Feminist science fiction art

Feminist science fiction is a category most frequently associated with literature, film, and television. This chapter challenges these associations, theorizing SF art as a space for queer / trans / feminist resistance. Specifically, SF artworks by Sophia Al-Maria, Sin Wai Kin, Tai Shani, and Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley are read as feminist theory––a method drawn from speculative and repro-utopian feminisms––which seeks to locate theoretical knowledge both within and beyond academic writing. Subsequently feminist SF artworks are contextualised within wider feminist and/or science fiction traditions, communities, and discourses. Feminist SF art is framed then not as a genre populated by individual auteurs, but as a community of artists engaged in co-authorship. This chapter focusses specifically on artists working with collaborative worldbuilding, a range of artistic strategies which further embed co-authorship and recursivity into SF art production

Vagina Dentata Zine, Issue 002

We’re back, and we demand utopia! It’s been two years since Issue 001, but it feels like a lifetime. In that pre-Trump, pre-Brexit landscape, Science Fiction was being whimsically adopted on every runway. Whilst the genre remains as culturally relevant as ever, the way creatives are adopting SF has significantly changed. Issue 002 utilises fantasy as a medium for defying oppressive politics. For some this is confrontational, for others escapist; whether explicit or subtle this collection demands change. (210mm x 210mm, 40 pages - staple bound) *Best viewed through tiny matrix sunglasses. Featuring collaborations with Dana Trippe, Aoi Itoh, Pol Kurucz, Natalie Baxter, Munachi Osegbu, LUPAE, Noémi Szabo, John Yuyi and Daisy Collingridge. “Somehow, this issue is even more bonkers than the last one...an explosion of colour with nods to aliens, Harajuku and the United Nations. Yes, all in one magazine…” – It’s Nice Tha

Vagina Dentata Zine, Issue 001

Vagina Dentata Zine is a visual exploration of Science Fiction and Fashion’s relationship. The zine provides a space for women, LGBTQIA+, POC and non-binary creatives to design the futures they want to see, utilising “fictioning” as a political tool. With a square format (210mm x 210mm, 40 pages - staple bound), and rejection of ‘fashion stories’, it provides a clashing visual journey emulating the way in which we consume and curate imagery through mediums like Instagram. Issue 001 features collaborations with Marina Fini, Jeleza Rose, Andrey Onufrienko, Anna Fearon, Hannah Grunden, Rosie Williams, Olin Brannigan, Bex Isley, Anna Milada, Aleksandra Klicka, and Alice Dear” “Out of this world…it’s the little touches that build this into a cohesive and unique publication” – It’s Nice That “It’s pretty much the most perfect title of any zine that dedicates itself to sci-fi and female fantasies…their Instagram feed is a must-see mood board of things they’ve cherry picked from around the interweb, feat. cyborgs, glitter and Sailor Moon” – Dazed Digita

Collective close reading: queer SF and the methodology of the many

Beyond Gender Research Collective are a group of researchers, activists and practitioners brought together by a shared commitment to imagining the world differently through collaborative explorations of queer, trans, and feminist science fiction. As Beyond Gender we understand ourselves as an example of what Jasbir K. Puar describes as a queer assemblage; we form, and are formed by, a practice we have developed called "collective close reading" (CCR). We begin this chapter by outlining CCR as a practice of utopian worlding: CCR is our method for reading and enacting science fiction, through which we exercise our capacity for imagining, dreaming, and building together. We apply this methodology to Ursula K. Le Guin’s "The Shobies' Story" (1990), particularly focussing on the ways in which Le Guin's narrative gestates new modes of art and of kinship, based on celebration of communal activity and politics of affinity. We conclude by connecting this reading of and through Le Guin's tale to our collective practices of performing science fictionality and of empathetic friendship. In doing so, we demonstrate how––like Le Guin’s Shobies––Beyond Gender's dedication to communal play and care allows us to insist upon expansive, heteroglossic, and generative possibilities in our collective futures

Drowning in the cloud: water, the digital and the queer potential of feminist science fiction

Water is frequently associated with a naturalized, trans-exclusionary understanding of womanhood. In this chapter we challenge this association. Focusing on the cyborgs of feminist SF and the waters in which they swim, gestate, and struggle, we theorize water as a technology that plays a crucial role in the self-consciously unnatural politics of queer resistance. In order to navigate these turbulent waters we have deployed the methodology we call Collective Close Reading—a practice of nonhierarchical knowledge production founded on a complex web of interdependence. In this way we seek to model the watery, cyborg collectivity depicted in the strange worlds of feminist sf. We swim together, beyond, against, and into gender

Collective close reading: queer SF and the methodology of the many

Beyond Gender Research Collective are a group of researchers, activists and practitioners brought together by a shared commitment to imagining the world differently through collaborative explorations of queer, trans, and feminist science fiction. As Beyond Gender we understand ourselves as an example of what Jasbir K. Puar describes as a queer assemblage; we form, and are formed by, a practice we have developed called "collective close reading" (CCR). We begin this chapter by outlining CCR as a practice of utopian worlding: CCR is our method for reading and enacting science fiction, through which we exercise our capacity for imagining, dreaming, and building together. We apply this methodology to Ursula K. Le Guin’s "The Shobies' Story" (1990), particularly focussing on the ways in which Le Guin's narrative gestates new modes of art and of kinship, based on celebration of communal activity and politics of affinity. We conclude by connecting this reading of and through Le Guin's tale to our collective practices of performing science fictionality and of empathetic friendship. In doing so, we demonstrate how––like Le Guin’s Shobies––Beyond Gender's dedication to communal play and care allows us to insist upon expansive, heteroglossic, and generative possibilities in our collective futures

Drowning in the cloud: water, the digital and the queer potential of feminist science fiction

Water is frequently associated with a naturalized, trans-exclusionary understanding of womanhood. In this chapter we challenge this association. Focusing on the cyborgs of feminist SF and the waters in which they swim, gestate, and struggle, we theorize water as a technology that plays a crucial role in the self-consciously unnatural politics of queer resistance. In order to navigate these turbulent waters we have deployed the methodology we call Collective Close Reading—a practice of nonhierarchical knowledge production founded on a complex web of interdependence. In this way we seek to model the watery, cyborg collectivity depicted in the strange worlds of feminist sf. We swim together, beyond, against, and into gender