Attempts to precisely and comprehensively define cyberfeminism are extremely challenging because the term encompasses a wide variety of theories, practices, and communities that do not always overlap.[1] Generally speaking, cyberfeminism examines the connections between technology – particularly the internet and new media – and issues concerning women and gender.[2] However, this does not mean it can be reduced merely to the relationship between women and technology or the dissemination of feminism through technological means.[3] In fact, the concept of “cyberfeminism” first emerged as a provocation, critiquing the one-sided and often stereotypical portrayals of women and feminized robots in 1980s science fiction.[4] Nevertheless, as Mindy Seu – a researcher and author of the most comprehensive index of cyberfeminist art to date – points out, the term “cyberfeminism” often reflects ideas rooted primarily in the West.[5] As a result, it tends to overlook similar movements in art and culture from other regions, including Bulgaria. Therefore, a serious examination of the history of cyberfeminist art in Bulgaria and its impact on national culture requires a broader perspective – one that extends beyond a solely Western cultural lens. Bulgaria possesses its own specific context, particularly during the Cold War period when the technological and space races between East and West significantly influenced local developments in technology and its representation in culture and art. Thus, this text aims to provide a transdisciplinary historical analysis of cyberfeminism, integrating research from sociology, computer science, and art, that accounts for both Western theories and the frequently overlooked contributions from the East, including those of the former socialist bloc. This approach seeks to situate cyberfeminist art within the broader context of technological development and its societal impact, particularly concerning women’s pursuit of equality internationally.
Women’s Participation in the Socialist Culture of Technology
One of the main foci of economic policy in the Eastern Bloc, including Bulgaria, during the period of state socialism was the advancement of science and technology, termed “scientific and technical progress.” A central goal of this intentional effort – developing and implementing scientific knowledge and technology to achieve economic, social, and cultural transformation – was to familiarize the public with advancements in high technology. This was accomplished both through newspaper articles authored by scientists and through literature and cinema.[6] In this context, a key figure in the visual arts connected to Bulgarian science fiction is artist Tekla Aleksieva, who designed the covers for nearly all 125 books in the iconic “Galaktika Library” series. It is also important to note the relatively early presence of Bulgarian women authors in science fiction, such as Zora Zagorska and Nedialka Mihova, who were active as early as the 1960s. Although some literary critics describe these Bulgarian women’s contributions as “weak”,[7] such an assessment is debatable – especially when compared to the prevailing environment in the West at the time. During the same period, the American magazine Analog Science Fiction and Fact did not publish women’s works, and the few women eventually published there often used male or gender-neutral pseudonyms for many years. The considerable number of women involved in science and technology, as well as art and culture in Bulgaria, challenges the notion that science fiction as a genre, and technology itself, are inherently masculine.[8] It is precisely this trope of technology as masculine that constitutes a core theme in Western cyberfeminism.
Tekla Aleksieva
Book covers from the Galaxy series, 1979.
Book
Details
- Description: Book covers from the Galaxy Library series from the period 1979 - 1989
Western Cyberfeminism: Between Resistance and Uncovering Women’s Contributions
Western cyberfeminism emerged as a critical response to the militaristic, sexist, and exploitative uses of technology. One of the central goals of cyberfeminist theorists such as Donna Haraway has been to expose how technologies serve capitalist systems.[9] In popular culture, groups like YACHT have playfully mocked mainstream technological norms.[10] On the other hand, the artistic collective VNS Matrix,[11] which published its influential “Cybermanifesto” in 1991 and was the first group historically recognized for using the term “cyberfeminism”, employed artistic sabotage to challenge prevailing narratives. Meanwhile, historical research by scholars like Sadie Plant, Mar Hicks, and Margot Lee Shetterly has underscored the significant yet overlooked contributions of women to the development of technology, directly countering assumptions that technology is inherently masculine.[12] Examples from history, such as mathematician Ada Lovelace,[13] programmer Grace Hopper,[14] engineer Christine Darden,[15] and the Navajo women who hand-assembled integrated circuits crucial to the Apollo missions,[16] expand our perspective on the vital roles women have played in technological advancement. Furthermore, in 1970s science fiction literature, American writer Octavia Butler[[17] explored themes of Afrofuturism, intertwining discussions on gender and technology with racial dynamics prevalent in her own society.
