FEMeeting
https://femeeting.com
Launched in 2017, the conference “FEMeeting: Women in Art, Science and Technology” was driven by the desire to develop and promote more direct collaboration between individuals who identify themselves as Women, independently of their sex . The idea behind FEMeeting was orchestrated by the Portuguese artist Marta de Menezes and scholar Dalila Honorato, after realizing that women in the field of Art and Science have an unquestionable presence worldwide.
FEMeeting acknowledges the social relevance of a core community and its role for the future. FEMeeting’s main purpose is to disseminate projects that are being carried out by women in order to contribute (a) to the development of research methodologies in art and science and (b) to the development of collaboration strategies that can increase knowledge sharing and bring communities together.
The main FEMeeting conferences are structured integrating part of presentations open to the public in urban centers and the main part of presentations held behind closed doors in smaller locations. These characteristics, in addition to several organized or spontaneous social activities, have the function of encouraging communication between participants.
The two first FEMeetings took place in Portugal and were organized by Cultivamos Cultura. The outcomes of 2018 and 2019 conferences have been many and, though most are intangible, among the project’s distinguishable objectives there are: (a) a strong personal support through instant internet communication between women doing research work (in the broadest sense of the term) in art, science and technology (b) and the encouragement towards the formation of local nodes to support research and artistic creation developed to enable a wide network of direct communication among them and encourage trust.
It is in this sense that FEMeeting announced its first community meetings taking place on March 20th-21st, 2020, “FEMeeting: Troy” and “FEMeeting: Paris”. Organized with Media Sanctuary’s NATURE Lab Initiative (North Troy Art, Technology, and Urban Research in Ecology), Leonardo/Olats and co-founders Marta de Menezes and Dalila Honorato, the events were cancelled due to the COVID-19 crisis.
Consequently FEMeeting 2020 reshaped its call for participation to its community and launched “FEMeeting: WEB” dedicated to the presentation of digital contributions.