Nathalie Magnan


Nathalie Magnan was a media theoretician and activist, a cyber-feminist, and a film director. She taught at both universities and art schools, and is known for initiating projects linking Internet activism and sailing with the Sailing for Geeks project. She also co-organised the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Film Festival in 1984. She died at home of breast cancer.

Education

After graduating with a Bachelor of Art degree at the University of Nanterre, Paris X, she continued her studies in the United States and obtained a Master of Fine Arts at the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, New York, where she met Catherine Lord, Mario Biagioli, Skuta Helgason and Lisa Bloom. She obtained a Qualifying Exam at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she met Teresa de Lauretis, who was working in the Women Studies department. In History of Consciousness, she met James Clifford and Donna Haraway, who took her as her assistant.

Teaching

She started her teaching career as lecturer at the University of California, Northridge and Chapman University in Orange, where she taught an introductory class on photography during the 1984–85 school year. She was assistant professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz from 1986 to 1990, where she taught media studies, cultural studies and the history of photography.
Upon returning to France, she sought to share her American experiences in her teachings, films, publications and events that she organised and participated in.
University of Paris VIII. In 1998 she became a full professor at the École nationale supérieure d'art in Dijon. In 2007, Paul Devautour invited her to come teach at the École nationale supérieure d'art in Bourges, where she taught until 2012. One of her classes entitled, Genre, which she gave in association with Giovanna Zapperi, was thought of as a space for pedagogical innovations within which she organised a lecture series with C. Lord, Paul Preciado, Shu Lea Chang, Yann Beauvais, Patrick Cardon.... In 2012, she invited A-LI-CE6 to give a VJing workshop. She established links and exchanges with Luang Prabang and with the University of California in Irvine. In Bourges, she created collaborations with Emmetrop and also with Bandits Mages. Her teachings focus on the analysis and critique of media on a feminist, queer and postcolonial point of view. More than transmitting knowledge, she wants to create a method, a trans-disciplinary process that leads to the conquest of autonomy.

Media theory

A media theorist and activist, she published two books translated from English and German into French : La Vidéo : entre art et communication, followed by Connexions : arts, réseaux, médias, with Annick Bureaud. She managed the French distribution lists Nettime and CEDAR, the coordination of all French art schools.
Nathalie Magnan took part in a number of events of all kind, related to several parts of her expertise. In 2000, Isea, the international symposium on electronic arts, was organized in Paris. Not a single woman was invited. A hundred women met at Ensba on Nathalie Magnan's initiative and were welcomed by Mathilde Ferrer - together, they held an Isea counter-event. Every woman had 5 minutes to talk about her work. This is the first time that these women gained some public notoriety.

Activism

Public access television

In the USA, she took part in public access televisions and tactical media. She made several movies with the collectives Paper Tiger Television and Deep Dish TV, including The Gringo in Mañanaland.

Cyberfeminism

Magnan is one of the French pioneers of cyberfeminism. She created the website Cyberféminismes.org. In 1999, she was invited to the Canalweb show Les Pénélopes, to talk about cyberfeminism. In 2000, she organised the ISEA off event in Paris. The same year, she took part in the creation of a women's TV show for the local Aubervilliers television, called SixSex, as well as a show on the dangers of tampons on women.
In 2001, she was part of the Very Cyberfeminist International festival in Hamburg. In 2002, she translated and published the Cyborg Manifesto by Donna Haraway, which she then published in 2007. She organized a presentation of women artists active in the digital world, Openmic cyberfem, at the Maison des Métallos, and organized Gender Changer Academy workshops for ZELIG: a week of workshops, demos, meetings, and debates on the subject of communication, networks, open source software and Internet activism. She created the Chiennes de Garde website and managed this feminist online forum until June 21, 2003.
In 2008, she organized the Femmes et Réseaux meeting in Paris with Isabelle Arvers and Anne Roquigny. She talked about Feminism and Cyberfem at the Master of Advanced Studies of the Zurich University of the Arts in 2009, and in March 2010 in Paris.
On March 7–8, 2015, she was part of the Wikipedia Art+Feminism Editathon, in Paris. On June 6, she talked about tactical media during Performing Opposition in Aubervilliers.

Sailing for Geeks

Nathalie Magnan invented the concept of Sailing for geeks, combining cybertechnologies and the rigorous logic of sailing. Sailing for geeks 1 is held in Finland, at Isea 2004, and Sailing for geeks 2, in 2005, lead people to explore sailing conditions in the Gibraltar detroit, to meet people trying to escape the Moroccan coast and come to Europe.
Her last public interventions are held in 2015. On November 21, 2015, she talked about Blackmarket for Useful knowledge and Non Knowledge at the Musée de l'Homme.

Gay and lesbian activism

Nathalie Magnan was a co-organiser of the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Film Festival in 1984. In the 1990s, she took part in the New Queer Cinema festival at the Paris American Center. In 1994, she co-founded the Paris Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and she was its president in 2001 and 2002. In December 1995, she joined Lesborama to come to the Lille festival Questions de genre – 100 ans de cinéma gai et lesbien – 10 ans de prévention, which is the first Gay Night at Canal+.
In 1992, she wrote for the periodical Gai Pied.

Productions

Publications