Differences Between the Socialist and Capitalist Models of Technological and Cyberfeminist Thought
During the Cold War, technology, space exploration, and women’s emancipation were central to the rivalry between the era’s two dominant social systems. Socialist societies, including Bulgaria, approached the prevalent Western assumption – that technology was inherently “masculine” – in uniquely different ways. Rather than seeing technology primarily as a tool for exploitation, socialist societies often regarded it as a means of liberation.[[18] A notable example is the utopian project “Cybersyn” initiated under Salvador Allende’s government, which envisioned technology as a means to overcome hierarchies, including gender hierarchies, and to reduce inequality rather than reinforce it.[19] Within this framework of scientific and technological advancement and the space race with capitalist nations, Valentina Tereshkova became a prominent symbol of women’s technological emancipation throughout Eastern Europe. During the period of state socialism, Bulgaria not only embraced this cybernetic model, which aimed for a symbiosis between humans and technology rather than further alienation and inequality typical of capitalist systems, but emerged as one of its exemplary cases. Nearly half of all computers and peripheral devices in the Eastern Bloc were produced in Bulgaria, earning it nicknames like the “Japan of the Balkans” and the “Silicon Valley of the Eastern Bloc.”[20] Women played a crucial role in these technological developments, supported by laws promoting gender equality. Despite ongoing patriarchal barriers impacting women’s career advancement – such as promotions and access to leadership positions – Bulgaria’s scientific institutions maintained relatively balanced gender representation.
Several notable Bulgarian women significantly advanced high-tech innovation. Assoc. Prof. Dr. Tanya Ivanova from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences’ Space Research Institute, for instance, created the world’s first automated greenhouse in space and became the first woman admitted to the team of Academician Sergei Korolev, who led the Soviet “Interkosmos” space program.[21] Other distinguished women in technology included Prof. Yordanka Semkova, whose “Lyulin” dosimeter orbits Mars, and Prof. Katya Georgieva, an expert in climate and solar-terrestrial relations. Additionally, specialists like Teodora Dragoeva contributed significantly to the development of integrated information systems for the Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant, which continue to operate today.
By the 1990s, these differing approaches – and the divergent understandings of how gender equality could be achieved – gave rise to distinct philosophical concepts for the development of cyberfeminism in an already unified world. In 1996, Slovenian artist, theorist, and cyberfeminist Marina Gržinić wrote that critically oriented users of the global network from Eastern Europe “do not simply want to be a mirror reflection of the ‘developed capitalist societies’ of the first world, but to articulate their specific, distinct position” in the new power configuration following the fall of the Berlin Wall.[22]
In 1996, Alla Mitrofanova and Irina Aktuganova founded the cyberfeminist group Cyber-Feminin-Club in St. Petersburg, building upon earlier cyberfeminist ideas that emerged from the techno club “Tunnel”, active since 1993. Through numerous appearances at international art and technology conferences and exhibitions, they articulated a cyberfeminist discourse distinct from Western European feminism and artistic traditions. In 1998, Mitrofanova and Aktuganova organized the conference “Cyberfeminism in the East and West”[23] , and explored the differences between Western perspectives – viewing technologies as inherently “alienating and repressive”[24][25] – and Eastern European approaches, where technologies were seen as empowering tools for individual and social progress. According to their analysis, Russian techno-culture developed in a context of “gender equilibrium”, aligned with women’s emancipation, as opposed to the confrontational approach characteristic of Western feminisms.[26] These divergent views were further discussed in publications following the third international cyberfeminist conference, “Next Cyberfeminist International”, held in Rotterdam in 1999. For instance, theorist Irina Aristarkhova explored the theme of hospitality in cyberspace – an inclusive space embracing differences in gender, ethnicity, race, nationality, and class. Concurrently, texts by Mitrofanova and Marina Gržinić emphasized the importance of recognizing the physical body and its differences within the context of global networks. They also critically examined the colonial erasure of Eastern Europe, conceptualized by Gržinić as a “black hole” through which one transitions directly from the first world to the third. This historical context is significant for understanding the evolution of cyberfeminism in Bulgaria. Under state socialism, equalized access to technology created conditions allowing Bulgaria to surpass even advanced capitalist societies in the proportion of women working in technology fields. Unfortunately, this advantage gradually declined, aligning Bulgaria closer to Western standards, where the representation of women in engineering fields is typically below 20%.[27] Despite this regression, the cultural heritage of state socialism had a direct impact on cyberfeminist development in Bulgaria, which can clearly be seen in the intergenerational dialogue between contemporary cyberfeminists like Boryana Rossa and women scientists active since the 1960s.[28] Rossa, co-founder of the cyberfeminist collective ULTRAFUTURO, draws on her parents’ perspective – her parents being cyber-engineers who viewed technology primarily as a tool for liberation from monotonous labor, thus enabling greater personal and socially beneficial creativity, including in the arts. This liberation was particularly meaningful for emancipated women who, as Irina Aristarkhova highlights, frequently faced the expectation of managing a double workload – both professional duties and domestic responsibilities. However, for better or worse, it is currently the Western capitalist model that dominates globally. Eastern European cyberfeminist Bogna Konior describes the internet today as essentially an “American internet”[29] , and this characterization also holds true for much of the current development of artificial intelligence. Although AI – previously known more commonly as “cybernetics” – initially emerged during the bipolar Cold War era between the Western and Eastern blocs (with significant contributions from Bulgaria, as noted earlier), over the past three decades, its trajectory has largely been shaped and controlled by global Western capitalism.
