I gotta right to sing the blues
I gotta right to feel low-down
I gotta right to hang around
Down around the river
Louis Armstrong (https://youtu.be/BUuI3oHQfm8)
Curated by Geert Lovink (Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam) and Denise Thwaites (University of Canberra)
Entrance free but please register here: https://events.humanitix.com/platform-blues
Co-presented by the Centre for Creative and Cultural Research, The Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance and the News and Media Research Centre (all University of Canberra) and the Institute of Network Cultures (Amsterdam). This gathering of bodies and souls coincides with the one-month residency of Geert Lovink at the University of Canberra.
Join us for a one-day event that maps the depression, boredom and loneliness that feed (and are fed by) social media platforms. Beyond fake news, our platform dependencies, miseries and anxieties are all too real. Many feel sadness about our collective inability to change – yet cannot imagine deleting social media accounts out of fear of isolation. Platform Blues are an area of interest for multiple and varied forms of research, which intersect with our topic through critical enquiry into techno-feudalism, memes, online dating, doom scrolling, right-wing libertarian/conspiracy cultures and girl theory. Alternative ways of community organizing provide glimpses of hope, as seen in protest and solidarity movements, such as those addressing climate action, to #metoo, to Gaza. Platform blues in Australia exist, but neither strict regulation nor the melancholic dream of going offline will solve it. How can our phones become a tool of connection again? Resisting the distractions of AI eye candy, let’s address the reality of our tech-induced mental poverty.
Preliminary Program:
Opening: 10:00 – 10:15am
Welcome – Geert Lovink and Denise Thwaites
Session 1: 10: 15 – 11:15am
Hiding in and from the internet: Avoidance and Dissociation
Moderator: Nicole Curato
Ella Barclay – ‘Unkempt Cognition’, re: Doomscrolling, Dissociating from World
Caroline Fisher – Young People, Internet and News Avoidance
Morning break (15mins)
Session 2: 11:30 – 1:30pm
Volatile Spaces: Toxicity and Transformation
Moderator: Ashley van den Heuvel
Erin Stapleton – Catastrophic Loss, Colonial Logics in Digital Spaces
David Nolan – Social Media in the Lead-up to the 2023 Indigenous Voice Referendum
Temple Uwalaka – Social Media Activism in Nigeria
Phoebe Quinn – Presentation and Demo of Polis
Lunch (1hr)
Session 3 : 2:30 – 4:30pm
Bittersweet Stories: Making Sense of Uncertainty and Chaos
Moderator: Geert Lovink
Sophie Dumaresqu – Inter-Species Connection to Find Joy and Love Among Platform Blues
Catherine Page-Jefrey – Parental Anxiety in the Age of Social Media
Tyne Sumner – The failure of the internet novel
Mathieu O’Neil – Media Literacies in Platform Capitalism
Afternoon break (15 mins)
Session 4: 4:45 – 6:00pm
Moderator: Denise Thwaites
Melinda Rackam – The Tawdry Nostalgia for Past Forms
Litia Roko – Performance
Geert Lovink – From Sad by Design to Platform Brutalism
If you like, use the QR code below to register for this free event:
