Rossitza Daskalova: How did you make the transition from making video art to being the President of the Board of Directors of Studio XX and working as a media art theorist, and more specifically in the field of web art? What was the context in which your professional activities evolved?
Katherine Liberovskaya: I became interested in the web when it emerged in 1993 - 1994. My first big contact with it was during the first ISEA meeting in Montreal in 1995. At that time there was all this curiosity, mythification and hype about it in the media art scene. I had been active in video art since the eighties and in the early nineties there was already this movement of multimedia activities in clubs: pre-raves and raves with video projections mixed with music and various computer generated audio-visual projects, notably around PRIM Video. They were organizing techno multimedia events. The Internet appeared at the same time as digital multimedia which had come from Hyper Card to Director. It all seemed as one exciting new digital world then that we were eager to discover. I was doing video work that integrated computer graphics. Though I had learned computer graphics in the late eighties, I never enjoyed the programming. That's why I collaborated with artists who enjoyed it and were good at it. With HTML it was more programming so I didn't get into it much either. In the mid-nineties I enrolled in a year-long program in multimedia where I learned computer programs such as Photoshop, Director, 3D studio, Illustrator. But after all that I still remained attached to video because of its immediacy, intuitiveness, and spontaneity, characteristics seldom present in Web and Computer based forms.
R. D.: Some of your early video projects produced in the beginning of the 90's have a net.art feel about them. You are working with video on the one hand and writing about web art on the other. It is quite suprising that you did not plunge into creating web projects. In your view, where is the divide?
K. L.: Although I am intellectually fascinated by multimedia and web art and stimulated by it, from the point of view of creation, I find computer arts frustrating. In my professional history I had already made a significant transition from visual arts (painting, assemblage, installation) to video. My first video was meant as one among many components of an installation that I was working on in 1987. The Hi-8 was not around yet and we were using these huge expensive U-Matic cameras. Videographe supported my project. I was looking to create a multi-sensory experience. Up to this point, I was constantly changing media but when I discovered video I stopped all other forms right there as it seemed to incorporate all the dimensions that I was seeking to express: image, form, sound, movement, duration. For me, video had it all. As for the digital, I find programming and code frustrating. Artists who are into it describe the whole process as sculpting code, they see code as the matière première. I see code as boring letters and numbers. I like to use video because I can capture an image right away and visualize it immediately. However, I have been editing digitally since the first non-linear systems. But though computer editing is based on code, it is hidden under intuitive applications that make the editing process feel like real time.
R. D. What draws you then to web art?
K. L.: My big love are the web's possibilities of connectivity and liveness. I really like the idea of connecting with people around the world. I have organized several conferences over the Net with C-U-SeeMe and I-Visit with Studio XX: notably the Russian Forum during the second edition of Maid in Cyberspace, as well as a web party for women via I-Visit for International Woman's Day this year. At the present stage of technological development one can easily integrate video into web projects but the picture is still the size of a postage stamp. So to me it's not interesting yet. But soon there should be exciting possibilities for video on the web: live jamming, interactivity, connectivity. I'm waiting.
R. D.: Which aspects of media arts have been at the core of your theoretical research during the last few years?
K. L.: I am interested in possible histories of multimedia, possible histories of net art with emphasis on media arts practices in non Western cultures. For my doctoral work for example I am examining net art in Russia. I am wondering whether technology that has mostly been developed in the U.S. has a colonizing effect on non-Western culture, notably Russia and Eastern Europe. Does digital technology force certain molds of creativity? As an artist, I find it in some ways sad that I have not caught onto net art more because I love its completely wild side which does not exist much for other art forms in the West at the moment. Video has been coopted completely by the art market. Yet the Net, is still surprisingly and refreshingly free in the sense that anyone in the world can post an intervention on the Net and with minimal knowledge can program the URL so that it would come up first on search engines. I love how the Net enables young artists or minority representatives to show their work, to put it out there and form their own networks without having to go through the usual hierarchy of the art world.