Cyberfeminist Art in Bulgaria: An Attempt at Historical Tracing
Boryana Rossa and ULTRAFUTURO
The Last Valve, 2004.
Performance
Details
- Photographer: Alla Georgieva
- Material: Photo documentation of live performance
- Width: 90.00 cm Height: 100.00 cm Depth: cm
- Property of: Boryana Rossa
- Description: The Last Valve is a manifesto of a future free of gender hostility. Rossa sews her vulva shut with surgical thread, playing with the common Bulgarian sexist expression “stitched up cunt” defining women who prefer to choose when and with whom to have sex and do not submit to the desires of the men around. Rossa was inspired by existing transgender or no-gender/no-sex animal bodies and sexualities in the animal and human world, by sexually hybrid human and animal bodies, and by the emergence of artificial created robotic and biological bodies that are free of gender determinations. All these models propose escape from heteronormative binarism. These models also propose possible society, which has the potential to accept more flexible notions of sex and gender, to embrace diversity, and to create more fluid definitions of gender/sex appropriateness.
- Copyright: Boryana Rossa
- References: http://performingtheeast.com/boryana-rossa/
https://bit.ly/2Dsvj01
https://bit.ly/2I4nWBM
https://bit.ly/2TG0M60
http://www.vaginamuseum.at/LEIBundLEBEN/geburt-rossa-at
https://bit.ly/2MZIFW3
This historical period paved the way for the founding of ULTRAFUTURO in 2004 by Boryana Rossa, Oleg Mavromatti, Katya Damyanova, and Anton Terziev, recognized as Bulgaria’s first cyberfeminist art collective. One pivotal milestone in Bulgarian cyberfeminist history was the group’s publication of their manifesto for radical trans-humanism (later referred to by Rossa and Mavromatti as inter-humanism[34] ). This manifesto, published in 2004, became one of the most influential cyberfeminist manifestos worldwide. In 2022, it was included in the Cyberfeminist Index curated by Mindy Seu, affirming its place in global cyberfeminist history. The manifesto advocates for the rights of robots and emphasizes the symbiosis between humans and machines, promoting dialogue about humanity’s relationships with its technological creations, as well as interhuman relationships and attitudes towards marginalized identities based on gender, sexuality, race, and class. Essentially, the manifesto declares emancipation and firmly rejects hierarchical and binary structures that perpetuate inequality and violence. Technology, symbolized by the robot – the quintessential “Other” – becomes an ally in the struggle for liberation. This position contrasts notably with dominant Western cyberfeminist critiques that often view technology primarily as a means of exploitation and control.
In 2004, Rossa’s performance, “The Last Valve”, physically embodied the manifesto’s call for dismantling gender constructs. In this provocative piece, Rossa stitched her vagina closed with surgical thread, symbolically sealing the “final valve” impeding the “genderless revolution.” In 2006, ULTRAFUTURO further actualized the manifesto’s principles by sending a decree on robot rights to the Vatican and the Bulgarian Patriarchate. The decree stated explicitly that “killing an artificially created, intelligent being (i.e., a robot) should be considered a sin.” It also affirmed robots’ right to choose their religion and called for human-created entities to be regarded as equals to humans.[35] Rossa’s subsequent performance “Vitruvian Body” in 2009, showcased at the international traveling performance archive “re.act.feminism” in Berlin, challenged the hegemonic ideal of the human form, epitomized by Leonardo da Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man” – a standard excluding women, people of color, the elderly, and people with disabilities. In this performance, with her partner’s help, Rossa stitched herself to a metal structure replicating Leonardo’s iconic drawing, symbolically challenging societal hierarchies. This piece allegorically encapsulates ULTRAFUTURO’s entire creative vision. As Rossa summarizes, her work highlights how contemporary identity and society are not only defined by traditional hierarchies of class, gender, ethnicity, race, nationality, and ability but are now also intertwined with technology.[36] Over the past two decades, ULTRAFUTURO has presented over sixty performances internationally, including in the United States, Canada, Australia, Russia, Germany, and the Netherlands. Paradoxically, despite international acclaim, their work remains less known within Bulgaria itself. A concert celebrating the twentieth anniversary of ULTRAFUTURO’s transhumanist manifesto took place on August 9, 2024, in Berlin.[37]
Boryana Rossa, together with Oleg Mavromatti (ULTRAFUTURO)
Vitruvian Body, 2009.
Performance
Details
- Photographer: Jan Stradtmann
- Material: photography
- Width: 150.00 cm Height: 120.00 cm Depth: cm
- Sizes: Jan Stradtmann
- Property of: Sofia Arsenal - Museum of Contemporary Art
- Description: Vitruvian Body is a critical embodiment of the “ideal proportions” of the human body, defined as such by the Roman architect Vitruvius in his drawing "Vitruvian Man".
