On March 11th we announced the cancelling of the first FEMeeting Troy and FEMeeting Paris for reasons connected with the COVID-19 pandemic. The two events scheduled for March 20th-21st 2020 marked the start of FEMeeting communities, focusing on the support of research and artistic creation developed locally by individuals who identify as women. Instead, Spring ’20 brought the flourishing of FEMeeting WEB, dedicated to the presentation of digital, alternative forms of gathering and overall encouragement to collective personal exchange in times of physical lock-down. 

FEMeeting WEB 2020 is organized with Kathy High and Branda Miller, from Media Sanctuary’s NATURE Lab Initiative (North Troy Art, Technology, and Urban Research in Ecology), and Annick Bureaud, from Leonardo/Olats, together with FEMeeting co-founders Marta de Menezes and Dalila Honorato, with the support of Cultivamos Cultura.

FEMeeting’s main purpose is to disseminate projects that are being carried out by women in its broadest interpretation (individuals who identify themselves as women, cis-gender and non-cis-gender, gender-fluid, and independent of their sex and gender) in order to contribute (a) to the development of research methodologies in art and science and (b) to the development of collaboration strategies that can increase knowledge sharing and bring communities together.

FEMeeting WEB 2020 includes the “Acquired Immunity” video podcasts sent by the members of the FEMeeting community at large, the “All Women Crew Podcasts,” and the 2020 Space Art Science Workshop organized to celebrate women in art, astronautics and astronomy.  Artistic submissions were created in direct response to the COVID-19 crisis. 

FEMeeting WEB 2020 is organized with Kathy High and Branda Miller, from Media Sanctuary’s NATURE Lab Initiative (North Troy Art, Technology, and Urban Research in Ecology), and Annick Bureaud, from Leonardo/Olats, together with FEMeeting co-founders Marta de Menezes and Dalila Honorato, with the support of Cultivamos Cultura.

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FEMeeting Herstory:

Launched in 2017, the conference “FEMeeting: Women in Art, Science and Technology” was driven by the desire to develop and promote more direct collaboration between individuals who identify as women. The idea behind FEMeeting was orchestrated by the Portuguese artist Marta de Menezes and scholar Dalila Honorato, after realizing that women in the field of Art and Science have an unquestionable presence worldwide. FEMeeting acknowledges the social relevance of a core community and its role for the future. 

The two first FEMeetings took place in Portugal and were organized by Cultivamos Cultura. The outcomes of 2018 and 2019 conferences have been many and, though most are intangible, among the project’s distinguishable objectives there are: (a) a strong personal support through instant internet communication between women doing research work (in the broadest sense of the term) in art, science and technology (b) and the encouragement towards the formation of local nodes to support research and artistic creation developed to enable a wide network of direct communication among them and encourage trust. In recognition of the vital role of grassroots creative praxis in building our growing global network, FEMeeting announces its first community meetings taking place this Spring: FEMeeting: Troy 2020 and FEMeeting: Paris 2020.

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VOICES: All Women Crew

Celebrating Women in Art, Astronautics and Astronomy

For the “All Women Crew” 2020 workshop, we have created, like last year, a deck of cards. The workshop having been cancelled we have asked each of the participant to “play” remotely. Each participant has been asked to answer the same first question “what has attracted you to space” and then two other questions picked up by chance. Deck of Cards Proposition & Questions: Annick Bureaud. Cards Graphic Design: Quentin Aurat. Podcasts Sound Design: Jean-Yves Leloup. 

