Working notes: conversation with Katy Deepwell - Interview

This conversation between Maureen Connor and Katy Deepwell, editor of n. paradoxa, took place in New York in March 2001.

Maureen Connor: Let's start by discussing the history of n. paradoxo--what led up to it, the beginnings, and what generally inspired you?

Katy Deepwell: n. paradoxa started online in December 1996. 1995-96 was an important period historically, when many universities began to provide access to the Internet to both staff and students. The rhetoric or hype about the Net implied it had everything and reflected everybody's interests. But there was actually very little about contemporary feminist art practice available. Having found a very interesting science paper on the idea of an alternative academic community online, I was inspired to set up a platform for debate about feminist art practice and criticism. I conceived n. paradoxa as an information platform--a global "meta-site" linking up other sites worldwide and providing resources and links to enable academics and students to study contemporary women artists. Email was important in making this a reality, but I was very disappointed by the level of intellectual debate in chat rooms, in interactive parts of websites where people leave comments, and in listservs. n. paradoxa online is published in the conventional sense of an edited document, available to download, with copyright held by the authors. It is a unique online resource. Drawing on current and past research by many women, it is the only full-text online journal on feminism and the visual arts that is truly international in scope. It has the only list of feminist film and video festivals in the world, compiled with assistance from Cinenova (which recently closed) and Women Make Movies. It has links to more than thirty women's arts organizations, which have accumulated archives of material on contemporary women's art, as well as to large generic sites designed to profile women artists. It has a multilingual and global list of more than three hundred books on women artists as well as past and current journals. To inform people about n. paradoxa, I used two interesting online lists, Faces [www.faces-l.net], started by Kathy Rae Huffman (now director of Hull Time-Based Arts in the United Kingdom) for women working in new media and the Feminist A rt History email list (which closed in September 2001)' started by the independent art historian Robin Masi. Word of mouth and personal networking at conferences also became especially effective methods. I used to joke that in spite of our sophistication with global networks in communications, handing out a piece of paper with the URL is still the best way of advertising a website.

The motivation behind n. paradoxa is to try to push the limits of the current discourse about feminism. I was influenced by the art critic Lucy Lippard's method of creative inquiry and by previous feminist journals, including U.S. publications such as Heresies, Chrysalis, and Women Artists News, the Australian journal Lip, the European magazines Eau de Cologne (Cologne) and Ruimte (Amsterdam), and international feminist exhibitions like Magma 77 and Feministische Kunst International. I wanted n. paradoxa to take up this work in a new way. If you are a young woman art student in the U.S., your knowledge of what defines feminism historically is likely to differ from that of a counterpart in, say, Austria who will have different coordinates and references for feminism. This is the problematic that interests me. n. paradoxa is an attempt to bridge, develop, and challenge various views of feminism. Although we talk very frequently about global vision, we remain located historically and culturally. By this I do not mean nationalistic cultures attached to the state where we live or work, but a very specific set of references and ideas, which form the coordinates of our knowledge. We locate ourselves accordingly because this is what seems available to us, but if we take the idea of research seriously, exchange with people working in other geopolitical sites is fascinating and rewarding. n. paradoxa's ambition is to challenge the myopia that results from any singular model of feminism, especially one based in any form of ethnocentrism in the U.S. or Europe.

Cannor: From the online version you made the decision to move into print in January 1998, which was not your original intention. What precipitated this development?

Deepwell: I went into print because I don't think the art world reads the Internet and because critical discussion there about artworks remains limited. Putting n. paradoxa into print provided opportunities to do more and different things. The online and print versions have separate ISSNs [International Standard Serial Numbers], discrete identities because of separate content, and even different audiences due to the distinct means of distribution. In each volume of the print edition, I try to draw attention to people from various constituencies by including work from at least twelve countries and to follow, in an oblique and paradoxical fashion, a theme. It's heavily selected, one could say "curated," largely by myself with advice and support from the editorial board. Also in the print version, alongside the articles, interviews, and features, I commission artists to produce special pages. These have included the publication of scripts from performances by five artists who represented India, Ireland, the Unit ed Kingdom, France, Spain, and Canada [vol. 5, Jan. 2000]; a centerfold of Carolee Schneemann's Vulva's Morphia [vol. 6 ,July 2000] and, in a reversal from vulvic to phallic imagery, a performance by the Icelandic Love Corporation called Blow Job [vol. 7, Jan. 2001]. Running two editions allowed me to publish more provisional work online, like conference papers, panel discussions, theses, and polemics that did not fit the thematic printed version.