Monday, April 30, 2007

The URL -- why femimen?

It was Monday, April 30...a few days before the end of the semester and just before the exams and final critiques commence. A colleague and I were sharing lunch (he had Cheez Its and I some Sun Chips and leftover pizza...) when he showed me how he made his own blog over the weekend. I loved the idea and decided that I wanted to manage my own blog also. So he walked me through the steps. It was easy until it came time to come up with a name, as in an internet name or URL -- how do I want people to know me? To find me...

I tried all of the obvious choices, which will be revealed over the course of several postings in the coming weeks. Each of these was self-referential in some way and, unfortunately, all of these were taken.

I was committed to having only one word as my tagline --- and then Daniel reminded me that I ˆhadˆjust invented a word last week during my Women's Studies class. The word was ˆfemimenˆwhich I defined as men who are feminists. The word stuck and so has become, of late, my tagline.

What is decollage?

The Thames and Hudson Dictionary of Art and Artists (1994) defines decollage as the opposite of "collage", decollage is a French term that literally means "unsticking". The term means the peeling away, usually of found images, i.e. posters, resulting in the accidental creation of new images and surface effects. I hope that this blog serves as a space for creating new meanings while re-viewing previously conceived ideas about art and visual culture as well as its intersections with feminism. Welcome! And feel free to leave a relevant comment....