Annick Bureaud
Leonardo/Olats Director
Art critic and Curator

Annick Bureaud is an independent art critic, curator and event organiser in the field of art and technosciences. She wrote numerous articles and contributes to the French contemporary art magazine art press. She organised many symposia, conferences and workshops among which Visibility – Legibility of Space Art. Art and Zero Gravity: The Experience of Parabolic Flight, project in collaboration between Leonardo/Olats and the International Festival @rt Outsiders, Paris, 2003. In 2009, she co-curated the exhibition (Un)Inhabitable? Art of Extreme Environments, Festival @rt Outsiders, MEP/European House of Photography, Paris. In 2018, she curated the Bourges Bandits-Mages Festival Mending the Fabric of the World. In 2019, she published-curated the online hypertext video capsule about the artwork Neotenous Dark Dwellers – Lygophilia by Robertina Šebjanic. She is the director of Leonardo/Olats. 

Yulia Akisheva

Cockpit Operations Research Engineer at Alten
Event Manager of SG [France2020 – Our Giant Leap at SGAC

Two nationalities, Russian and Swedish; three Master’s degrees, and 25 years of age make one aerospace engineer and young scientist. In space, I am above all passionate about human exploration of Mars and international collaboration. Born in 1994, I am at the beginning of my career path but its Martian roots go far back and it has already been a journey for me to get here. 
Precisely, 10804 km of aspirations, dreams, limitations, failures and successes. Apparently, a space trip is a bumpy ride. 

My roots stretch back to Khabarovsk a Far Eastern city in Russia so far from the space industry, I hid my space dream so deep that not a single person knew of my passion until 18 years later, already in Stockholm, Sweden, after I had applied exclusively for Aerospace Engineering at KTH. Having evolved from someone who had once buried her dream to dig it back up half way around the globe to somebody friends call “the Mars girl”, I would like to tell you never to give up on your dreams. 

You know, there are many severe dust storms on Mars, but remember to dust off your dream and remind yourself of what it was before the storm; my enduring dream is to contribute to the international human exploration of Mars. Nurture your dreams, in many ways they make us who we are.

Hélène Ben Aïm Drieux
PhD Engineer – Open Innovation Project Manager – CNES

Hélène Ben Aim Drieux is a “Maker”. Whatever the issues that are entrusted to her, she provides end-to-end solutions. Expert, project manager, auditor, strategic plan manager, or space representative in a ministerial office … enforced by 30 years of experience at CNES, she’s been responsible for open innovation for 7 years. Hélène’s Project COMET strengthens the skills and know-how of some 5000 experts in networks including 800 CNES engineers. The goal is to keep all of them at their highest technical levels, to face the current exponential increase of knowledge. Being pragmatic and collaborative, Helene implements frugal concrete solutions using the “test and learn” methodology. His motto: “the best is the enemy of good”. Convinced of the richness of diversity, she is Chairwoman of the Paris group of “Women in Aerospace Europe”.Engineer (INSA 1984), PHD in Physics (INPT 1990), Auditor (IFACI, 1997), High military studies (SHEAR2000) Green Belt Lean (2017), trained facilitator and creative methods @LinkedIn H.BenAim – @COMET – @WIA-E

Fabiane Borges
Doctor in Clinic Psychologyst – PUC/SP & Post-phd fellow at PGETE/INPE / Director of Space/Art Platform SACI-E/INPE/Brazil

Fabiane M. Borges is an articulator of the Technoshamanism and Intergalactic Commune network. She is a graduate, master and doctor in Clinical Psychology, a researcher who works at the intersection between Subjectivity, Art, Science and Technology. In 2015 she was curator and organizer with Pedro Soler of the “Art in Orbit” exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Quito / Ecuador. She is Director and Curator of the SACI-E / INPE Platform – A platform for Space Culture and Artistic Residencies at the National Institute for Space Research / Brazil.

Marie-Pier Boucher
Assistant professor of Media Studies at the University of Toronto, Canada

Marie-Pier Boucher research focuses on the design of habitats for sustaining life in extreme environments. She is the co-editor de Being Material (MIT Press, 2019), Heteropolis (2013), and Adaptative Actions (Madrid, 2010). She is a collaborator of the plateform Adaptative Actions. She has taken part in group exhibitions in Tokyo Wonder Site (TWS), Japan, 2015; Galerie d’art Leonard & Bina Ellen, Montréal, 2010; Biennale Madrid Abierto, Spain, 2010). Her research residencies include: Banff Center, Canada (2011), Max Planck Institue for the History of Sciences, Germany (2010) and SymbioticA, Center for excellence in bioart, Australia (2006). She is assistant professor of Media Studies at the University of Toronto, Canada.

