UCLA Center for the Study of Women

In the distant past (fifteen years ago), before the advent of web 2.0, one subculture, riot grrrl, made effective use of social media to communicate a message and build a sense of community. Riot grrrl’s successful dissemination of zines, mixtapes and angst ought to serve as an example of the possibilities offered by social media, and subcultures today would be wise to learn from their model. Given the primacy of subjectivity in forming any community and the efficiency with which moving images can serve in such processes, today I will use the experimental autobiographic videos of Sadie Benning and Thirza Cuthand as case studies in an effort to better understand how social media function in the articulation of unique subjectivities, and how their evolution creates space for alternative means of dissemination.