Gender Anarchy Project, temporary gender symbols

Gender Anarchy Project

The ability of electronic media to make any image ‘temporary’ through its digital visualization follows the temporarity of today’s informations and the shift from the stability of printed media to the transient disembodied light of pixels. The displays equipped with a small amount of memory give the possibility to change periodically the image shown, in a table-top photograph holder as well as in an advertisement billboard. Gender Anarchy Project, by Amelia Marzec, applies this volatility to one of the most recognizable symbols we are used to see, the one indicating the gender (male/female) outside of public toilets. In the only door available in the toilet of the Aronson Gallery in New York, the ‘male’ symbol turns into the ‘female’ one, or into one of several unlikely hybrids, thanks to a hidden PC and an electronic display. The mix of these two symbols nullifies their obsolete dichotomy and casts a light on the fragility of the gender concept, conjugating it with the intrinsic fragility of electronic images.