<nettime> RIP Nathalie Magnan

["t byfield" <tbyfield@panix.com>]

Many reports on Facebook confirm that Nathalie Magnan passed
away yesterday, Sat 15 October 2016.

Some nettimers knew her, a few more probably know of her, but
most may have at most seen her name. What follows is a brief
effort to cobble together a short memorial, partly in the
hope that others who know Nathalie well will add more 
or correct any errors.

Nathalie was an early and energetic participant in many of
the milieus that gave rise to the nettime project, and she
generously brought perspectives and connections that this
project has never done very well with -- feminism and France,
to name two. Along with a loose network that included Nicolas
Maleve, Aris Papatheodorou, Benoit Cristou, Boris Beaude, and
Philippe Riviere she moderated the nettime-fr list:

   https://nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0203/msg00013.html

Much more significantly, she was deeply involved in a range
of efforts surrounding cyberfeminism. A few traces include
the FACES mailing list, the OBN (Old Boys Network), the Very
Cyberfeminist International, and Zelig:

   http://faces-l.net/
   http://www.obn.org/
   http://archive.constantvzw.org/events/e12/nl/corsolnl.html
   http://www.tacticalmediafiles.net/persons/333/Nathalie-Magnan

Like many people involved in nettime early on, Nathalie was
someone who, as the cultural arbiters like to say now,
'worked at the intersection of.' You can supply whatever
mad-libs-style list you want to specify what was
intersecting, but they're often accidents of history: it was
the 'intersecting' itself that mattered more, the sense of
possibility and imperative where different worlds permeate
each other, or collide, or however you want to put it. But
those geometrical metaphors never quite capture the valences
of the work of someone like Nathalie. For example, philosophy
and theory are haunted by the ghosts of translation,
especially in the Anglophone world: learned footnotes about
obscure distinctions are almost obligatory. Nathalie's
translation of the very American thinker Donna Haraway into
French (Manifeste cyborg et autres essais: sciences,
fictions, féminismes) goes against that grain on many levels.
This brilliant interview by Cornelia Sollfrank, "France is
waking up," from 14 December 2003, gives a simple and dense
sense of the many people and practices that Nathalie wove
together:

   https://nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0304/msg00031.html

Some of the reports of Nathalie's death on Facebook are
public, some private; I'll attribute the ones that are public
by name, the others by initials. If someone wants to 'own'
their words, a quick reply to the list is all that's needed.

Catherine Lord:

   Nathalie Magnan died early this morning in Marseille of
   metastasized breast cancer. She was accompanied by two women
   who loved her, Reine Prat and Catherine Lord. it was, in the
   end, a peaceful crossing for a magnificent rebel--cyber
   feminist, new media artist, sailor, fighter, hacker,
   seductress in all manner of disciplines, dyke pioneer,
   activist. The world is smaller without her.

JT:

   Nathalie Magnan left this plane yesterday. The year is 1987
   or so. A group of students convened to carve out new ground
   with some amazing maverick professors in a program with that
   went by the name of History of Consciousness. The brain child
   of Norman O. Brown and Herbert Marcuse. Huey Newton was in
   one of the early cohorts. Hayden White came to UCSC and he
   hired a couple of young intellectuals, Jim Clifford and Donna
   Haraway. Around 1987 Nathalie brought Dee Dee Halleck and
   some other intrepid feminist guerrilla TV women to UC Santa
   Cruz to put on tape the wild wisdom of a young new professor
   named Donna Haraway. Thank you for it all, Nathalie.

   https://youtu.be/eLN2ToEIlwM

Ewen Chardronnet [FB translation]

   Nathalie Magnan died this morning very early at his home in
   Marseille, a quiet end at the end of palliative care and with
   women who have loved, queen prat and Catherine Lord. I wanted
   to visit him in early November, I post here these photos, in
   memory of this happy moment, our sailing towards tanger at
   fadaiat in 2005, this immigration reversed towards North
   Africa that she had me convinced Organize with her and many
   of our friends sailing enthusiasts. Remember sailing for
   geeks Jacques Servin, Nicola Triscott, Claire Pentecost,
   Pablo De Soto, Andy Bichlbaum, Marie Lechner, Marko Peljhan,
   Brian Holmes, Rob La Frenais, Valentin Lacambre...

DB:

   RIP dear one. This morning in Marseille the great Nathalie
   Magnan died. Impossible to fathom. She will never be
   forgotten. Ernest Larsen said it more eloquently than I
   could: "Nathalie embodied such a rare, radically individual
   spirit, it's a shock that it should ever be allowed to escape
   this world.

   "Fiercely loving, explosive fighter, filled with humor, irony
   & razor-sharp intellect. She struck sparks everywhere she
   went."

Thyrza Goodeve

   My dear friend from [UC Santa Cruz] Hist-Con days -- the most
   ferocious, sparkly, funny, flirtatious, fesity, and gorgeous
   Nathalie Magnan has passed to the other side. It is
   impossible to imagine the world without her spirit.


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