*Spreadable Media, Social Media and the Viral/Virtual Witness *
This panel invites explorations of how spreadable media, social media, and
viral/virtual witnessing both continue traditional documentary debates and
open up new challenges in the areas of theories, aesthetic forms, open space
formations, ethics and human rights. New circulatory networks of media, new
participants in documentation and documentary and ubiquitous tools for
film-making are impacting on the possibilities for creating human rights
action through media, on our understanding of the generation and reach of
testimonial story and visual evidence, and on the established traditions of
documentary. Where do issues of circulation, aggregation and remix intersect
with human rights values, documentary tradition and real-life social change?
What is at stake in the new mutating economies of representing and
circulating other peoples' suffering and our own? What new conceptual models
of advocacy media do these new media ecologies of networks and circulatory
systems necessitate? What is at play in the transition from curated space to
viral space? And what are the implications of circulation rather than fixed
exhibition? What place does aggregated user-generated content occupy in a
landscape of advocacy media? And what new palettes for advocacy media are
being invented, developed, imagined and mobilized in the current new media
ecology? What ethical issues are emerging in this new sphere?
Please send panel proposal to Sam Gregory (sam_at_witness.org) and Patty
Zimmermann (patty_at_ithaca.edu) *by March 12.*
*Biographical Statements:
*
*Sam Gregory* is Program Director at WITNESS (www.witness.org <
http://www.witness.org> ) which empowers people to use video and online
technologies as tools for justice, promoting public engagement and policy
change. He was the lead editor on Video for Change: A Guide for Advocacy and
Activism (Pluto Press, 2005). In 2007 he lead the development of the
curriculum for WITNESS' first ever Video Advocacy Institute. Videos he has
produced have been screened at the US Congress, the UK Houses of Parliament,
the United Nations and at film festivals worldwide. He has worked as a
television researcher/producer, and for development organizations in Nepal
and Vietnam, and holds a BA from Oxford University in History and Spanish,
and a Master's degree in Public Policy from Harvard's John F. Kennedy School
of Government. He is on the Board of the US Campaign for Burma, and the
Tactical Technology Collective.
*Patricia R. Zimmerman*n is Professor in the Department of Cinema,
Photography and Media Arts at Ithaca College, Ithaca, New York. She is
currently the Shaw Foundation Professor in the Wee Kim Wee School of
Communication and Information at Nanyang Technological University,
Singapore. She is the author of Reel Families: A Social History of Amateur
Film (Indiana University Press, 1995), States of Emergency: Documentaries,
Wars, Democracies (University of Minnesota Press, 2000), and coeditor of
Mining the Home Movie: Excavations in Histories and Memories (University of
California Press, 2008). She was coeditor with Erik Barnouw of The Flaherty:
Four Decades in the Cause of Independent Media (Wide Angle, 1996). Her book
on digital arts, Public Domains: Cinemas, Histories, Visualities (Temple
University Press, forthcoming), explores the relationship between
historiography, political engagements and digital art practices. She is
co-director of the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival (FLEFF).
--
Dr Leshu Torchin
Lecturer in Film Studies
University of St Andrews
Dept. Film Studies
99 North Street
St. Andrews
Fife
KY16 9AD
Scotland, UK
Tel. +44 (0) 1334 467 476
The University of St Andrews is a charity registered in Scotland, No: SC013532
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University of St Andrews Webmail: https://webmail.st-andrews.ac.uk
