Femtech | Morgane Billuart & Carmen Hines

This coming Monday at the Visual Cultures Department, Carmen Lael Hines and Morgan Billuart will present research and writings on the fast-growing industry of Femtech, a term which described software, products and digital services that focus on female health. At the intersection of discourse on Gender/Sexuality, Platform Capitalism and Neoliberal Hegemonic landscapes – Femtech raises critical issues on the social reproductive sphere of platform capitalism, and its role in shaping and orienting user bodies. The lecture is open to all, and will take the form of short presentations and an open discussion.

Carmen Lael Hines is a curator, lecturer and researcher based at the department of Visual Cultures (TU WIEN). She studies, through research and teaching, the way culture is produced and manifests itself on built and digital environments, and is interested in radical politics, popular culture and design typologies. Her research engages Platform Capitalism, Gender/Sexuality Studies and Theories of Social Reproduction which inform work exploring digital contraception, menstrual tracking apps, dating apps, home automation, A.I, data capitalism, amongst other topics. Her academic, artistic and curatorial activities have been presented in spaces including: Architekturzentrum Wien, Austrian Cultural Forum New York, Institute for Contemporary Art Graz, Austrian Pavilion (Biennale Architettura 2021), University of Bologna, e-flux Screening Room (NY), Index Foundation Stockholm, amongst others. She has a B.A. in English Language and Literature from the University of Oxford, and an M.A. in Contemporary Art Theory from Goldsmiths College, University of London.

Morgane Billuart is a French writer and visual artist. She is a researcher at the Institute of Network Cultures in Ansterdam and student of Cross-Disciplinary Strategies at the Angewandte in Vienna. She graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam and studied at the Cooper Union in New York. In the era of digital practices, DIY-internet belief, and self-help seminars, her practice aims to display diverse forms of faith or beliefs, and the way in which they are generated. She questions how the forces and fluctuations of female bodies can help us rethink and criticize the technocratic and digital spheres surrounding us. Her written work has been published by the Institute of Network Cultures, Do.Not.Research, Bookie Bookie, Blank Magazine, Amsterdam Alternative, and Lili Magazine. Her visual work and research have been shown in the Stedelijk Museum, the Cooper Union, the Eye Museum, Gerrit Rietveld Academy, and different exhibition spaces throughout Vienna, Amsterdam, Paris, and New York.