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BIMI-Pittsburgh Annual Lecture: Jessica FitzPatrick, 'Lived Space as Critical Media Practice'

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Venue: Online

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BIMI-Pittsburgh Annual Lecture: Jessica FitzPatrick, ‘Lived Space as Critical Media Practice’ 

 Please find the link for the event here: https://eu.bbcollab.com/guest/d09ea058f2a14bb6a987110255421708

Online event: 18:00-19:30, Friday 19 November 2021.

 

This year Jessica FitzPatrick (University of Pittsburgh) will deliver the annual BIMI-Pittsburgh Lecture online: ‘Lived Space as Critical Media Practice’.

 

The discussion will be chaired by Sarah Joshi (Pittsburgh London Film Program) and the respondent will be Bartek Dziadosz (Derek Jarman Lab and Birkbeck).

 

When place becomes the motivation for a media project, certain questions arise. What elements of place will be prioritized? Which mediums can best capture a sense of lived space? How might a community of place serve as more than just an object of study? These are nontrivial problems, ones which might challenge the appeal of a spatial project. Theorists like Edward Soja, Yi-Fu Tuan, David Harvey, and Doreen Massey value the lived dimensions of space as the realm of creative possibility. This talk builds from their premise, contending that relational third space, or lived space, offers a way for media practitioners to attune their practice. Anchored in explorations of University of Pittsburgh student media projects, with short readings of professional pieces like AJ Contrast’s augmented reality Still Here (2009) and Roger Ross Williams’ virtual reality documentary Traveling While Black (2019), this argument for lived space as a media practice will consider questions of spatial storytelling, placed power hierarchies, and design justice. 

 

Speaker profile: Jessica FitzPatrick is the Director of the Digital Narrative and Interactive Design program at the University of Pittsburgh. She conducts research at the confluence of postcolonial theory, speculative fiction studies, spatial studies, and new media creation. She regularly teaches courses about Narrative and Technology and Composing Digital Media. Her current work includes the book project, Hacking the Future: the Space and Place of Earth in Postcolonial Science Fiction, and digital and public humanities ventures like the Secret Pittsburgh Digital Guidebook [https://secretpittsburgh. pitt.edu], which exhibits student-generated explorations of Pittsburgh sites and stories.  

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