The WisCon vid party (wiscon_vidparty) was on Friday. I premiered this vid––from the 1983 film Born in Flames, which I encourage you all to see, but it should be quite watchable as a vid about the feminist revolution if you don't know the source.


Black Steel
Music: Black Steel by Tricky (original song by Public Enemy; vocals by Martina Topley-Bird)
Video: Born in Flames (dir. Lizzie Borden, 1983)
Edited by Lila Futuransky
Beta: cyborganize and metatxt. Thanks to were_duck and chaila
Content notes: Physical: Flickering images and rapid intercutting throughout. Content: institutional violence; brief depiction of sexual violence and dead body.

"The right to violence is like the right to pee. You've got to have the right place and the right time." Revolutionary becoming in a past speculative future: a transformative homage to Lizzie Borden's 1983 film Born in Flames.

( Download, lyrics and streaming links )

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I leave at 9am tomorrow for WisCon! I'm quite excited. I will be in Madison from tomorrow evening until Monday afternoon, after which I am flying to Pittsburgh to look for an apartment.

I'm doing many, many panels this year, I'm co-running the vid party, and the volume of WisCon Chronicles that I edited is coming out. So I may be a little overwhelmed––but I love meeting new people at WisCon, and I will be very happy to talk about vidding, the Chronicles, academia, or anything else as long as I'm not desperately trying to get somewhere or finish something. I'm also beginning the process of moving from Los Angeles to Pittsburgh, so I'd love to meet up with anyone who can hook me up with feminist/social justice fan people in western Pennsylvania.

These are my many panels:

Fri, 4:00–5:15 pm Caucus
"I pulled myself up by my bootstraps and all I got was this chip on my shoulder": Uplift, Downsizing, and Other Changes of Class
Moderator: me. Participants: me, Julie Hayes, Kiini Salaam, Fred Schepartz, Vanessa Vega
In the US, everyone is expected to want to move up in class—but if we do, we are likely to find that we can't leave our former experiences behind and we might not want to. Similarly, many formerly well-off people have slipped down the class ladder in the economic downturn, but may not realize the kinds of privilege they maintain or the kinds of survival knowledge they lack. In this panel, we'll talk about the challenges we've experienced in changing class in any direction, and work to build narratives that fit our lives better than the standard ones.


Fri, 8:45 pm–Sat, 3:00 am Room 629
Vid Party
Organizers: me, Sandy Sasha_feather, Gretchen T.
Fan vids are fan made videos with something to say. Come join us for WisCon's third vid party! There will be some subtitled vids for a sing-along section.
[I am also premiering a new vid here!]

Sat, 10:00–11:15 am Wisconsin
Imagining Radical Democracy
Moderator: me. Participants me, Timmi Duchamp, Andrea D. Hairston, Liz Henry
The General Assembly has become a familiar practice since the growth of Occupy Wall Street. Anarchistic and radically democratic organizing processes have a much longer history, though, including the Zapatistas, the Spanish student movement, and movements in the history of feminism. For WisCon members, a familiar feeling might have bubbled up in watching, reading about, or participating in Occupy: wasn't this a bit like what they did on Le Guin's Anarres, or in DuChamp's Free Zones? This panel will discuss the possible growth of a kind of democracy other than our current party-based political systems, using the ways it has been prefigured and imagined in feminist science fiction to help make sense of radical histories and futures.

Sat, 2:30–3:45 pm Conference 4
Vid Party Conversation
Moderator: me. Participants: me, Evelyn Browne, Sandy Sasha_feather, Gretchen T, and the unofficially added Chaila.
We'll discuss some of the vids shown at the vid party, and vidding in general.

Sat, 9:00–10:15 pm Assembly
Untangling Class
Moderator: Jess Adams. Participants: Jess Adams, BC Holmes, me, Chris Wrdnrd
What do we mean when we talk about class? Is it about how much money we have? How much education? How we grew up? Our position with respect to a global capitalist world system? There have been a lot of WisCon panels in the past focused on speculative fiction that "does class well"—but how can we know whether something's being done well if we don't even know what it is? This panel brings together WisCongoers with expertise and experience in talking about class to hammer out (if not actually decide upon) some definitions.

Sun, 4:00–5:15 pm Conference 2
Aqueduct Press Reading I (scheduled)
Eleanor A. Arnason, Carolyn Ives Gilman, Liz Henry, me, Kiini Salaam
(I will be reading from/talking about WisCon Chronicles...)

Mon, 10:00–11:15 am Conference 3
Feminism, SF and Fandom in the Academy: An Open Mentoring Session
Organizer: me. Participants: whoever shows up!
This session is a space to share experiences and offer advice and support, for academics and aspiring academics at all levels. Are you interested in beginning graduate study in intersectional feminism, science fiction, fandom, digital culture, writing, or any other WisCon-related concerns? Are you mid-PhD and trying to figure out how to finish your dissertation? Suffering the pains of the academic job market? Balancing the demands of teaching and research as a TA, lecturer or professor? Facing the impact of budget cuts? Let's share our experiences, learn from one another, and perhaps even use our shared commitment to WisCon's principles to build a network of cross-generational support for scholarship and teaching inside and outside academic institutions.

