Research Space

Not long ago I wrote an article celebrating the work being done by cyberfeminist collective Deep Lab. After the piece was published, a writer, curator, and friend wrote to me to express concerns ab...

Since 2009, Yugoslavia-born video and internet artist Aleksandra Domanović has increasingly used her new-media skills to produce tech-savvy sculptural installations involving stacked paper, huge acrylic scrims and sci-fi prostheses.  

We've collected some of the most influential Internet artworks of the early Web by figures like JODI and Heath Bunting—all still available for viewing online.

“The acceptance of the tenderness and thoughtfulness of the cat relates directly to the acceptance of female sexuality: its subtlety, its complexity. In cultural history, the detestation of the domestic cat is always parallel to suppressed rage at difference in general and at all aspects of the female body and female orgasm in particular.” -- Carolee Schneemann

Mia Khalifa is on the tip of the tongue in today’s porn industry. Her quick fame has ignited heated controversy. A Lebanese born and raised and in your face about it, Mia has assumed the role of Middle Eastern representative in the porn world. She dethroned Lisa Ann as Pornhub queen pretty quickly. Is it because she is… exotic, perhaps? Is it because seeing a woman in hijab give a blowjob is just so new and exciting? The fact that Mia is Lebanese and a porn star is not what interests me, but rather the political implications behind her fame. ‘How can porn be political?’ one might ask. For starters, if someone’s fame lies heavily on that person’s race, one comes to think there is something fetishized going on here. Not only is Mia a brown woman doing porn, but also she is a brown woman who has starred in her porn videos wearing hijab. You can hardly find the name Mia Khalifa without the word ‘Lebanese’ in the same sentence. One of the most popular videos on Pornhub is Mia performing sexual acts wearing nothing but a scarf on her head. This is where things get sticky. Most of ...