Hackers On Planet Earth

Not Your Boy Genius: Feminist and Queer Hackers in Film and Pop Culture

Jasmin Hagendorfer

From cyberpunk fantasies to contemporary screen culture, hackers are often imagined as brilliant, antisocial, male-coded figures in hoodies, basements, and command lines. But what happens when the hacker is female, queer, trans, femme, monstrous, seductive, collective, or politically disobedient?

This talk explores the representation of female, female-read, and queer hacker figures in film, fiction, and pop culture. Taking cinema as its main entry point, it will look at how women and queer characters have been portrayed as coders, engineers, system-breakers, information smugglers, digital witches, cyberpunks, whistleblowers, and technological tricksters. The talk will move through iconic and lesser-known examples – from mainstream hacker films and cyberpunk narratives to queer, feminist, and speculative media and ask what these figures reveal about power, gender, surveillance, desire, and technological agency.

Saturday 1900 Crystal Ballroom

Based in Vienna, Jasmin Hagendorfer is a contemporary artist, filmmaker, and curator, known for her bold approach to sociopolitical topics and gender identity. She is the co-founder and festival director of the Porn Film Festival Vienna, a unique event combining feminist and queer perspectives with art and pornography. Her TEDx talk “How Good Porn Can Save the Planet” explores the environmental potential of alternative porn. She contributed to Fragile Fäden - Beziehungsweisen im Kapitalismus and is co-editor of the Arse Elektronika anthology Sexponential. Her short films, including Musings of a Mechatronic Mistress, Slugfest, and Fudliaks! Tear The Sexes Apart!, have screened at festivals internationally and merge media art with critical cultural reflection.