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Back in the dim and distant past time known as January 2012, some of you may remember that there was a vid exchange called Festivids. And lo, I participated in it and I made a Rocky Horror Show vid for blithesea, and I had two lovely and amazing vids made for me.

I kept meaning to finally upload my signed vid, but I couldn't get it to come out in .avi format looking decent, and my RL was rather extremely hectic. But I have finally, finally got around it it!

***

Dandy in the Underworld
Music: T-Rex
Video: The Rocky Horror Picture Show
Edited by Lila Futuransky
Beta: cyborganize, metatxt, were_duck and I think chaila and beccatoria looked at it as well, but it's been a while.

Frank's a dandy in the underworld. And 70s queer poly perversion is awesome.

( download and streaming here )

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Also known as the year I signed up for everything....

( schedule )

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That I just submitted. Thanks to wrdnrd, raanve, and bcholmes for brainstorming on class panels! :)

( class and radical democracy )

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Festivids just went live, and I was incredibly excited to discover I have TWO, count 'em TWO, vids made just for me!

They are both for the same prompt and fandom, Misfits, which I requested having only watched the first season but feeling confident I was about to get through the rest of it. Of course then the busiest period of my life ever hit, and I have hardly watched any TV for months... And these vids are both spoiler-tastic. I did not care at all, because I rarely mind spoilers anyway, and VIDS. This has given me the motivation to watch so that I can appreciate the greatness of these vids EVEN MORE than I already did.

Anyway, here they are:
Dear Prudence uses a Siouxsie and the Banshees cover of the Beatles song to mix up the joy and fear that come together in Alisha's portrayal. Siouxsie's transformation of the upbeat Beatles song into a more downbeat and darker feel fits really well; we notice the sweetness of the lyrics when they play over Alisha's joyful moments, and they feel like threatening demands when Alisha is in danger.

The Fear uses Lily Allen to similarly fantastic effect. The line "I am a weapon of massive consumption" sums up how this song choice is perfect for positioning Alisha in a larger world of sexuality-as-commodity, how she occupies that space and makes it her own despite her marginal position and despite the way that her power takes her control over how her body interacts with others away from her.

I find the vids incredibly complementary, and a great pair of examples for how even exploring similar issues with similar footage doesn't make two vids at all the same. I made this request because I wasn't quite sure what to make of the character of Alisha, of the way she moves through the world and her power and of the way both play in to a large extent to certain race/gender stereotypes––even though I was also very drawn to her femme swagger, her not-giving-a-shit attitude, and, um, her extreme hotness. Both these vids, individually and especially together, do what character studies do best: they offer me a lens through which to see Alisha in all her complexities, in her full context. I understand her better now, and as I go to watch the rest of the show, I'm going to be doing so through the frame that these vids offered. And I know I will be watching both these vids many times more, because I know they are going to reward it.

I'm off to watch a few more vids now... I have a ton of work to do, but I just can't resist. :)

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Dear Festividder,

I was supposed to go back and enter optional details, but I forgot, so I hope you find this!
( Read more... )

Confused? This is Festivids!

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I've been making this vid for two years, mainly because RL kept getting in the way. The WisCon premieres deadline finally gave me the push I needed to finish it. It's a very sad vid, but I hope you enjoy it.

Metal Heart
Music: Cat Power, Metal Heart
Video: Battlestar: Galactica
Edited by Lila Futuransky
Beta: cyborganize, metatxt, were_duck
Premiered at WisCon 2011

Summary: A flawed model. You're not worth a thing.
A study of Cylon Model Eight.
( download, streaming, lyrics )

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This is a liveblog typed with extreme rapidity and only read over very quickly for the worst typoes––please comment if you have any additions or corrections!

Panel description:
Since winning the 2009 Tiptree Award for the first two volumes of Ooku: The Inner Chambers, Fumi Yoshinaga's series has continued on through volume 5 and forges further into the alternate history in which a terrible plague affecting only men utterly changes medieval Japanese culture. Beautifully drawn, the story is a feast for science fiction readers whose sense of wonder is sparked equally by the gender themes, alternate history speculation, and the we're-not-in-Kansas-anymore vision of historical Japan. Yoshinaga's view of gender and power isn't a simple matter of women taking charge from men. What characteristics does Yoshinaga clearly think are gender-specific, no matter which gender is in power? What changes in this alternate history with the transfer of power?
M: Andrea Horbinski. Mely (coffeeandink), Cynthia Gonsalves, Margaret McBride, Gregory G. H. Rihn

( notes )

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I'm liveblogging this panel at WisCon; will come back later to clean up, I hope.
( Read more... )

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