Membra(I)nes. Technologies, Theories, and Aesthetics of Im/Permeability. Introduction

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.17169/ogj.2025.400

Keywords:

Membrane, Permeability, threshold, decolonialization

Abstract

Under the conceptual metaphor “membra(I)nes,” the 12th annual conference of the Gender Studies Association (June 15-17, 2023) focused explicitly for the first time on approaches to intersectional gender research from the perspectives of media, art, and cultural studies. The fact that the conference was held for the first time at art academies and in the eastern German cities of Leipzig and Halle (Saale) continued the programmatic theme of crossing boundaries and permeability at a structural level. In this special issue, the considerations from the event are further pursued, deepened, and expanded beyond the ephemeral format of the conference and made accessible to a broad public.

Author Biographies

Muriel González-Athenas, University of Innsbruck

Muriel González-Athenas (pron. all) holds a doctorate in history and lives between Innsbruck and Barcelona. She is a assistant professor at the University of Innsbruck's Institute for Historical Studies and Empirical Cultural Studies. She is co-founder of the working group Epistemologies of the Body at the research platform of the Center for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies in Innsbruck. Since 2024, she has been on the board of the professional association DeKolonial. Her main areas of research are: gender history, cultural economic history, feminist epistemology and methods, spatial concepts, postcolonial studies, decolonial perspectives and practices, and critical cartography.

Susanne Huber, University of Bremen

Susanne Huber works as a researcher for the history and theory of art at the University of Bremen. Current perspectives in her research include phenomena of fetishistic attachment, conditions of embodiment in visual cultures since the advent of modernism as well as still life photography at the turn of the 20th century. She is an associate member of Mariann Steegmann Institut Kunst & Gender and co-editor of the book series Oyster. Feminist and Queer Approaches to Arts, Cultures, and Genders.

Katrin Köppert, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Katrin Köppert is an art and media scholar based in Berlin. She currently holds the professorship for media theory at Humboldt University in Berlin and is a junior professor of art history/popular cultures at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig. Since 2020, she has been co-director of the DFG research network “Gender, Media, and Affect,” and since 2024, of the VW-funded project “Digital Blackface: Racialized Affect Patterns of the Digital.” She is a member of the editorial board of the Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft (German Journal of Media Studies) and the open-access journal Open Gender Journal.

Friederike Nastold, University of Oldenburg

Friederike Nastold is trained as an artist, mediator, and art theorist and is a junior professor of art history with a focus on gender studies at the Institute for Art and Visual Culture at Carl von Ossietzky University in Oldenburg, as well as deputy director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Women‘s and Gender Studies (ZFG) in Oldenburg. Her research focuses on gender studies in art and cultural studies, queer ecologies and gardens in art and visual culture, new materialism, affect theory, and queer theory.

References

Bahadori, Sara/Nguyen, T./Masal, Rosa/Sanches Martins, Núbia (2022): Complaint as a killjoy-genre. In: Aden, Samia/Tamayo Rojas, Carolina (Hg.): Dekoloniale Interventionen. Münster: Unrast, 15–31.

Bhabha, Homi K. (2011 [2000]): Die Verortung der Kultur. Tübingen: Stauffenburg.

membra(I)nes: article cover

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Published

2025-11-07

How to Cite

González-Athenas, M., Huber, S., Köppert, K., & Nastold, F. (2025). Membra(I)nes. Technologies, Theories, and Aesthetics of Im/Permeability. Introduction. Open Gender Journal, (1). https://doi.org/10.17169/ogj.2025.400

Issue

No. 1 (2025): Special Issue: membra(I)nes - Technologies, Theories and Aesthetics of Im/Permeability

Section

Editorial

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Copyright (c) 2025 Muriel González-Athenas, Susanne Huber, Katrin Köppert, Friederike Nastold

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