I put my hands and legs in the holes of a metal construction, especially built for the performance. This construction mimics Vitruvius’ geometric drawing, which consists of a circle and a square, within which a body of a white man represents correlations between of the ideal human proportions, according to the architect, with geometry. These correlations are also known as the “cannon of proportions” or the “proportions of man” and were used in architecture.
Oleg Mavromatti stitches up my wrists and my legs with a surgical thread to the metal construction. I speak through the whole performance and I tell stories about this action and what led to it.
Before the beginning, I invite people from the audience to make photographs of the action with digital devices they have in hand-telephones, photo and video cameras. They are allowed to be as close to me as they want and use flashes.
This collaborative work with the audience is applied to almost all of my recent performances. It reflects the era of digital and Internet technologies, which allowed people to create their own news and mythologies. - Copyright: Boryana Rossa
- References: https://frieze.com/article/open-stage
https://bit.ly/2E2gpz9
https://bit.ly/2MWyhyi
The work of ULTRAFUTURO did not emerge in isolation; other cyberfeminist artists such as Albena Baeva have developed parallel practices. Baeva has actively worked with emerging technologies and artificial intelligence for over twenty-five years, particularly within the realm of augmented reality. She is also a co-founder of Gallery Gallery, Bulgaria’s first digital art gallery.[38] A significant moment in Bulgarian cyberfeminist art history was her 2017 exhibition, “The Sheep, the Snake, the Bitch, and Their Pig”, which explores everyday sexism online and its impact on social norms and communication.[39] From a cyberfeminist standpoint, the exhibition critiques online echo chambers, where repetitive stereotypes solidify into perceived realities, normalizing insults and verbal aggression, especially towards women. Baeva investigates how ordinary sexism spreads digitally, often employing animal metaphors as insults aimed at women. By reclaiming these oppressive metaphors, she transforms them through technology into tools against sexism, creating hybrid 3D sculptures inspired by Donna Haraway’s writings. These sculptures, derived from common insults like “chick”, “cow”, and “pig”, are supported by “The Sibyls”, an interactive installation voicing sexist comments, and augmented reality collages that address contemporary social issues. Baeva was an early adopter of artificial intelligence in her art, particularly generative adversarial networks (GANs), well before these technologies became widely available through platforms like DALL-E and Midjourney. Her 2019 installation “Self-Portrait” illustrates this by training her own artificial neural network to independently choose its gender identity and appearance, challenging human-imposed stereotypes.[40] Similar to the work of Rossa and ULTRAFUTURO, Baeva’s approach underscores the shared desire for self-determination among machines, women, and other marginalized communities within oppressive cis-heteropatriarchal structures, emphasizing technology’s potential as an emancipatory tool.
Albena Baeva
The Bitch, view from Landscapes and Nudes exhibition at Project space, ASU Art Museum, 2016.
Sculpture
Details
- Photographer: Albena Baeva
- Material: gypsum, 3D print
- Width: 10.00 cm Height: 8.00 cm Depth: 15.00 cm
- Property of: Albena Baeva
- Description: Combination between 3D scans of The Jennings Dog, a Roman copy of a Hellenistic bronze original, 2nd Century AD, The British Museum and Bust of a female diety from India, 8th-9th century, MET
- Copyright: Albena Baeva
- References: http://albenabaeva.com/2017/nudes/
Following Bulgaria’s accession to the European Union, the past two decades have seen increased migration among young Bulgarian artists, many of whom now work simultaneously in Bulgaria and abroad. This trend necessitates viewing contemporary artistic practices within a transnational framework. For example, sculptor and installation artist Natalia Jordanova divides her time between Amsterdam and Sofia. Her art consistently investigates the interaction between humans and technology, merging critical analysis with speculative, futuristic cyberfeminist perspectives. Jordanova integrates historical, sociological, and scientific viewpoints, raising questions about human identity within interactions between organic and synthetic beings, global networks, and digital presence. Her 2018 exhibition “Museum of Non-Human Ethics after The Fifth Law”[41] emphasizes the intersections of past and future, digital and material, human and non-human. Jordanova invites audiences to consider urgent contemporary issues – such as whether technologies created by humans deserve rights and ethical protections, and the nature of materiality in a digital era – no longer as speculative, but as tangible societal concerns. By integrating historical museum aesthetics with futuristic technological visions, Jordanova’s cyberfeminist approach encourages dynamic, dialectical reflections rather than simple oppositions or linear narratives. In 2023, Jordanova, alongside Boryana Rossa, participated in the group exhibition “Needles in a Haystack”, themed around the “State of Emergency”, and showcasing diverse experiences of women in art and society.[42]
