ textile designer, and social entrepreneur. She is a member of global research networks such as: The Community Economies Research Network, Rural Women’s Studies Association, Women, Gender and Social Justice, and Canadian Association for Studies in Co-operation. Outside of her PhD studies she is active in the social enterprise, Wildflower Enterprises at WildflowerConnection.com, that she and her twin sister founded to connect rural women through crafting, design, and empowerment services. She is an advocate for ethical trading of fashion and continues to write on ethical fair trade practices, specifically decolonizing the fair trade field through ethical and decolonial storytelling and marketing and advocating against toxic charity structures. Further she is a survivor advocate and worked with the YWCA, National Sexual Violence Resource Centre, and Pennsylvania Coalitions Against Rape and Domestic Violence. She is passionate about lifting survivor voices and working on survivor centered and trauma informed pedagogies and approaches to social change.

Aparajita Bhandari, University of Waterloo

Aparajita Bhandari is an assistant professor of Critical Digital Studies at the University Waterloo’s Department of English Language and Literature. She previously completed her SSHRC-funded doctoral research in the Department of Communication at Cornell University where she was a member of the Social Media Lab. Aparajita’s current work sits at the nexus of critical internet studies and feminist media studies engaging in critical examinations of social media platforms with a focus on understanding instantiations of everyday or mundane online experiences as potential sites of resistance against hegemonic power. Her interdisciplinary research has been published in top-tier journals such as New Media & Society, Social Media + Society, Communication, Culture and Critique, and Big Data and Society.

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The Feminist XResistance Project

Reflections and Commentary

Authors

Keywords: