Part of our Rewiring Consent: Data Visualization & Social Justice series
Quantum media work to enumerate human life, activity, and death - most often in the service of state, corporate, or regulatory interests. The practice of counting the dead is deeply entangled with the long histories the paperwork and media technologies used to certify and regulate the lives of U.S. citizens and expresses and shapes how the nation-state values different lives and bodies. Performing a long history/media archeology of death counts, I'll be asking us to collectively consider how consent, access, and representation play out differently depending on who is counting and who is counted. What can early modern and colonial practices teach us about the value traces in 21st century quantum media? If we think of mortality media as a kind of visualization of a mortal border crossing, what are the effects of forced participation, exclusion, and explicit silencing for what we "see"? (With responses from IU Faculty Justin Garcia (Gender Studies), Amy Gonzales (Media School), and Rebekah Sheldon (English).)
Dr. Jacqueline Wernimont directs the Nexus Lab at Arizona State University, and is a specialist in feminist digital media, histories of quantification, and technologies of commemoration. She is a collaborator on Eugenic Rubicon—a historical data and storytelling project; Vibrant Lives—an arts and performance-based collaboration; and Centers for Solutions to Online Violence—an initiative that provides rapid response to the harassment of women and feminists of all genders.