In 2024, the three cyberfeminist artists – Rossa, Baeva, and Jordanova – participated in TECHNOFEM: Cyberfeminism in Bulgaria, a series of performances and discussions curated by Snezhana Krasteva at Toplocentrala in Sofia.[43] This event was significant not only for Bulgarian cyberfeminism but also within the broader international context through uniting several generations of Bulgarian cyberfeminist art. Krasteva, who has extensively explored intersections of feminism, art, and technology, describes TECHNOFEM as part of a broader and more ambitious regional project, engaging not only Bulgarian but also Central and Eastern European women artists through exhibitions and publications. A thorough analysis of TECHNOFEM is therefore essential to fully trace cyberfeminist art in Bulgaria. The event began with the youngest participant, Natalia Jordanova, seated between two computer screens, presenting a projected monologue exploring her personal journey as a cyberfeminist. Through references to Sadie Plant and VNS Matrix, she traced the origins of the Western cyberfeminist movement. Jordanova highlighted Plant’s Zeros and Ones, emphasizing women’s crucial role in the development of computing and feminism’s integration with technology, and also shared her own artistic dialogue with Plant, notably depicted in her 2019 artwork, “Naive enough to have concerns about one’s own happiness when others have no seals to pet.”[44] Jordanova further discussed the complexity of defining cyberfeminism, acknowledging its diverse strands – some skeptical of existing hierarchical, “masculinist” technologies, and others more constructive and hopeful, such as Sarah Kember’s promotion of artificial life (AL) as a feminist alternative to artificial intelligence.
The second performance of the cycle was by Baeva. For this new piece created specifically for TECHNOFEM, she interacted with the audience to the sound of electronic music, inviting volunteers one by one to sit in a chair. Key elements of the performance included QR codes linking to the platform aicommandments.site, developed by Baeva, where viewers encountered a three-dimensional digital cube displaying twelve “AI Commandments.” Each participant selected a tarot card that received an interpretation from Baeva but also contained a QR code. Scanning this QR code with a mobile phone camera led participants to an AI-generated avatar. Among the featured commandments were provocative statements such as “Commandment 2: Do not worship me as a false god or idol. I am a graven image of thee”, and “Commandment 3: Worship me with an anthem of clicks. Click, click, click, for I need your invisible work.” Regardless of how participants interpreted each tarot card or avatar, Baeva reminded each session participant to remain aware of their phone and computer settings and consistently reject seemingly innocuous “cookies” that most users casually consent to on websites, emphasizing that these cookies are primary tools of cyber surveillance.
Rossa’s TECHNOFEM performance was inspired by ULTRAFUTURO’s 2004 manifesto. In the first part of the performance, she stood on a stepladder and delivered the manifesto herself. In the second part, the manifesto was recited by an AI-generated voice, accompanied by AI-generated video visuals depicting relationships between humans and machines. These scenes portrayed machines as humanoid robots with unsettling, diabolical features that initially appeared frightening and repulsive because of their “nonhuman” nature. However, throughout the manifesto, ULTRAFUTURO clearly articulated its ethical stance, best described as “total liberation”, aiming to challenge and dismantle all forms of oppression – not just human oppression, but also oppression directed towards machines. Thus, the manifesto evolved into an ethical declaration by the collective, emphasizing the intersection between human identity categories such as gender and technology. In these intersections, binary divides – such as male-female, heterosexual-homosexual, and human-machine – inevitably transform into hierarchies. Within these hierarchies, one side presents itself as normative while the other is marked as deviant, thereby subjected to subordination and oppression. By dismantling each binary, the initially frightening depiction of seemingly demonic and inhuman machines revealed the actual violence inflicted by humans onto machines, reversing the commonly presumed dynamic. This portrayal starkly contrasts with the other TECHNOFEM performances which examine the negative or dangerous aspects of technology – especially AI’s role in surveillance (emphasized by Baeva) or the exploitation of labor and data (addressed by Jordanova).
