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USC-MIT
conference addresses rhetoric around "digital divide" and
expands perceptions of minorities' use of technology
Posted
March 28, 2001 • Contact information
Most
discussions of the "digital divide" erase the numerous contributions
of minority artists, activists, entrepreneurs, journalists,
and scholars. Researchers in MIT's Program in Comparative
Media Studies and USC's Annenberg Center for Communication
will host a three-day conference, "Race in Digital Space,"
to explore current issues and celebrate the accomplishments
of minorities using digital technologies, Friday, 27 April
through Sunday, 29 April 2001 on the MIT campus. The conference
is free and open to the public.
"Cyberspace
has been represented as a race-blind environment, yet we don't
shed our racial identities or escape racism just because we
go on-line," said Henry Jenkins, professor, director of Comparative
Media Studies at MIT, and co-organizer of the event. "The
concept of 'digital divide,' however, is inadequate to describe
a moment when minority use of digital technologies is dramatically
increasing. The time has come to focus on the success stories,
to identify examples of work that has increased minority access
to information technologies and visibility in digital spaces."
Conference
organizers hope the event will serve as a touchstone for thinking
critically about race in a wide variety of digital spaces.
"We need to think beyond the screen and the mouse," said Tara
McPherson, professor at USC's School of Cinema-TV and conference
co-organizer. "Digital spaces extend to a whole range of 'tote-able'
street technologies from cell phones and beepers to Gameboys,
music equipment and more. We're interested in the way these
forms constitute new publics."
Plenary
panels will explore such issues as: E-Race-ing the Digital;
How Wide is the Digital Divide; Authenticating Digital Art,
Expression and Cultural Hybridity; and Speculative Fictions/Imaging
the Future. Breakout sessions, designed for focused conversations
with smaller groups of conference participants, will address:
Art and Hactivism; Funding the Arts-Creative Capital; Digital
Business-From Netrepreneurs to Corporations; Hactivist Workshop-Organizing
the Million Women March; Hate Speech; Job Opportunities and
Training; and Community Best Practices. A keynote will be
presented by Walter Massey, president of Morehouse College.
"The
ways in which we represent ourselves and use digital media
raises significant issues," said Anna Everett, professor at
the University of California at Santa Barbara and conference
co-organizer. "We need to begin exploring answers to such
important questions as 'What cultural and social baggage do
we carry into the digital domain?' and 'How have minority
communities deployed digital tools to comment on digital culture,
to reconfigure the history of racism, and to claim a more
powerful voice in shaping the future?'"
SPEAKERS
While
the event is being planned within the academy, organizers
have invited a diverse group of speakers to address an equally
diverse audience, which will include scholars and teachers,
professionals, artists, writers, policy makers, social and
cultural commentators, community leaders, and young people.
Confirmed speakers include:
Vivik
Bald, (aka DJ Siraiki), Co-founder, Mutiny
Nolan Bowie, Senior Fellow, JFK School of Government, Harvard
University
Karen Radney Buller, President, National Indian Telecommunications
Institute (NITI)
Farai Chideya, Editor, PopandPolitics.com
Mel Chin, Artist
Beth Coleman (aka DJ Singe), Co-director, SoundLab Cultural
Alchemy
Ricardo Dominguez, Co-founder, The Electronic Disturbance
Theater (EDT)
Coco Fusco, Associate Professor, Tyler School of Art, Temple
University
Jack Gravely, Office of Workplace Diversity, Federal Communications
Commission
Paul D. Miller (aka DJ Spooky), Artist, Musician, Writer
Lisa Nakamura, Assistant Professor of English, Sonoma State
University
Alondra Nelson, Ph.D. Candidate, American Studies, NYU
Mimi Nguyen, Ph.D. candidate, Comparative Ethnic Studies,
U.C.-Berkeley
Elizabeth Nunez, Distinguished Professor of English, Medgar
Evers College, CUNY
Alex Rivera, Digital Media Artist and Filmmaker
Kalamu ya Salaam, Poet and Community Activist
Ana Sisnett, Executive Director, Austin Free-Net
Thuy Linh Tu, Ph.D. Candidate, American Studies Program, NYU
Jamille Watkins-Barnes, Business Consultant, Classic Business
Development
ART EXHIBITION, DIGITAL SALON, AND DANCE
PERFORMANCE
In
coordination with the conference, a concurrent video show
and digital salon is being be curated at the List Center for
the Visual Arts. "The exhibition will feature the work of
innovators and visionary film, video, new media, and website
designers whose work deals specifically with the intersection
of race and technology," said Erika Muhammad, Ph.D. candidate
in Cinema Studies at NYU, co-organizer of the conference,
and curator of the exhibition at LIST Visual Arts Center.
"In
the ever-changing terrain of new media productivity, issues
of race and ethnicity ferment in digital space. Artists who
tackle issues of race in their work are faced with fresh challenges
and opportunities as they build and define what will be the
most powerful networks on earth," Muhammad said.
Included
in this digital salon, video program and soundscape are works
by artists who are building digital habitats and laying political
foundations through the use of hi-tech documents. Spanning
the past 20 years, the program will include experimental film
and video, net.art, CD-ROMS, websites and aural mixes.
A
performance event featuring DJs and live video mixing by Vivek
Bald (DJ Siraiki), Beth Coleman (aka DJ Singe), and Paul D.
Miller (aka DJ Spooky) will be held for conference participants
and students on the evening of Saturday, 28 April 2001. MIT
Assistant Professor Tommy DeFrantz will also perform "My Digital
Body," an original dance piece developed for the event.
PRE-CONFERENCE
WORKSHOP
A
pre-conference workshop for Boston metropolitan and New England
regional educators, artists, and technology center directors
will be held on Wednesday, 11 April 2001, 11:00 a.m.-3:00
p.m., Bartos Theater, MIT Campus. "We want to spotlight community
'best practices' and encourage conversations among the dozens
of Boston-area technology centers that support minority communities,"
said Paula Robinson, founder of the Institute for the Integration
of Technology and Education and conference co-organizer.
All
events are free and open to the public. To learn more and
register, visit:
http://cms.mit.edu/race
ORGANIZERS
AND SPONSORS
The
Race in Digital Space Project is organized by the University
of Southern California and the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology in conjunction with New York University and University
of California at Santa Barbara. The conference is sponsored
by USC Annenberg Center for Communication, USC School of Cinema-Television,
MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, MIT Program
in Comparative Media Studies, MIT Communications Forum, MIT
Council for the Arts, MIT LIST Visual Arts Center, MIT Program
in Women's Studies, and the NYU Department of Cinema Studies.
Major financial support has been provided by the Ford Foundation
and Rockefeller Foundation. Microsoft is an in-kind sponsor.
CONTACT:
Alex
Chisholm
Program in Comparative Media
Studies
alex@mit.edu
617.253.6447
OR
Sarah Wright
MIT News Office
shwright@mit.edu
617.258.5400
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