Kitsou Dubois
French Choreographer, Dance Researcher, Artistic Director of “Ki Productions”

In 1990, Kitsou Dubois, choreographer and researcher in dance, became the first artist to experience weightlessness in parabolic flight with the French Space Agency (CNES). Since then, Kitsou has flown on a series of 21 parabolic flights. 
In her creations, from stage choreographies to video installations or hybrid productions, Kitsou uses her experience and knowledge of weightlessness to explore movement, perception of the environment and also the sensation of time, the relation to matter, the relation to others and the poetry of an environment where all familiar references seem to have been transformed. 
She works with performers (dancers and acrobats) in environments where the sensation of gravity has been altered: in water, in parabolic flights, in virtual reality set-ups (with sound and sensorial sensors) and also works closely with researchers in science and technology. 
In her artistic approach, she works, from the dance gesture perspective, on the legibility of another space-time “nor heavy, nor light”. She made dream-like pieces which trouble the perception of the audience. Movements alternate between losing point of reference and anchoring. A connection is made between the bodies of the dancers and that of the spectators, uniting both in a common vertigo.

Félicie d’Estienne d’Orves
Artist

The work of Félicie d’Estienne d’Orves combines light, sculpture and new technologies. Her research focuses on vision, its processes and conditioning. Her immersive installations use a phenomenological approach to reality, they underscore the perception of time as a continuum. Since 2014, the artist’ researches focused on space in relation to astrophysics and to study the natural light cycles. 
Her work has been shown at the Centre Pompidou – Nuit Blanche (Paris) – New Art Space / Sonic Acts (Amsterdam) – Watermans Arts Center (London) – Elektra Festival / BIAN (Montreal) – Maison des Arts of Créteil (Créteil/FR) – Le Centquatre / Nemo International Biennial of Digital Arts (Paris) – OCAT (Shanghai) – ICAS (Dresden) – Aram Art Museum (Goyang /KR).

Elizaveta Glukhova
Researcher and media artist

Elizaveta Glukhova is a researcher and a media artist. She studied applied arts at the Moscow State Stroganov Academy of Industrial and Applied Arts. In 2014 she continued her education at the Graphic Design department of the Royal Academy of Art in 
The Hague, from where she graduated in 2018. She considers herself a curator of ideas and a storyteller and implements this approach to her autonomous as well as applied practice. 
At the end of 2018 Elizaveta joined the ArtMoonMars group and became a co-curator of the Moon Gallery (www.moongallery.eu) project. Together with Anna Sitnikova and Bernard Foing, she works on the promotion of interdisciplinary collaborations and innovative design thinking inspired by the challenges of human space exploration. 

Ségolène Guinard
Ph.D Candidate in Philosophy, University Paris 8 Vincennes Saint-Denis

Ségolène Guinard is a doctoral student at Labex Arts-H2H and Paris 8 University, under the supervision of Dominique Lestel. It is also part of the Pirate Philosophy Laboratory, the accretion of young researchers whose research aims to explore the conceptual consequences of the profound technological and ecological transformations that affect humans and non-humans. As part of her thesis, which aims to formulate an ecology of places of extra-terrestrial life, she is interested in attempts to export humans beyond the Earth’s atmosphere, and ecosystems resulting poor, that is, environments where interactions between humans and non-human living are extremely limited.

Michelle Hanlon
Co-Founder and President, For All Moonkind and Co-Director at the Center for Air and Space Law at the University of Mississippi.