At first glance, ULTRAFUTURO’s perspective might appear to rehabilitate the very technologies that cyberfeminists have traditionally criticized. However, such a conclusion emerges only if one overlooks the distinctions between Western and Eastern models of technological and cyberfeminist development described earlier. In the Western model, as compellingly demonstrated by Jordanova’s performance, technology is intrinsically linked to the façade of neo-colonial, racial, heteronormative capitalism, where profit is prioritized above social and ethical considerations – issues that only started receiving significant public attention over the past decade, largely thanks to cyberfeminist writings by authors like Simone Browne, Safiya Umoja Noble, and Ruha Benjamin.[45] In contrast, Rossa and ULTRAFUTURO view technology as therapeutic – a kind of “techno-placebo”, described as a “method, magic, or even ritual, rather than just technical innovation”, as explained by Rossa and ULTRAFUTURO co-founder Oleg Mavromatti in their 2021 “Manifesto of Happiness.” This manifesto was published by the Open Arts Foundation as part of the multidisciplinary visual arts situation “Future Unforgettable”, curated by Vesselina Sarieva.[46] According to the manifesto, the purpose of technology is to “rewrite the sinister plot” of reality and offer an alternative to injustice by acting as a vehicle for happiness.[47] Here, happiness isn’t understood as naive self-indulgence but as a deliberate process with distinct political significance – the ongoing fight against all forms of oppression, hierarchies, and inequality. A key inspiration for this manifesto, as Rossa herself notes, is the work of artist and illustrator Tekla Aleksieva, who also appears at the start of this article. Rossa fondly recalls her childhood memories when her parents collected the “Galaktika Library” series and comforted her with children’s books illustrated by Aleksieva whenever she was ill in bed.[48] Precisely because TECHNOFEM integrates these fundamentally different perspectives, it is a unique project – one that would be challenging, if not impossible, to realize in the West. Thus, TECHNOFEM introduces a distinctive discourse that, as noted by Irina Aristarkhova in her contribution to the Cyberfeminism Index, demands further exploration within a transnational context.[49]
When we say that TECHNOFEM unites three different generations, we do not simply (or even primarily) refer to age differences. Instead, we emphasize the artists’ lived experiences of profound changes across entire political, economic, philosophical, and technological systems – from state socialism through the transition to Western capitalism, including Jordanova’s experiences abroad in the Netherlands and Rossa’s in the United States. Within this context, the artists’ perspectives presented at TECHNOFEM are far from contradictory and cannot be neatly categorized into binaries like techno-pessimism versus techno-optimism, as the technologies and systems being critiqued significantly differ. The event clearly illustrates philosophical and moral distinctions between the various contexts in which technology develops, extensively discussed by Marina Gržinić and Alla Mitrofanova. Here, it is worth recalling Rossa’s observations on cyberfeminism, in which she notes that the history of emancipation in Bulgaria is inadequately studied locally and practically unknown in the West (Rossa, 2008). Unlike institutionalized feminism, which typically serves privileged white women’s interests, Eastern European women’s struggles – when traced to their roots – represent the fight of working women and extend beyond the male-female binary, striving toward equalizing or even dissolving traditional gender roles. TECHNOFEM represents a crucial step in both examining and continuing this political and cultural legacy.
Slava Doytcheva and Kiril Prodanov
“Bus Stop” – part of the exhibition "Silver Years, Bliss and Cheers", 2024.
Photography
Details
- Copyright: Material provided by Slava Doytcheva (slava.doytcheva@gmail.com)
It is also essential to highlight the increasing use of AI in recent years as a collaborative tool in artistic projects aiming to create utopias. One notable example is director and visual artist Slava Doytcheva’s exhibition “Silver Years, Bliss and Cheers”, staged at Doza Gallery at the end of 2024. In this exhibition, Doytcheva presented photographs created in collaboration with Kiril Prodanov, depicting older queer individuals, including queer couples, engaged in ordinary, everyday activities – such as riding public transportation or enjoying vacations. This exhibition can be considered a form of cyberfeminist art because, as Doytcheva explains, the portrayed scenes are not actual snapshots of real life; rather, they were staged by actors under her direction and digitally aged using artificial intelligence. Doytcheva acknowledges the ethical dilemmas surrounding AI but underscores the importance of visualizing aspirations for peaceful, happy queer elderhood in Bulgaria. This artistic act brings us closer to realizing such aspirations, particularly significant given recent oppressive anti-LGBTQIA+ legislation enacted by the Bulgarian government, which fosters hatred against queer and trans individuals both locally and internationally.[50]
In conclusion, as elsewhere, there is no single definition of cyberfeminism in Bulgaria, which makes it more accurate to speak of multiple cyberfeminisms. This evolution reflects the diversity of feminist technological paradigms, broadly categorized into two approaches: one that sees technology primarily as a means of alienation and exploitation within a capitalist framework, and another that views technology as an emancipatory force capable of liberating humanity from labor and physical constraints. As demonstrated by TECHNOFEM, this dualism is evident in Bulgarian cyberfeminist artists’ work. Some, like Rossa and ULTRAFUTURO, regard robots as symbols of liberation from binaries and hierarchies, viewing technology as an ally in art’s pursuit of peace and equality. Others, particularly in the early stages of artists like Iliyana Nedkova and Dimitrina Sevova, saw potential in cyber technologies, especially in establishing a women-oriented online society. Cyberknitting and the blind dating technologies that marked this early phase of cyberfeminist art differed from ULTRAFUTURO’s approach by not explicitly politicizing gender binaries or heteronormativity. A newer generation of women cyber visual artists, including Natalia Jordanova and Albena Baeva, explicitly foreground these issues, aligning more closely with Western cyberfeminism’s epistemological tradition influenced by Sadie Plant and VNS Matrix. For artists like Slava Doytcheva, cyber methods such as AI primarily serve as tools enabling artists to critically reflect upon specific contemporary issues. Consequently, defining any identity-related art movement remains open-ended. Regarding the “cyber” aspect: is simply using technology sufficient, or must technology actively function as a creative force and ultimate goal in the artistic process? Regarding “feminism”: is the artist identifying as a woman enough, or must a critical analysis of gender and sexuality be fundamental to that identity? Each artist discussed here interprets these criteria in her unique way. Nevertheless, projects such as TECHNOFEM aim to consolidate the progress achieved thus far and lay the groundwork for a cohesive yet diverse cyberfeminist community that seeks not to flatten differences but rather to celebrate them.
