AMES, Iowa — The internet is not only a network of cables, servers and computers — it is an environment that shapes and is shaped by its inhabitants and their use. Designer and technologist Mindy Seu (she/they) will speak about society’s relationship to cyberspace in a virtual lecture hosted by the Iowa State University College of Design next month.

Seu’s presentation, “The Design and History of the Cyberfeminism Index,” will be from 5:30–6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 18, via Zoom. Register online in advance to access the Zoom link.

Seu is the authoring editor of Cyberfeminism Index, which encompasses three decades of online activism and net art and includes the perspectives of hackers, scholars, artists and activists of all regions, races and sexual orientations to consider how humans might reconstruct themselves by way of technology.

In this free talk — part of the College of Design’s 2023-2024 Lecture Series — Seu will highlight cyberfeminism’s long-ignored origins and expansive legacy through examples from the book’s more than 700 entries of radical techno-critical activism in a variety of media.

About the speaker

Seu is an assistant professor of art and design at Rutgers Mason Gross School of the Arts in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and a critic at Yale School of Art in New Haven, Connecticut.

She has lectured at the Barbican Centre and Central Saint Martins, both located in London; Columbia University in New York City; and for SSENSE and Google. She has been a resident at MacDowell in New York City; the Sitterwerk Foundation in Gallen, Switzerland; Pioneer Works in Brooklyn, New York; and Internet Archive.

Seu’s design commissions and consultations include projects for the Serpentine Gallery in London, the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal and the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her work has been featured in Frieze, Dazed, Gagosian Quarterly, Brooklyn Rail and i-D Magazine among many others. She was awarded a grant from the Graham Foundation in 2021 for her work on Cyberfeminism Index.

Her latest writing surveys feminist economies, historical precursors of the metaverse and the materiality of the internet.

Seu holds a master in design studies from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and a bachelor of arts in design media arts from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Contacts

Megen O’Toole, College of Design Lectures and Exhibitions Committee, motoole@iastate.edu
Saylor Upah, College of Design Events, upahsay@iastate.edu
Lauren Johnson, College of Design Strategic Communications, laujohn2@iastate.edu

-30-