Michelle is the Co-Director of the Air and Space Law Program at the University of Mississippi School of Law and its Center for Air and Space Law. Preserving Human History in Space – a Path to Sustainable Development and Peace She is also a Co-Founder and President of For All Moonkind, Inc., a nonprofit corporation that is the only organization in the world focused on protecting human cultural heritage in outer space. For All Moonkind has been recognized by the United Nations as a Permanent Observer to the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. Michelle Chairs the International Committee of the National Space Society and serves as the Co-Chair of the Cultural Considerations Working Group of the Moon Village Association. She received her B.A. in Political Science from Yale College and her J.D. magna cum laude from the Georgetown University Law Center. Michelle earned her LLM in Air and Space Law from McGill University where the focus of her research was commercial space and the intersection of commerce and public law. Prior to focusing on space law, Michelle was engaged in a private business law practice. Her legal career commenced with the restructuring of sovereign debt for a number of South and Latin American countries and evolved into the negotiation and implementation of cross-border technology mergers and acquisitions. Her subsequent solo practice advised entrepreneurs across four continents on all aspects of bringing their innovative ideas to market: from basic corporate formation to financings and buyouts. Michelle continues to provide advice and counsel in respect of all aspects of air, space and cyber law through the consulting firm of ABH Aerospace, LLC.

Flis Holland
Artist, Finnish Academy of Fine Arts.

I practise depression and I’m trying to get worse at it. I’m a doctoral candidate at the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts, a Finn Brit, a slow writer. My short story Sigh-fi was published in Kontur journal’s ‘Decline’ issue (link above). I spent 2019 developing an iterative performance ‘Gravity doesn’t keep you down I do’, which culminated in a New York residency to research asteroid strike simulations.

Dalila Honorato
InArts Lab – Ionian University

Dalila Honorato, Ph.D is Tenured Assistant Professor in Aesthetics and Visual Semiotics at the Ionian University, Greece. One of the founding members of the Interactive Arts Lab, where she coordinates the Art & Science Research Group, she is also a collaborator at the Center of Philosophy of Sciences – University of Lisbon. Her research focus is on embodiment, monstrosity, the uncanny and the acrobatic balance between phobia and paraphilia. The starter of the conference “Taboo-Transgression-Transcendence in Art & Science”, Dalila Honorato launched together with Marta de Menezes “FEMeeting: Women in Art, Science and Technology”.

Adriana Knouf
Artist/Writer/Xenologist; Assistant Professor of Art + Design, Northeastern University

Adriana Knouf (she/her/hers, sie/hir/hirs) works as a xenologist, as an artist-scientist-writer-designer-engineer. She engages with topics such as space art, satellites, radio transmission, non-human encounters, drone flight, queer and trans futurities, machine learning, the voice, and papermaking. She is the Founding Facilitator of the tranxxeno lab (https://tranxxenolab.net), a nomadic artistic research laboratory that promotes entanglements amongst entities trans and xeno. Adriana is also an Assistant Professor of Art + Design at Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA. 
Adriana publishes widely, including a book, _How Noise Matters to Finance_ (University of Minnesota Press, 2016); journal articles about radio art and xenological temporalities; book chapters about biohacking and the intersection of handpapermaking and electronics; and conference papers about surveillance, xenology, and human-computer interaction. Adriana’s research has been supported by residencies such as Field_Notes and Wave Farm. She exhibits nationally and internationally and regularly presents at conferences and festivals around the world. For more information see http://zeitkunst.org.

Minna Långström
Artist filmmaker, MFA

Minna Långström is a media artist and film maker from Helsinki, Finland. Her artistic work consists of participatory cinematic installations, short films and documentaries. Her work processes tend to be extensively researched and interdisciplinary. Her latest film “The Other Side of Mars” (56 min, 2019) brought her in contact with geologists, astrobiologists and Nasa engineers involved with the current Mars missions. Premiering at the DocPoint Documentary Film Festival 2019, and screened at festivals around the world, the film looks at the role of images in these missions. Her previous films and artwork have been selected to numerous film festivals and exhibited at museums such as Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art and Frankfurter Kunstverein and in galleries such as InterAccess gallery in Toronto. Långström was an assistant professor in Moving Image at the Academy of Fine Art in Helsinki 2008-2012, where she also developed course concepts critically connecting media art, science and technology. She has been an artist in residency at FACT, Liverpool, IASPIS, Stockholm and Space Studios for Art and Technology in London.