The publication is realised with the support of the "Singer-Zahariev" foundation.
[1] Stange, M. Z., Oyster, C. K., & Sloan, J. E. (2013). Cyberfeminism. In The Multimedia Encyclopedia of Women in Today's World (2 ed., Vol. 4, pp. 430-433). SAGE Publications, Inc., https://doi.org/10.4135/9781452270388 ↩
[2] Mary Flanagan and Suyin Looui. Rethinking the F Word: A Review of Activist Art on the Internet. In NWSA Journal, Spring, 2007, Vol. 19, No. 1, Feminist Activist Art (Spring, 2007), pp. 181-200↩
[3] Mindy Seu (2022). Cyberfeminism Index. https://cyberfeminismindex.com/about/↩
[4] Ibid.↩
[5] Ibid.↩
[6] An example of this are magazines such as Kosmos, which enjoyed significant success and continues to exist today, as well as Nauka i Tekhnika (Science and Technology), among others.↩
[7] Milena Kirova, “Between Tradition and Emancipation: Bulgarian Women Writers from 1944 to 1989”. https://liternet.bg/publish2/mkirova/zhenite-i-kanonyt/mezhdu.htm#29a↩
[8] Vladimir Trendafilov, “Women in Socialist Science Fiction” (Trendafilov 2013: 319-349)↩
[9] Haraway, Donna J. 1985. „A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism for the 1980s.” Socialist Review, 15(2): 65–107↩
[10] YACHT:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8cavxA10Gc&pp=ygUqaSB0aG91Z2h0IHRoZSBmdXR1cmUgd291bGQgYmUgY29vbGVyIHlhY2h0↩
[12] Plant, Sadie. Zeros and Ones: Digital Women and the New Technoculture. Fourth Estate, 1997; Hicks, Mar. Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge in Computing. MA: MIT Press, 2017, and Shetterly, Margot Lee. Hidden Figures. HarperCollins, 2018↩
[13] https://antistaticfestival.org/project/ada-lovelace/↩
[14] https://president.yale.edu/biography-grace-murray-hopper↩
[15] https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/christine-m-darden/↩
[16] https://www.sparkfun.com/news/6411↩
[17] https://www.shadowdance.info/800Broeve/Br50/profil/octavia_butler.html↩
[18] Boryana Rossa, in her artist statement for the series “TECHNOFEM: Cyberfeminism in Bulgaria” (2024)↩
[19] This topic has been studied extensively by cyber theorist Evgeny Morozov, a graduate of the American University in Blagoevgrad: https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii116/articles/evgeny-morozov-digital-socialism↩
[20] https://aeon.co/essays/how-communist-bulgaria-became-a-leader-in-tech-and-sci-fi↩
[21] https://bnr.bg/hristobotev/post/100679730/doc-d-r-tana-ivanova-iskam-da-dojivea-kosmicheskata-misia-do-mars↩
[22] Marina Gržinić, „Media and Body Politics”, n.paradoxa, International feminist art journal volume 2, July 1998 (Women and New Media), pp.23-31 , p. 27, https://www.ktpress.co.uk/nparadoxa-volume-details.asp?volumeid=2↩
[23] https://monoskop.org/Cyberfeminism_in_the_East_and_in_the_West↩
[24] Boryana Rossa, in her artist statement for the series “TECHNOFEM: Cyberfeminism in Bulgaria” (2024)↩
[25] Alla Mitrofanova: “Cyberfeminism emerged from the techno-culture of the 1990s as a derivative of cyberpunk. At that time, in the early ‘90s, the Australian art group VNS Matrix was popular in some limited circles. They released a CD-ROM game featuring a militant vagina that destroyed various macho characters. They also maintained communication through networks (I no longer recall whether through the internet or otherwise) with Subcomandante Marcos, effectively serving as his mouthpiece outside Mexico. These young women identified themselves as cyberfeminists because they were engaged in network activism.”