R. D.: Don't you find however that the net art world is becoming more and more structured?
K. L.: It is becoming very structured but this structuring is primarily philosophical and ideological. It organizes activities as opposed to an art that is transmitted by way of an object such as a video cassette. It is very hard to show a video if no one will show your work. Even CD-Roms need to be somehow distributed. But on the Net you can still post a site from a very distant place and make a connection with the world. Yes, by now there is Nettime, Rhizome, the Walker, the Whitney, the MOMA, ZKM, Documenta, the Venice Biennale and many net artists aim for these now accessible to them prestigious career paths. Yet, you can still live in Zimbabwe, teach yourself net programming and post a site outside of all those prestigious locations and if you have the knowledge you can make the right connections and get your site to be known with much more ease than if you were working in other art forms. This has happened for example with several artists from Eastern Europe, something that would have been difficult if not impossible in pre-net times. The Net is still amazing for minority cultures. They can still easily create their own spaces in their own images. The Net affords the possibility of not conforming to power structures and hierarchies.
R. D.: When did you become involved with Studio XX and what can you say about its evolution?
K. L.: I have been involved with Studio XX from the very beginning. It was conceived by Kathy Kennedy, Kim Sawchuk, Patricia Kearns and Sheryl Hamilton around 1995, right after ISEA in Montreal. I believe that the intial impetus was the example of the Guerilla Girls in Australia, as well as the hype about the Internet and new digital artforms that was so much in the air then. At the time, as typically as happens with technology, there were mostly a bunch of techy guys getting in the area and very few women. The idea in the first place then was a forum for women to find out about, learn about and think about these new media and forms, a forum for empowerment. Sheryl and Kim are both academics, Patricia a film-maker and Kathy a sound artist, all with strong ties to feminism. The first event they ever organized was an informal screening and discussion at the Cinémathèque of a documentary about women and the Internet. You could call that evening the first Femmes Branchées. If I'm not mistaken the documentary was called "Wired Women". I had been invited to that first meeting and was immediately interested in getting involved with them. The Studio was very small then. Kathy had gotten this PowerMac that was very fancy for the time and decided that she would share it with the XX community of women. She found this tiny space on Berri, in the building where Oboro is. We were sharing it with another non-profit organization so it only cost some $50 or $60 per month (that was often hard to come up with). Next to it was a large space belonging to the QDF (Quebec Drama Federation) that we would rent one evening a month for our Femmes Branchées salons.
The point of Femmes Branchées was show and tell. We invited many women who were very technical to come and explain what the Internet was about and what we could do with it. Women came and showed their works in digital media, presented works-in-progress, shared ideas, theories, critical perspectives, information. At the time, I was one of the coordinators of the Femmes Branchées. It was a fun time. Everything was new and people were excited about it. In those days most people weren't connected to the Internet, didn't know much about it, so there was this whole mythical aura about it. The Femmes Branchées were way more flexible than now then. Members of our community knew that they could arrive a few minutes before a Femmes Branchées and request five or ten minutes to make an announcement, share an idea, some information. It was chaotic but dynamic. Everything was run by volunteers. Nowadays our Femmes Branchées still remain quite flexible compared to other media art events around. But with everyone and your grandmother getting connected in Canada over the past 2-3 years, the hype has worn down and the Studio has had to become more focused. Now that everyone has a personal website and makes Microsoft Office and I-Movie multimedia presentations at home it is not longer sufficient to simply be an organization centered on women and new media or women and Internet. It has become more important than ever to remember our feminist roots and aspirations and our critical stance in relation to new media. The Femmes Branchées have continued to exist in more or less the same format: once a month, usually the last Friday of every month, from 5:30 to 7:30. It is still a show and tell, only a bit more sophisticated now that the coordinators have salaries and that we have a budget for renting equipment like LCD projectors.
In 1997, upon receiving our first funding, we moved from the miniature office on Berri to a much bigger space on Mont-Royal Street with a breath-taking view of the mountain. Since, we were able to move to our present great location on St-Denis Street. Our funding has become more stable. At first, we were only able to obtain funding for various projects, now we have graduated to regular core funding from the provincial and national Arts Councils. From year to year we have been able to hire more and more people: from one in 1997-98 to a staff of around ten people these days. Our annual women's web art festival, Maid in Cyberspace, now better known as les HTMlles, has also grown tremendously. Its first sponteneous edition in 1997 took place during a single weekend in a space rented (or borrowed, I can't remember) from the Theater Association. Anyone who applied that year, got in; there were only some thirty projects and no one was paid. For the second edition, we got some funding and were able to rent a space for a month at the Belgo building. We had a budget to pay a limited amount of artists' fees so we selected a specific number of projects among many more applications than the previous year. Since 2000, HTMlles have been held at the Cinémathèque Québecoise that graciously lend us their spaces during the first week of February. It is exciting that the Studio which started so modestly is alive and well an only doing better and better.
