Radical Optimism? Cyberfeminism Then and Now

What began in the early 1990s as a punk-fueled belief in the liberating power of technology has evolved into an ongoing conversation. Cyberfeminism is now seen as one of many movements working to disrupt and challenge the insidious status quo. This panel brings together cyberfeminism pioneer Julianne Pierce of VNS Matrix, artist and researcher Claudia Hart, and the artist collective Malpractice to reflect on how cyberfeminist thinking has shifted in response to today’s technological realities.
Back in 1991, VNS Matrix’s Cyberfeminist Manifesto expressed a radical optimism. There was a belief that digital spaces could transcend physical limitations and gender constructs, offering tools for liberation and reinvention. But in 2025, the landscape has grown more complicated. Technologies that once held utopian promise, such as AI and NFTs, are now often complicit in reinforcing the very power structures they were meant to dismantle.
As Flynn by Malpractice put it, we have moved from “the clitoris is a direct line to the matrix” to “the matrix is mining your data and reinforcing biases.” Flynn, as the first AI enrolled student at a university, exists within this contradiction. They are both a product of these problematic technologies and an effort to critique them through art.
How do artists and thinkers working today, some human and some not, navigate this shifting terrain? What remains of that early optimism? And what does resistance look like now?
The discussion is moderated by Anika Meier, with an introduction by Julia Staudach.