The Blazing World Barbara Kapusta, Cathrin Mayer

The title for this evening is taken from the first-ever novel to be called science fiction, written by Margaret Cavendish in the seventeenth century. In spite of its setting in a royal court, this book takes an explicitly feminist stance. The narrator is a young woman who is crowned queen of a planet named “The Blazing World.” Apart from numerous events, Cavendish describes the heroine’s motivation as a pacifist who believes in inclusion, and who uses her reign to combat sexual discrimination. In the context of this unique story, this program features films by women artists who use the genre of science fiction and many different methods and materialities to address the themes of body politics, transsexuality, the body, queer feminism, and solidarity.

Program
Barbara Kapusta, Empathic Creatures, 2018, 7 min
Joan Jonas, Double Lunar Dogs, 1984, 25 min
Lynn Hershman Leeson, Seduction of a Cyborg, 1994, 6 min
Doireann O’Malley, Prototypes (Part I: Quantum leaps in trans semiotics through psychedelic snail serum), 2017, 35 min

Presented by Cathrin Mayer, followed by a conversation with Barbara Kapusta