scholarly journals Ground Zero Revisited – Museums and Materiality in an Age of Global Pandemic

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 302-304
Author(s):  
Lindsay Anne Balfour

This paper examines the potential of convergence technologies in the process of 9/11 memorialization, particularly when materiality and its absence are so crucial to the in-situ narrative of post terror attack. Questions over the incorporation of virtual and digital media are not new in the context of COVID-19 but are perhaps more urgent than ever, as we all begin to grapple with the turn to technology as a surrogate for what we cannot physically provide. In particular, I trace the Derridean phenomenon of autoimmunity to draw parallels between memorial practices associated with both 9/11 and COVID-19. Ultimately, the migration online initiated by global pandemic reminds us that traumatic memory in particular is punctuated by gaps and absences; it insists on the recognition of other, stranger, incomplete and imperfect ways of knowing and commemorating.

2020 ◽  
pp. 107780042096013
Author(s):  
Pille Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt

This article discusses how different forms of autoethnographic production prompted by diverse forms of academic self-expression can lead to different types of knowing. Utilizing five examples from the Massive_Microscopic project, where participants responded to 21 different prompts inviting autoethnographic reflections about COVID-19 global pandemic, the article explores the responses from the perspective of alternative ways of knowing, reflecting on questions of motherhood, self-care, and performance in academia. Whether visual, rhythmic, or text produced from the perspective of things, the different modalities of the prompts allowed unexpected knowledge to emerge and supported deeper and more colorful reflections. Exploring the personal experience with the pandemic is expanded by the qualitative inquiry supported by different (self-)expression formats.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Wilkie

Inventing the Social, edited by Noortje Marres, Michael Guggenheim and Alex Wilkie, showcases recent efforts to develop new ways of knowing society that combine social research with creative practice. With contributions from leading figures in sociology, architecture, geography, design, anthropology, and digital media, the book provides practical and conceptual pointers on how to move beyond the customary distinctions between knowledge and art, and on how to connect the doing, researching and making of social life in potentially new ways. Presenting concrete projects with a creative approach to researching social life as well as reflections on the wider contexts from which these projects emerge, this collection shows how collaboration across social science, digital media and the arts opens up timely alternatives to narrow, instrumentalist proposals that seek to engineer behaviour and to design community from scratch. To invent the social is to recognise that social life is always already creative in itself and to take this as a starting point for developing different ways of combining representation and intervention in social life.


Author(s):  
James Rendell

The 2020 Covid-19 global pandemic has greatly impacted societies around the world, where governmental strategies to curb and control the outbreak have resulted in citizens being unable to attend public businesses and spaces. For musicians who rely on touring as a dominant part of their income, the pandemic has had a hugely negative effect on their finances since they can no longer play face-to-face shows. However, a number of artists have turned to digital media to remedy this, performing online to audiences via Web 2.0 platforms. To better understand this cultural phenomenon, the article introduces the concept of portal shows that employ a converge between traditional live gigs, screen media and new media technologies. Analysing the textual, affective, performative and economic dynamics of portal shows, the article examines three differing case studies: Code Orange’s album release show on Twitch.TV, Beach Slang’s acoustic performance on StageIt and Delta Sleep’s in-store show on Instagram. In doing so, the article argues portal shows offer novel and nuanced ways artists and audiences can engage with one another through spatial convergence afforded by video streaming technologies and digital interfaces. Such live events also offer just-in-time fan engagement but does so within a digital transcultural remit, aiding the support of virtual scenes. As a result, the article expands on what is considered pandemic media and subsequent audience affective registers and enriches the study of the music industry’s engagement with digital media and wider convergence cultures more generally.


2012 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 125-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Magali Peyrefitte

This paper presents an innovative insight into the complexities of the ways in which sense of place can be expressed and experienced. It particularly focuses on the phenomenological rapport participants have to the physicality of place and how it impacts on their ways of being, ways of seeing and on the construction of a sense of place (ways of knowing). In doing so it makes a case for conducting visual tours. Here I present the methodological framework that structured this approach and I give examples of how it can work. The narrative of this paper is constructed around three accounts of three different visual tours that were conducted in inner-city Nottingham. I argue that visual tours result in the combination of four types of intersecting narratives that give extra dimensions to the process of exploring ways of seeing and ways of being in the city: 1. the narrative of walking, 2. the visual narrative, 3. the narrative of the conversation in-situ 4. and finally the narrative of the written account by the researcher. All of these narratives are constitutive and constructive of a sense of place. In the case of my research on British Asian suburbanisation in Nottingham, these intersecting narratives brought to light a series of points on ways of seeing and ways of being and overall on ways of knowing the city. It highlighted a sense of place constructed around paradoxes, dichotomies and overall contrasted visions of the inner city where participants used to live and the suburbs of desirable housing where they now live. These kinds of observations are essential in understanding the way mobility and movements operate in the ‘multicultural city’.


Arts ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 18
Author(s):  
Andres Burbano

This report addresses the SIGGRAPH 2018 Art Gallery (Vancouver, 2018), its curatorial process, the conceptual guidelines, the methodological approaches, and the sources behind it. The gallery has emphasized a transdisciplinary perspective combining creative and critical projects coming from art, science, and technology. The exhibition was one component of the SIGGRAPH conference, and it was built upon five conceptual nodes, in this text, particular attention is paid to the historical node. The SIGGRAPH Art Gallery is an international show that in 2018 included the work of artists, engineers, and scientists from more than twelve countries participating in the exhibition in situ and from other ten countries participating in the online exhibition. In general terms, the dialog between a diverse set of projects is one of the most compelling aspects of the exposition, the participation of Indigenous artists working with digital media represented one of the most challenging and positive elements of the gallery. The theoretical reflections of Friedrich Kittler about the museums and their relationship with computation and information were a permanent source of inspiration. This text is located halfway between a report and a paper. Therefore, some sections are written in the first person.


