Emancipation Through the Virtual

An analysis of various biases in artificial intelligence demonstrates that technology is often disadvantageous to Black women. Technology—usually created by, and primarily to serve, the needs of white men—intersects with race and gender, and combines to exclude Black women, leaving them on the margins of future possibilities. How can the technologies we use in everyday life become a tool of emancipation to create new perspectives? In this lecture, we will explore how virtual technologies allow us to create spaces in which we are able to question our relationships to these technologies, but also give ourselves the possibility to change this inherent paradigm of cyberspace. The virtual enables us, as Black women or any other specific individual or intersectional identity, to create emancipatory imaginaries, and consequently, technology can become a liberating tool rather than one of discrimination and domination.

Iyo Bisseck (she/her) is a France-based designer, researcher and artist. She holds a BA in Media Interaction design from ECAL in Lausanne, and a MA in Virtual and Augmented Reality research from Institut Polytechnique Paris. Along with Elise Connor and Mathilde Avogadro, she is a collaborator in the collective Good for a Gxrl. In her work, she is interested in the biases showing the link between technologies and systems of domination. She explores the limits of virtual worlds to create alternative narratives.

This lecture is part of the Coding Resistance lecture series:

September 24, 2021 | 3 pm CEST
Outing and Outsmarting Discriminating Algorithms
with Nakeema Stefflbauer

October 01, 2021 | 3 pm CEST
Back to the Future of the African Village
with Minna Salami

October 08, 2021 | 3 pm CEST
Gender and Technology Beyond W.E.I.R.D.
with Maryam Mustafa

October 15, 2021 | 3 pm CEST
Glimmering Opacities: From Queering The Map to QT.bot
with Lucas LaRochelle

October 22, 2021 | 3 pm CEST
Emancipation Through the Virtual
with Iyo Bisseck

October 30, 2021 | 4 pm CEST
Make Time to Take Time
with Morehshin Allahyari

November 05, 2021 | 3 pm CEST
Interdependence as a Political Technology
with Aimi Hamraie

November 12, 2021 | 3 pm CEST
Digital Colonialism and Palestinian Resistance
with Marwa Fatafta

November 19, 2021 | 6 pm CEST
Towards Justice, Equity and Accountability in AI
with Timnit Gebru