Cyberwitches and Feminist Internet is a seminar series designed to place feminist theory in close dialogue with technology, cyberspace, and the political formations that shape social media and its aesthetic universes. Approaching feminism as plurality and spatiality, we will discuss what a feminist approach to internet theory entails. How can we engage with topics related to artificial intelligence, UX design, cybernetics, and the digitalization of consumption through gender and sexuality studies?

Focusing on the figure of the cyberwitch, we will discuss gender as a technology and an essential component of capitalist history—and, therefore, our platform-capitalist present. Much like the internet itself, internet theory is an evolving and largely undefined field. It relates to questions of what forms and forges the digital world—from heat, water, and sand to cables running through the ocean. It also refers to the impact of new technologies on global politics, democracy, and social relations. Digital platforms and the softwares that drive them shape not only how we live together, but the vocabularies and aesthetics behind how we imagine what it means to live together.

The purpose of this course is to think about the internet and new media through queer and feminist approaches to digital culture. We will collectively explore new vocabularies for cyber-theory, platform studies, and the dissolution of binaries between hardware/software, artificial/real, and simulated/organic.

Addressing Afrofuturist, cyber, xeno, glitch, and uncategorized feminism(s)—with guests from the wide web of intersectional feminist activism and technology studies—we will consider feminist approaches to artistic practices, both online and offline.

What does it mean to become cyberwitches in digital landscapes shaped by capitalist forms of production? How can cyberwitch networks shape open-source commons? Finally, how can queer feminism(s) help us imagine new forms of the digital?

Session I 28 / 04 / 2025 #tradwife: Gendered New Media and Its Discontents with Carmen Lael Hines This session will critically examine the rise of gendered normativity online, epitomized by digital movements such as #tradwife, incel culture, and the wojak meme. With the expansion of Big Tech, the internet has increasingly become a space for the hyper-circulation of content, shaping users towards endless consumption and production of data. Through feminist and queer theory, we will explore the hyper-masculinization and commodification of digital life, collectively considering what feminist internet(s) could look like and mean.

Session II 05 / 05 / 2025 Holistic Healing in Digital Spaces with Morgane Billuart Taking the publication Cycles, The Sacred and the Doomed as a starting point for reflecting on female health and technology, this session will examine the resurgence of ancestral knowledge and healing practices in digital spaces. From Facebook groups to Reddit forums, online communities have become crucial sites for exchanging resources, advice, and alternative approaches to health. This session will explore how digital gatherings enable collective care and reclaim embodied knowledge while addressing the constraints of sharing such wisdom within platforms shaped by capitalism. How do algorithmic structures influence what knowledge circulates? What tensions arise when holistic healing meets the logics of digital consumption? Through a feminist lens, we will discuss the potential and limitations of cyberwitch networks in resisting the commodification of health and fostering radical healing online.

Session III 12 / 05 / 2025 Posthumanist Erotics: Feminist Approaches to Cyber-Sexuality with Carmen Lael Hines This session will explore various feminist approaches to cybersexuality. Examining topics such as AI-generated pornography, erotic chatbots, virtual girlfriends, and dating apps, we will consider the ongoing capitalization of sexuality in a libidinal economy driven by embodied relations and fractured socialities. However, through posthumanist, feminist, and queer theories, we will also discuss how the liquidities of cybersexuality may offer new intersubjective potentials, challenging heteronormative, human-centric perspectives on erotics.

Session IV 19 / 05 / 2025 Erotic Bureaucracies: Power, Consent, and the Poetics of Bureaucracy with Cy X What does it mean to enter an agreement—voluntarily or under coercion? How do contracts shape our erotic, artistic, and digital selves? How do we negotiate autonomy when every interaction—sexual, social, and digital—is mediated through bureaucratic control? What are the risks of engaging in self-making (autopoiesis) within these structures?

In this session, we will analyze the Contract as a formalized ritual within BDSM, using it to explore power dynamics and the erotic dimensions of legal and digital agreements. We will also examine how this methodology applies to questions of data, surveillance, and coercion, interrogating the intersection of bureaucracy, consent, and digital infrastructures.

Session V 26 / 05 / 2025 Alien Feminisms with Luciana Parisi This session will map a trajectory of alien feminisms that have radically defied what Sylvia Wynter calls the cosmogony of Man, alongside the onto-epistemologies of Man1 and Man2. With this premise, we will reflect on how the emerging form of Man3 (the techno-phallus) is already being counter-coded by glitch feminisms, xeno-feminisms, and quantum-feminisms—movements that refuse to bind technology to patriarchal and colonial projects.

Session VI 02 / 06 / 2025 Crossings: Avatars and the Thresholds of Identity with Andrew Mallinson / Feminist Internet Queer and trans people have long reshaped their identities as a means of assimilation and survival. Now, digital spaces create new thresholds for embodiment, where virtual bodies rendered in pixels and shaders offer strategies for resistance and self-determination. This talk and conversation will explore the parallels between historical acts of gender-crossing and the potential digital spaces hold for identity construction. How can the design of virtual bodies emancipate us from the limitations of the physical? What role can they play in resisting dominant narratives of gender and sexuality? Can we envision futures where virtual embodiment is not just an escape, but a radical act of self-authorship?

