Life After: Activist Memorials and Digital Collaboration
The Public Policy Center, as part of its 25th Anniversary celebration, will sponsor in part:
Life After: Activist Memorials and Digital Collaboration
A Symposium of Public Discussions and Performances
October 11, 2013: 9:30am-6pm
Locations: Old Capitol Museum, Iowa Theatre (formerly Bijou) in IMU, the Englert Theatre
See http://dsph.uiowa.edu/lifeafter for detailed schedule, sponsors, and up-to-the-minute-updates.
Free and open to the public
Inspired by deepening public and scholarly interest in commemoration and memorialization, this one-day interdisciplinary symposium on Friday, October 11 will unite local and guest speakers whose work intersects with public and/or digital humanities exploring the activist potentials of memorial practices. Once a concept dominated by the monolithic monuments of state, today’s memorial studies relish alternatives, layers, and collaboration, often reframing old spaces or creating new ones through digital technologies. By engaging rather than unceremoniously burying dark and even invisible pasts, we work to build more deliberate futures.
Schedule highlights:
Old Capitol Museum, Senate Chamber
9:30 am Welcome
9:45-11 am Mapping and Designing Memory
Mona Smith (mapping Native memory online); Linda Bolton (Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Gardens); Shalla Ashworth (The Old Capitol Museum)
11 am-12:15 pm Netizens and Hacktivism: International Online Responses to Loss
Joseph DeLappe (hacktivism and anti-war gaming and design; Iraqi Civilians’ Memorial); Jiyeon Kang (netizens, South Korean vigils, political rhetorical agency)
1:15-2:45 pm Moving Past(s)
Mark NeuCollins (AIDS Quilt Touch mobile app development team); R. Clifton Spargo (anti-elegy; Voices and Faces Project)
Iowa Theatre, Iowa Memorial Union (formerly Bijou Theater)
3:00-4:45 pm Performing Autobiography, Queer(ing) Pasts, Fleeting Memories
Premiere of “Memorials,” a new song cycle and film; Kim Marra’s Horse Views; Working Group Theatre’s Broken Chord
Englert Theatre: Douglas and Linda Paul Gallery
5pm Closing reception for Life After and Opening of Black Angel Invitational Exhibition of community art and writing inspired by the cemetery art of Iowa City