Conversation with Faith Wilding, Chicago, 2003

In this conversation, Faith Wilding describes her involvement in co-founding the first feminist art program with Judy Chicago at California State University, Fresno. She reflects on the radical pedagogy that shaped the Feminist Art Program (1970-1975), which explored new artistic mediums such as video, performance, and installation through practices like consciousness raising, noting how “researching the history was always a really important thing in the feminist movement… to uncover hidden histories of women.”

For Wilding, feminist art has always been connected to broader activist movements. “It’s really important to emphasize that we were not in a vacuum; our movement was connected to others,” such as the civil rights and anti-war movements. She notes that many tactics used by organizations like ACT UP during the AIDS crisis were influenced by the Feminist Health Movement. Wilding critiques the reductionist view of feminism that focuses only on gender equality, advocating instead for addressing broader power structures.

Simone de Beauvoir, Lucy Irigaray, Donna Haraway’s A Cyborg Manifesto, and labor studies have been transformative for Wilding’s work, especially in relation to the intersection of women, technology, and labor. “Haraway introduced the concept of the cybernetic organism, connecting us all to machines, plants, and animals.” Wilding critiques early cyberfeminism, which she perceives as overly utopian and essentialist. “Computers and the internet are deeply rooted in military and business economies… I’m critical of the idea that new technologies will be women’s salvation.” Wilding’s essay “Where’s the Feminism in Cyberfeminism?” emphasizes the need to ground cyberfeminist ideas in the history of feminist art rather than starting anew.

Wilding addresses her role in the cyberfeminist group Old Boys Network (1997-2001), noting the lack of racial sensitivity in European feminist movements and the difficulties of promoting gender and racial diversity in a predominantly white male media sphere. She foregrounds her work with the cyberfeminist collective subRosa, which examines the impact of biotechnology on women, focusing on their commodification by corporations and drawing parallels with the historical colonization of women’s bodies.

At the end of the conversation, Wilding points to the cyclical nature of the feminist movement: “You know, all these different bitch and cunt magazines and the pink groups, were also strategies in early 70s feminism, to call yourself a cunt… like total recycling… This is how culture always works.”