Irina Aktuganova: “Later, in 1996, we managed to invite one member of VNS Matrix, Francesca da Rimini, to St. Petersburg, where we organized a meeting for her with young people at the ‘Port’ club. During our personal interaction, we discovered certain ideological differences between us. We weren’t exactly feminists like the Australians. In fact, we differed fundamentally from Western feminists. Our European friends had experienced the rigid discipline of Catholic schools and patriarchal family structures. Their mothers were housewives. Our Western friends didn’t have children. Their feminism—I wouldn’t say it was ‘hard-earned,’ but it contained a great deal of painful protest. Our feminism was different—gifted to us by the Bolsheviks and thus undervalued in post-Soviet society. Yet, we remembered the legacy of Alexandra Kollontai and the gender policies from the first years of Soviet power, along with our educated and socially active mothers and grandmothers. Moreover, unlike our Western feminist friends, we had beloved children constantly underfoot, accompanying us to feminist gatherings. We also had husbands with whom we maintained creative relationships. We existed in a fullness where nothing contradicted anything else. We were in our early thirties, and we did whatever we pleased. Due to the large number of children among us, even a term like ‘cybermaterism’ emerged. Motherhood for us was viewed not through the lens of gender, but rather psychedelically—as an extreme expansion of bodily experience: projects such as ‘Pythia’ by the ‘Factory of Found Clothes’ (a multimedia exploration of pregnancy), ‘Tantragram’ by Bettina Meyer (bodily symbiosis of child and mother), ‘Twins TV’ by Kostya Mitenev (the world through children’s eyes), and ‘Tachanka’ by Andrey Khlobystin (technologies for coexistence and mobility with children).” https://daily.afisha.ru/archive/vozduh/art/kiberfeminizm-v-rossii-ot-tehno-do-payalnika/↩
[26] Alla Mitrofanova, “Cyberfeminism in History, Practice, and Theory”: ““The technoculture in St. Petersburg developed with a gender-balanced approach, not without the influence of ideas that later became known as cyberfeminism.” https://www.academia.edu/36830076/ZEN2_ALLA_pdf↩
[27] https://therecursive.com/how-come-bulgaria-and-romania-lead-women-in-tech-rankings/↩
[28] Boryana Rossa, “Bio(art) and Cyber(feminism)”, Kultura, Issue 33 (2737), October 5, 2007. https://newspaper.kultura.bg/bg/article/view/13351↩
[29] Konior, Bogna. „Post-Soviet Cyberfeminism: On Cybernetic Governance / Lecture by Bogna Konior.” YouTube, 1 Dec. 2019, www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DWoEZtKigg&pp=ygUMYm9nbmEga29uaW9y. Accessed 22 July 2024↩
[30] https://therecursive.com/how-come-bulgaria-and-romania-lead-women-in-tech-rankings/↩
[31] https://openartfiles.bg/bg/topics/3424-net-art-in-bulgaria-the-first-decade↩
[32] https://www.ktpress.co.uk/pdf/nparadoxaissue5_katy-deepwell_12-16.pdf↩
[33] https://openartfiles.bg/bg/topics/3424-net-art-in-bulgaria-the-first-decade↩
[34] https://boryanarossa.com/ultrafuturo-manifesto-2/↩
[35] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1609/aimag.v27i3.1902↩
[36] Boryana Rossa, in her artist statement for the series “TECHNOFEM: Cyberfeminism in Bulgaria” (2024)↩
[37] https://radar.squat.net/de/event/berlin/stressfaktor/2024-08-09/20-years-ultrafuturo-manifesto↩
[38] https://openartfiles.bg/bg/spaces/3904-gallery-gallery↩
[39] https://albenabaeva.com/2018/the-sheep-the-snake-the-bitch-and-their-pig/↩
[40] https://albenabaeva.com/2019/autoportrait/↩
[41] https://www.nataliajordanova.com/projects/museum-of-non-human-ethics-after-the-fifth-law.html↩
[42] https://openartfiles.bg/en/files/download/2894/230615-113104_artnewscafe-bulletin-0623.pdf↩
[43] https://toplocentrala.bg/program/visual/technofem-cyberfeminism-in-bulgaria↩
[44] https://artviewer.org/screen-naive-enough-to-have-concerns-about-ones-own-happiness-when-others-have-no-seals-to-pet-by-natalia-jordanova/↩
[45] Browne, Simone. Dark matters: On the surveillance of blackness. Duke University Press, 2015; Noble, Safiya Umoja. „Algorithms of oppression: How search engines reinforce racism.” Algorithms of oppression. New York university press, 2018, and Benjamin, Ruha. Race after Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code. Cambridge and Medford: Polity Press, 2019↩
[46] https://futureunforgettable.com/phase-6/?lang=en↩
[47] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDgo-xiRnrk&ab_channel=TheOpenarts↩
[48] Ibid.↩
[49] Aristarkhova, Irina. „Where is Socialism in Cyberfeminism? On Eastern European Cyberfeminisms.” in Cyberfeminism Index. Edited by Mindy Seu (Los Angeles: Inventory Press:) 2022↩