Stemming from a series of works by Sidsel Meineche Hansen, this
monographic catalogue offers a range of perspectives on urgent issues around
gender, sexuality and labour in the digital age.
This book orbits “Second Sex War”, a series of works by Sidsel Meineche
Hansen addressing political and ethical questions arising from the use of
digital bodies in contemporary visual culture and the means of production
and distribution for these commodities. Realising that the same avatars are
used across the pornographic, gaming and cultural industries, she
investigates the working conditions and relationships that structure these
fields. Through numerous essays and conversations, Second Sex War,
the book, emphasises her collaborations with various practitioners
(animators, musicians, writers) and the way they have inflected her
practice. Media theorist Helen Hester (author of the Xenofeminist
manifesto) reflects on the limitations of the porn industry and the
use of female avatars. Artists collective Radclyffe Hall talks to
photographer Phyllis Christopher about early lesbian erotica magazine in the
1980s. Linda Stupart compiles quotes by Sara Ahmed, Kathy
Acker and Ursula K. Le Guin to consider what is radical
sex today. Artist Hannah Black's contribution, which opens the
publication, reads like a manifesto for artists being crushed under the
weight of current political circumstances.
Published following the eponymous exhibitions at Gasworks, London, from March 17 to
May 29, 2016, and Trondheim Kunstmuseum, Norway, June 12 to October 16,
2016.
Sidsel Meineche Hansen (born 1981 in Denmark, lives and
works in London) is a Danish artist. She produces exhibitions,
interdisciplinary seminars and publications that foreground the body and its
industrial complex, in what she refers to as a "techno-somatic variant of
institutional critique". Meineche Hansen questions the body in the field of
industrial representations: robotic or virtual bodies, and their
relationship with the working
world of industries of gaming,
pornography, and new
technologies. Her research-led practice has taken the form of woodcut
prints, sculptures and CGI animations, often made by combining her own
low-tech manual craft with outsourced, skilled digital labour.
Edited by Sidsel Meineche Hansen and Robert Leckie.
Texts by Robert Leckie, Hannah Black, Helen Hester, Phyllis Christopher
& Radclyffe Hall, Linda Stupart, Josefine Wikström. Entretiens with
Helena Vilalta, James B Stringer, Melika Ngombe Kolongo (Nkisi) by Sidsel
Meineche Hansen.
