DOCULELA IN WORDS

DOCULELA IN WORDS:

LELA's animation (the entrance)

One of the main objectives to visualize Lela's project was to generate a seductive, transgressive and attractive image, that at the same time could maintain some kind of relation with the project participants, the meaning of the word lela (kind of crazy, kind of silly) and our intention to claim for sillyness and craziness as a way to aproach and practice technologies.

We present a nude, with multiple shapes, insinuative and curious femenin character, with past and futurist elements, a drawing in a comic style that moves around technological circuits.

LELA could represent any womyn interested in technologies and, in doing so, we look for some complicity and identification with this figure. LELA could be fat, thin, young, old, beautiful, ugly etc...but all nude. Thus  symbology gives an idea of daring, but of simplicity and naturality as well.

The inverted game of the logos typography makes us go through a diferent way, a different journey marked by the capital letters “L” and the game of the most opened vowels “A” and  “E” and the  garnet colour. We get a visual square, a safe and strong structure where LELA sits on. This square is not closed, it could be a part of a circuit where LELA stands to observe and understand, or even a space to play and share. The granate colour has been choosen because it includes the lilac of the old feminists and the fucsia of the postfeminists.

Individual and collective memories

Two lelas at their working space are talking while we are navigating through a poetical visual map to let emerge visual imaginaries, often submerged into the oblivion: “(Lela1) We were looking both for individual and collective memory. What we’ve found, searching technology history and how women have taken part in it, was a huge knowledge gap. We’ve found out the first person to invent the language for programming was a woman, Ada Lovelace, and the first programmers were women too, ENIAC womyn (Lela2) And nobody knows that.”

By doing so spectators sink into the universe identified as a part of memories, our first technological memories, our Proust muffen. We did not simply expose it, as a “those marvellous years” sentimentalism. With our protagonists we want to promote a memory exercice that provoques the emergence of our submerged into the oblivion imaginaries (pegs, sewing machines, past references...). This vision on memories is analytical and political. We know that womyn's participation in designing and developing tecnologies and science has been systematically denigrated, minimized or erased. To excavate in the rols, protagonism, of those womyn that were there and did something, raises the duties to stimulate our own memories.

Fiction sequence: An old images succession brings us to the XXth century history and let us view diverse womyn making technological artifacts and working with them in a frenetical rhythm. By thus we visualise that womyn's use and practice with tecnologies is nothing new, but we do not have many images to represent this phenomena in our current society.

Acces  and learning

Again, one of the lelas introduces womyn's personal motivations to enter into technologies and the different ways to acces them.  Lela 1: “Loads of womyn, for example, do it through her cousin or friend, they play with them up till they can, but because of being something that it is not there and it is not stimulated, it disappears and it comes back to them when they start to study or work. In moments that we socialize in another way.”

The protagonist's voices will show us that motivations and ways to enter to tecnologies are diverse, but that among them there is a kind of division that shows two dates in relation to the first memory on anything technological. First a date/age, generally during childhood (4-17 years old) and  related to some kind of confrontation, relation or interest in a technological artifact. Afterwards, at a later age they start consciously using some technologies. We see a division in these memories, a break that preceeds the establishment of a longer and continuous relationship with technologies. For that reason we can say that for a lot of womyn, their relationship with technologies has been marked by a “pause” or a temporary hole, when they could not/would not deepen their knowledge of technologies. Either they lost interest, were not encouraged enough to get involved, or they had no possibility to access to tecnologies. Generally, the hole is a mixture of all these elements.

Fiction sequence: a fiction of the 3 lela’s in a working day where they show different uses and practices of technologies, accompanied by music that gives a slow rhythm to the scene.

Gender inequalities

Even though the documentary provokes the emergence of womyn's visions and subjectivities in relation to technologies by introducing a critical gender perspective, we wanted a specific section with the voices of tech womyn that question current reality by giving references to the discrimination and inequality they have suffered in our society. In this critical exercise they also express improvement proposals and wills to surpass current unequal relations and situations.

In this section, different protagonists talk about their experiences, complaints and improvement  proposals that question, critic or claim for changes and situations that imply our society transformation at a political and social level to make it more redistributive and fair for the society as a whole and specifically for womyn.

Uses and practices

From the diverse uses and practices that women do with tecnologies we have chosen a peculiar and specific one: electronical music and dj's, because it is one of the fields in which womyn have less visibility. We go to the music world from some feminine viewpoints that practice before jumping on the scenario. There the spectator will have a journey through the universe of some musicians and womyn discjockies. They talk about and show their artistical practice.  It is shown live music of Femelek, electronical music festival that combines tecnologies with the celebration of the 8^th of March, womyn international day.

Free software  

Some investigations and publications have alarmed us about the low presence of womyn in free software. This research centered on the participation of womyn in free software development communities shows very low rates of female presence in those communities, from 1% to 5%. Currently in Catalonia, and the rest of Europe, there is no collection of data to permit any evaluation of the participation of womyn in free software communities or womyn's use of free software.

This thematic section, from our protagonist's experiences and words, wants to contribute to the visualisation of new information in that field. For that reason two lela's introduce us to this section by affirming that, for example, almost half of the tech womyn interviewed are free software users and among them, a 15% use free software only.

The protagonist's different voices show the different ways to participate in free software developing communities and free software movements related to FLOSS and free licenses. This participation takes various forms: using them, being interested in them, translating its contents etc...To participate in a thousand of ways in its exploration and active comprehension we can and should participate in how tecnologies really work in our daily life.

Impacts of technologies on our bodies and minds.

Sequence Videoclip: Accidente Lujurioso: touch me, crave me, penetrate me, as if i wasn't there, but i am there!

With humour beats and with a broken rhythm our protagonists explain and manifest the impacts of tecnologies on them, physical, mental and emotional such as tendinitis, headaches, backache, vision problems and psychological problems such as stress, anxiety, insomnia or a higher mental dispersion produced by the amount of hours in front of the computer or the multitasking that one ends up doing in front of it.

Fiction sequence: Manifesto reading

Dreams and wishes

Sequence Videoclip Accidente Lujurioso: i see you and i want more

The documentary finishes with the wills and improvement wishes of the tech womyn on their technological practice expressed in the interviews. To show the great diversity of dreams and wishes many womyn appear briefly expressing their dreams and wishes in relation to tecnologies, but not only, also related to the ways of learning, the uses and spreading of free software and the wishes to go beyond gender inequalities.

We also have to note that instead of only expressing their own personal wills, those womyn showed dreams and wishes related to the collectivity and the society as a whole and any kind of relationship inside it. And so concludes the documentary, with one of our protagonists open hand approaching the screen with a heart tattoo on it.

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