R. D. Aside from Femmes Branchées and the HTMlles Festival, what other activities are organized by Studio XX?
K. L.: Since the beginning we have been offering various Internet and computer workshops for women by women. Our community likes the different atmosphere these workshops provide. We also offer special thematic workshops for different artists once a year. Last year, we had one on hyper-literature in French, for writers. We have had one in digital sound for composers. We also have artist residencies. We make sure to stay open to projects with media that are not digital like radio, film, video, because these too are still relatively new media which are no less technological. Studio XX is also very much a community organization, which distinguishes it from other women's art centers. We have always strived to incorporate social activism in our activities. For example, board member Slavka Antonova has conducted research on immigrant women and the Internet. We feel it is important to serve all sorts of women's communities, which is no simple goal. What we are discovering is that rather than trying to bring them to us the best solution is probably to go to them. An important activist community project since 1997 has been Down to Earth in Cybespace which promotes the use of technology by women and women's groups. The Femmes Branchées have never addressed just art and digital technology. Last season, for example, we had a whole evening dedicated to the International Women's March in New York in the Fall, we had a special evening to mark International Women's day in March involving mostly activists. Often our Femmes Branchées are a mix of people: artists almost always, but also theorists, social activists, feminists... which has always been the concept: the juxtaposition of various practices and ideas related to women and technology, not simply women's art.
R. D.: What is the role of Studio XX within the context of new media in Quebec, Canada and internationally? What are the short term and long term perspectives and the strategies for the development of Studio XX?
K. L.: There is a lot going on in Quebec and in Canada. One of the reasons for this is that we have one of the most connected countries in the world and connected and affordable. Studio XX is perhaps the first, or one of the first, organizations that has just been digital from the very beginning. Most of the other media art centers have evolved from other media, notably video, and have added web art to their activities recently. Examples are Oboro, GIV, Prim, among others. Perhaps SAT in Montreal and Avatar in Quebec city are more like us because they too started on digital ground. I think the place of Studio XX within the Quebec media art scene was and is quite significant even if just because the HTMlles Festival was the first international web art venue here. FCMM and the CIAC came later. And more and more media arts organizations are producing and showing web-based projects: GIV, Videograph, PRIM and Diamon in Hull, among others. Studio XX has been instrumental in bringing respect to this new art form and women's role in it. Studio XX has become more and more francophone since its mostly anglophone beginnings. On a radical international level the French language on the Internet is an important phenomenon. We plan organizing activities with France, with the French cybermagazine Synesthesie for example. As well the HTMlles Festival has inspired many women around the world to produce web-art.
Internationally, we are part of a whole cyberfeminist network such as: the Faces Lists, The Oldboys Network, Cyber Femmes in France, the CyberFeminClub in St, Petersburg, the Herland Festival out West in Canada and the Guerilla Girls in Australia, among others. This network is involved in much activism around the world. For example, the Faces women squat major international media arts events to ensure women's representation. In this sense, I think we could be more radical at Studio XX, we are becoming a bit more polished and institutionalized. Though this institutionalization is in part due to the requirements of funding structures in Quebec and Canada. We are, after all, following the directives and guidelines that all art organizations are following. As the international net art scene becomes more structured, Studio XX brings to the forefront women and women's talent which I think is still extremely necessary although there will be people who will say that this does not make much sense anymore. If you start counting the women participating in festivals and international events, there are always more male participants. Yet if you examine demographics you will not find more males; if you look at art schools, there won't be more males, on the contrary. We are often asked why we remain dedicated to women, why we don't open up to men: because there are a hundred other organizations that are open to all and in the very male world of new technology there is still a need for spaces where women feel comfortable and empowered.
R. D.: On the one hand, it is great that a place like Studio XX exists, because it provides an important forum for women, and, on the other, the fact that it is for women only, makes it seem as a form of ghetto. What are your strategies for overcoming this duality?
K. L.: We do a lot of collaborations for example. There is a lot of exchange and Studio XX does not remain isolated. People are getting to know us and they come to our events. When other organizations are interested in women's projects with cutting edge technologies, they come to us. In this respect, Studio XX has become an important resource. My personal desire would be that we continue all these exciting activities that help us get bigger and better, but that we keep an open avenue for more radical activism as well, that we not become too institutionalized... Furthermore, many new young people are coming to Studio XX who grew up with computers and already have a cyberspace imagination. They come from another planet. This is a whole new generation which thinks in HTML, whereas before, we were transposing from other media to the Net.