Carmen Lael Hines Carmen Lael Hines is a writer and curator interested in tech, bodies and the implications of their entanglements. Working at the interface of technology, gender/sexuality studies and the political economy, from 2020– 2024, she taught critical theory in the Department of Visual Culture at the Vienna University of Technology. Her recent work engages: AI generated pornography, home automation, femtech, sextech and digital contraception. At present, she holds a curatorial position at The Ryder Projects, Madrid. Her curatorial practice looks at ways of combining innovative approaches to exhibition design to themes from contemporary philosophy in architecturally unique spaces. Her next exhibition will take place in the oldest broadcasting center in Austria: THE FUNKHAUS, in collaboration with NEVER AT HOME. 

She has taught in the Department of Spatial Design (TU Wien), HEAD(Geneva) and the Institute for Contemporary Art (TU Graz) and has presented her research at institutions such as the University of Bologna, Academy of Arts Vienna, KTH Stockholm, Index Contemporary Art Foundation, and Floating University Berlin. She is co-editing the book:  Dissident Practices: Posthumanist Approaches to a Critique of Political Economy, to be published by Bloomsbury, and holds a BA  from the University of Oxford, and an MA from Goldsmiths College, University of London. 

Relevant articles and exhibitions include: All Surfaces Clean at all Times(Never at Home + Klima Biennale Wien), Bordering Plants(Exhibit Galerie), Platform Austria(Austrian Pavilion, Venice Architecture Biennale 2021, curatorial assistance), “The Between of Urban Financialization in New York”(Informal Marketplaces. Nai010 2023) and “The Aesthetics and Architectures of Femtech” (Data After Nature After Nature, Skoden, 2022).  

Morgane Billuart  Morgane Billuart (1997) is a filmmaker and writer based in Vienna and Paris. She graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam and studied at the Cooper Union in New York. In the era of digital practices and diy-internet belief, her practice aims to display diverse technological phenomena and dissect their inner structures. Often, she confronts these themes and interests with her gender and existence as a woman in the spaces she investigates and questions how feminist perspectives can help us rethink and criticize the technocratic and digital spheres surrounding us. To explore such topics, she uses diverse mediums, often returning to film-making and writing. Her most recent book: Cycles, Sacred and The Doomed was published by SET margins. She is currently developing another book about the geo-politics of the semiconductor industry. 

Cy X  Cy x is a cyberwitch and pleasure ceremonialist moved by tremendous desire and obsession with glory holes, queer archives, magic, and more-than-human collaborations. They study the way that erotics and space co-construct each other and utilize their findings to create ritualized encounters through writing, sound, video, and performance. Their work has been shown in the Center for Art Research and Alliances, Culture Hub, Nest (The Hague), Pioneer Works, Rewire Festival, The School For Poetic Computation, and other spaces, both digital and physical.

Feminist Internet / Andrew Mallinson Andrew Mallinson is an artist, researcher, and co-founder of Feminist Internet, a cross-disciplinary collective tackling technological inequalities through creative and critical practice. Feminist Internet has received international recognition for their contribution to Cyberfeminism. They have developed exhibitions, films, workshops, and events for organisations including HEAD, The Photographers Gallery, Goethe-Institut, UAL, Web Foundation, Mozilla, and IAM, among others. Andrew’s work, both individually and for the collective, looks to understand how bodies, particularly queer and trans bodies, intersect with technology and move politically and socially through space. Outside of Feminist Internet Andrew is Associate Lecturer at the Royal College of Art London 

Luciana Parisi Luciana Parisi is Reader in Cultural Theory, Chair of the PhD programme at the Centre for Cultural Studies, and co-director of the Digital Culture Unit, Goldsmiths University of London. Her research draws on continental philosophy to investigate  ontological and epistemological transformations driven by the function of technology in culture, aesthetics and politics. Her writing aims to develop a naturalistic approach to thinking and technology. She is interested in cybernetics, information theory and computation, complexity and evolutionary theories. Her writing addresses the technocapitalist investment in artificial intelligence, biotechnology, nanotechnology. She has written extensively within the field of Media Philosophy and Computational Design. In 2004, she published ‘Abstract Sex: Philosophy, Biotechnology and the Mutations of Desire’ (Continuum Press). In 2013, she published ‘Contagious Architecture. Computation, Aesthetics and Space’ (MIT Press). She is currently researching the history of automation and the philosophical consequences of logical thinking in machines. She holds a Ph.D (Philosophy) from the University of Warwick, Coventry, UK.

Are the sessions live or pre-recorded? All sessions are live, via a Zoom meeting. All sessions will be recorded, so you can access all materials in case you miss the online encounters.

Where will we be able to access course materials? All materials will be shared through an online folder, where you will be able to see the sessions, find the texts and readings, as well as other interesting materials related to each session.

How long will we have access to the recordings? The recordings will be uploaded after every session, and all materials will be accessible during the course and until two weeks after the end.

Will the bibliography be shared in advance? All references, bibliographies, links, and materials will be shared in advance to facilitate the reading and preparation time of the sessions.

Do I get any kind of certificate after the seminar? After the completion of the seminar, you will receive a non-official certificate as a proof of enrollment.

Do you offer any scholarships or special prices? We offer a 20% discount for students and IPS alumni (a document showing enrollment to any academic institution or university, or previous IPS seminars, will be demanded). We understand that the cost to attend might be a barrier to entry depending on where you’re living, or your personal situation. If you are interested in requesting aid please send us a request throughthis formand we will analyse your case.

Are the discounts accumulative? No, we do not offer accumulative discounts. What we do offer is a 20% discount in case of acquiring more than one product, being an alumni, or being a student.

For inquiries, please contact us at studies@instituteforpostnaturalstudies.org