Aoife van Linden Tol
Artist, Vice Chair ITACCUS

Aoife van Linden Tol is a London based artist working with explosives. Beginning in 2000 her work with explosives fuses her interests in nature, cosmology, chemistry and physics. She is a multi-disciplinary artist whose practice spans sculpture, installation, drawing, photography, film and performance. She creates abstract, visceral and immersive works which often examine concepts of time, density and matter as well as deep human emotions and motivations. 
Aoife is the Director of FERAL, an arts and events organisation which tunes into the wild and beautiful instincts of the human condition. She graduated from Central St Martins College of Art and Design, with BA Hons in Art & Design. She also graduated from The International School for Safety and Explosive Engineers with a national qualification in explosive handling 2001. She was was awarded the position of Artist in Residence at the European Space Agency & Ars Electronica Futurelab during 2017. Some of her other roles include Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and the Vice Chair for the IAF Committee for the Cultural Utilisation of Space.

Daniela de Paulis (Amsterdam)
Artist, Astronomers Without Borders

Daniela de Paulis is a media artist, licensed radio operator (IU0IDY) and trained radio telescope operator. From 2009 to 2019 she has been artist in residence at the Dwingeloo radio telescope, where she has developed a large body of work using innovative radio technologies in live performance art. She is member of the permanent international SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) committee, the only worldwide forum for SETI scientists, and member of the METI (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence) advisory panel. 

Mirjana Povic
Assistant professor and Head of Astronomy and Astrophysics Research and Development Division, Ethiopian Space Science and Technology Institute, Ethiopia / Associate researcher, Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia, Spain Honorary professor, Mbarara University of Science and Technology, Uganda

Mirjana Povic (1981, Serbia) is assistant professor and Head of Astronomy and Astrophysics Research and Development Division at the Ethiopian Space Science and Technology Institute (ESSTI), associate researcher at the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalucia in Spain, and honorary professor at Mbarara University of Science and Technology in Uganda. She obtained her PhD in astrophysics in 2010 at the Institito de Astrofísica de Canarias (Spain). Her main research interests are related with galaxy formation and evolution, in particular with nuclear activity in galaxies, star formation, morphological classification of galaxies, and galaxy clusters. In addition, over more than last 10 years, she worked on development in astronomy, science and education in different parts of Africa, and in particular in Ethiopia, Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania, South Africa, Kenya, Ghana, Zambia, and Morocco, through joint research collaborations, institutional development, students supervisions, trainings, lecturing, regulation development, and outreach. In 2018 she was a winner of the inaugural Nature Research Award for Inspiring Science. In May 2019 was invited by Serbian Government to be one of 16 selected Science Ambassadors. In June 2019 she received a recognition from the ESSTI and Ethiopian Ministry of Innovation and Technology for her contribution to the institutional development of ESSTI and development of astronomy and science in Ethiopia.

Neha Satak

CEO, Astrome Technologies Private Limited

Neha is the co-founder and CEO of a space startup, Astrome, which is working on making high-bandwidth satellite internet connectivity affordable. Astrome through its patented technology is solving the fundamental problem of the absence of quality internet backbone in most parts of the world. She holds a PhD from Texas A&M University and a Masters from Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Aerospace Engineering. She worked as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at University of Florida in association with the Air Force Research Lab, USA. She was awarded the Amelia Earhart Fellowship by Zonta Foundation and WEQ award jointly by AnitaB.org, USISTEF and Government of India. She was also selected to be part of ITU’s EQUALS pro

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