Feminism and Flight: how do women artists working today respond to global wars and conflicts by reimagining flight technologies? by reimagining flight technologies?

Conference Video (including Introduction & two Keynotes) 

‘All wars lead to progress’, I was told once by an astronaut when discussing the future of flight. This statement repeated a familiar idea that, somehow, the horrors of war must be endured to allow technologies to evolve and deliver benefits to mankind; but it was both shocking and sobering. Can it really be true that human civilisation can only progress through the misery of war? In this paper I pose the question, why demilitarizing and womanizing flight is important, and argue that there may be ‘poetic technologies’ (Graeber, D. 2015)* comprised from haptic artworks, including textiles, that could offer a way forward, to reimagine different flight technologies for a future away from global militarism. Using the examples of my artistic practice and research, I demonstrate how women artists respond to wars and conflicts, and how these artistic responses strive to re-imagine fast-changing technologies, including the technologies of flight and militarised surveillance. I examine how women artists who have experienced conflicts and wars, including Putin’s disgraceful invasion into Ukraine, can activate ‘poetic technologies’ within their artworks, becoming instruments of feminist resistance through strategies of deceleration such as creative collective projects and artistic endeavours working with haptic technologies, textiles, and other fibre-based materials.

This research analyses contemporary perspectives on flight via feminist philosophies and feminist thought ( Silvia Federici, Sadie Plant, Rosi Braidotti and Donna Haraway, et al), juxtaposed with critical perspectives on capitalist acceleration and accumulation (Paul Virilio, Bledwyn Bowen, Kohei Saito), to evaluate and reimagine haptic technologies in the form of textile installations created by women artists and activists.

Can flight be requalified and reimagined through a feminist perspective on its technologies? By problematising the geo-politics of flight in relation to personal histories and feminist thought, my research strives to develop an alternative, artistic vision of flight, to offer a transformative redirection for our future with flight technologies that sets aside any reliance on male- dominated, techno-industrial militarism, that continues to contribute to ecological collapse, climate catastrophe and global refugee crises.

This Create/Feminisms conference was organised with ACI Faculty Research Funds.

There were 39 speakers. Around 90 people attended in person, with a further 50 online. The speakers came from and spoke about many countries:Iran, Ukraine, Austria, France, USA, Lebanon, Brazil, Bolivia, Spain, Poland, Latvia, Czech Republic, Germany, Cyprus, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, Ireland, The Netherlands, China, South Africa, New Zealand and UK.

The conference organisers were: Katy Deepwell, Elli Young and Alexandra Kokoli.