Sunday, April 5, 2009

Feminist Flashback #31

In honor of Gaypril, this week's Feminist Flashback brings you the work of Dyke Action Machine (DAM), a two-person team (Carrie Moyer and Sue Schaffner) whose public art projects have graced the city streets since 1991. According to their website, their campaigns "dissected mainstream media by inserting lesbian images into recognizably commercial contexts, revealing how lesbians are and are not depicted in American popular culture. While questioning the basic assumption that one cannot be “present” in a capitalist society unless one exists as a consumer group, DAM! performed the role of the advertiser, promising the lesbian viewer all the things she’d been denied by the mainstream: power, inclusion, and the public recognition of identity."

DAM encourages people to re-print and plaster their own neighborhoods with DAM posters. The artistic duo also just created a 16-page pamphlet explaining how to "convert lesbianism into a viable commodity." It's oh-so-very educational.

Check out a few of their older projects below and definitely head over to their website to see what they're up to these days:


The Gap Campaign, 1991


Family Circle, 1992


Do You Love The Dyke In Your Life?, 1993


Lesbian Americans: Don't Sell Out, 1998


No comments: