‘FOCUS ON NATHALIE MAGNAN’

Nathalie Magnan (1956-2016) was recognized in the English-speaking world and in France as a remarkable media theoretician. Over the course of her career, she edited two anthologies of texts, published numerous articles, and created various websites. As a moving-image artist, she worked as a director for entities across a wide spectrum of the media landscape, making videos for various alternative media collectives as well as the French television giant, Canal +. A pioneer of cyberfeminism, she was one of its most prominent figures, working with Zelig, Faces, and Old Boys Network, and co-moderating the pioneering listserv nettime. Magnan introduced the work of scholar and theorist Donna Haraway to France, translating and publishing “The Cyborg Manifesto.” Spending 12 years in the U.S., where she completed her graduate studies and collaborated with, among others, the media collective Paper Tiger Television, she returned to France in 1990, where she would become a professor at the École Nationale Superieure d’Art in Bourges. A committed, generous, and rebellious teacher, she taught generations of young artists that art could be the practice of freedom.

The screenings will be followed by a debate between Peggy Pierrot and Cornelia Sollfrank (cyberfeminist artist), Malin Bjork (MEP), Marie Vermeiren (co-founder of Elles Tournent, filmmaker and specialist in female directors) and Virginie Jortay (director of the ESAC – Graduate School of Circus Arts – and director).