2021 ◽  
pp. 097325862110002
Author(s):  
Alicia Torres ◽  
Claire Kelley ◽  
Sarah Kelley ◽  
Gabriel Piña ◽  
Isai Garcia-Baza ◽  
...  

Science and health journalists have incorporated digital media as a source for their daily news production process, but little is known about the potential impacts of using digital media data to inform the news production process in the context of a global pandemic, where information is rapidly changing. During the COVID-19 pandemic, families have struggled to ensure economic stability and good health as well as their children’s learning and development. The Child Trends News Service sought to broaden access to science-based information to support families during the pandemic through television news, testing whether digital media can be used to understand parents’ concerns, misconceptions, and needs in real time. This article presents that digital media data can supplement traditional ways of conducting audience research and help tailor relevant content for families to garner an average of 90 million views per report.


2021 ◽  
pp. 146879412110493
Author(s):  
Helena Cleeve ◽  
Lena Borell ◽  
Lena Rosenberg

This article brings methodological insight into in-situ drawings as representations of daily life with dementia. As part of ethnographic fieldwork in dementia care units in a nursing home, drawings were made on site by a researcher. We suggest that the ambiguity of in-situ drawings, and the ensuing possibilities to disambiguate them, is valuable. Inspired by Asdal and Moser’s (2012) concept of “contexting,” we experimented with arranging the drawings with fieldnotes, discussing them with staff members, as well as with configuring multiple drawings and fieldnotes in sequences. This led to reflexive engagements with the drawings, creating space for discussing concerns in research practices and care practices. Switching between different forms of contexting produced tensions, revealing that what was cared for through the practices of researchers, staff members, and residents, diverged. In this way, we argue that contexting in-situ drawings may intervene in ways of knowing, caring for, and living with dementia.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Siavash Shami ◽  
Babak Ranjgar ◽  
Mahdi Khoshlahjeh Azar ◽  
Armin Moghimi ◽  
Samaneh Sabetghadam ◽  
...  

Abstract The first cases of Covid-19 in Iran were reported shortly after the disease outbreak in Wuhan, China. The end of the Persian year and the beginning of the Nowruz holidays in the following year (March 2020) coincided with its global pandemic, which led to quarantine and lockdown in the country. Many studies have shown that with the spread of this disease and the decline of industrial activities, environmental pollutants were drastically reduced. Among these pollutants, Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) and Carbon Monoxide (CO) are widely caused by anthropogenic and industrial activities. In this study, the changes of these pollutants in Iran and its four metropolises (i.e., Tehran, Mashhad, Isfahan, and Tabriz) in three time periods from March 11 to April 8 of 2019, 2020, and 2021 were investigated. To this end, time-series of the Sentinel-5P TROPOMI and in-situ data within the Google Earth Engine (GEE) cloud-based platform were employed. It was observed that the results obtained from the satellite data were in agreement with the in-situ data (average correlation coefficient = 0.7). Moreover, the results showed that the concentration of NO2 and CO pollutants in 2020 (the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic) was 5% lower than in 2019, indicating the observance of quarantine rules as well as people’s initial fear of the Coronavirus. Contrarily, these pollutants in 2021 (the second year of the Covid-19 pandemic) were higher than those in 2020 by 5%, which could be due to high vehicle traffic and the lack of serious policy and law-making by the government to ban urban and interurban traffic. Furthermore, the increase of the NO2 and CO in 2021 was followed by an increase in the deaths caused by Covid-19 and triggering the fourth peak in the Covid-19 cases, signifying a link between exposure to air pollution and Covid-19 mortality in Iran.


Journalism ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 146488492110606
Author(s):  
Mette Mortensen

This article studies perpetrator livestreams as an emerging witnessing genre in today’s digital media circuit. Perpetrator livestreams challenge the norms of witnessing by undermining the ethos traditionally associated with testimonies. They also challenge the forms of witnessing by being integral to the attacks and disseminated across media. Combining scholarship on witnessing and liveness, this article proposes a conceptual framework for understanding perpetrator livestreaming as a witnessing genre, which falls into the three phases pre-mediation, mediation, and re-mediation. Moreover, a prominent example of perpetrator witnessing is analyzed: the livestreaming of the terror attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019.


2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 452-469
Author(s):  
Ross Poole

There are two memorials at the site of the World Trade Center: the above ground Memorial Park and the below ground Memorial Museum. They embody very different conceptions of how an event such as 9/11 should be remembered. The Memorial Park was an attempt to integrate the recognition of loss into the ongoing life of the city. It fails to do this, largely because it succumbs to the temptation to let the site itself—“Ground Zero”—do the work of memory. The two pools (“voids”) are located on the footprints of the two towers. They dominate the site, inheriting the clumsy monumentality of the destroyed buildings. The underground Memorial Museum combines relics, remnants, images, and newsreels, to involve its visitors in the emotional immediacy of the events of 9/11. It presents 9/11 as a traumatic memory, one to be re-experienced but not understood, placing it outside history in a kind of perpetual present. It reinforces what Marita Sturken identified as a national sense of innocence, and it militates against the development of an historical understanding of the causes and consequences of 9/11. In the final section of this article, I reflect on ways in Ground Zero might have been designed to create a site where residents, citizens, and visitors might have come together to mourn, reflect on, and seek to understand the events of 9/11.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document