Communications, Transformations, Futures

I'm heading to the University of British Columbia on Unceded Musqueam (xʷməθkʷəy̓ əm) Territory this week for the 2019 Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory conference.

HASTAC is "an interdisciplinary community of humanists, artists, social scientists, scientists, and technologists changing the way we teach and learn." This year's conference theme is "Decolonizing Technologies, Reprogramming Education," and there are some inspiring plenary speakers lined up, including Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Karyn Recollet, and Elizabeth LaPensée.

I'll be part of a panel titled Communications, Transformations, Futures, presenting a talk on "Building Co-Immunity in Wiikwemkoong and Masiphumelele: Participatory Science Fiction to Inoculate the Civic Imagination." If you're in Vancouver on Friday, come say hi!

Rappin' at the Research Meeting

Huge thanks to the inspiring team at the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation for the opportunity to present at their research meeting yesterday at the University of Cape Town's Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine.

Happening now! @alisonhum presents on her #participatory #sciencefiction #storytelling #Shadowpox project with @DTHF_SA at @UCT_news @UCTIDM Institute of Infectious Disease & Molecular Medicine Centre #immunize #VaccinesWork #masiphimelele #cowpox #smallpox pic.twitter.com/PamxIBjJHJ

— Jenn Warren (@jennwarren) March 15, 2019

Thanks too to talented photographer and communications consultant Jenn Warren for documenting the talk!

We do not live in isolation! Your #immunity is part of the community. @alisonhum talks #shadowpox, #Participatorystorytelling for #research, Superhuman embodiment, projection and protection, and the #Cytokine storm #coimmunity #community @DTHF_SA @UCT_news @UCTIDM @yorkuniversity pic.twitter.com/5uriXv4dO0

— Jenn Warren (@jennwarren) March 15, 2019

On location at the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation Youth Centre

Photographer and communications consultant Jenn Warren joined our Shadowpox group recently at the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation Youth Centre in Masiphumelele, Cape Town, and took some beautiful shots. Pictured: Sibulele Bontshi, Abongile Maputhuma, Buhle Mavi, Zanele Melapi, Lazola Nkelenjane, Asiphe Ntshongontshi and Aphiwe Zabezolo.

Click on images to enlarge (and check out more behind-the-scenes photos here).

Bongo Mavi, with Alison pretending to be his cell phone

Zanele Melapi 

Lazola Nkelenjane

Abongile Maputhuma

Alison, Abongile, Zanele and Lazola in the "EduZone" computer lab

Discussing the next scene...

Superhero Cellphone Cinema

As a warm-up to our Shadowpox video workshop, participants including the Youth Interns of the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation Youth Centre in Masiphumelele, Cape Town, wrote, directed, shot and assembled their own superhero storyboards using Comic Life. Huge thanks to Plasq for generously donating the software to the Youth Centre's EduZone computer lab!

Created by and starring: Sibulele Bontshi, Abongile Maputhuma, Buhle (Bongo) Mavi, Zanele Melapi, Lazola Nkelenjane, Asiphe Ntshongontshi and Aphiwe Zabezolo.

Click on images to enlarge (and check out more behind-the-scenes here).

Aphiwe Zabezolo (in character) arriving at the DTHF Youth Centre

Asiphe Ntshongontshi casting a solar-powered shadowpox effect on Zanele

Lazola, Sibulele, Asiphe, Zanele and Bongo

Glimpse/Blink at the University of Cape Town

The University of Cape Town's renowned Centre for Theatre, Dance & Performance Studies "teaches dance and theatre performance as modes of critical inquiry, creative expression, pedagogy and public engagement." 

Veronica Baxter is a leading scholar of social and applied theatre and drama and of practice-as-research in South Africa, so I was thrilled when she extended an invitation to share a Shadowpox "Glimpse/Blink" workshop with her students. 

Thanks to Prof. Baxter and everyone at UCT for their warm welcome and their shadow-fuelled flights of imagination! 

Building Black Panther

For last week's Cellphone Cinema workshop at the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation Youth Centre, I put together a collection of links and videos on the making of the film Black Panther.

Early storyboards for the ancestral plane sequence by artist Simeon Wilkins:
http://www.storyboardsinc.com/boards/view/id/215/sectionId/2/categoryId/0/#9750

(click image above to enlarge)

An animatic is a video showing how the panels from a storyboard would look as a sequence of shots. Here are a few from Simeon Wilkins, starting with the ancestral plane sequence above:

And why not, here’s storyboards for T’Challa’s first trip to the Ancestral Plane #BlackPanther #WakandaForever #MarvelCinematicUniverse pic.twitter.com/Hh0buIVzlq

— Simeon Wilkins (@SimeonWilkins1) February 18, 2018

(Click below for more...)

Brainstorm profiles Shadowpox

Brainstorm is a monthly newsletter published by the Office of the Vice-President Research & Innovation at York University. Megan Mueller, senior manager of research communications, wrote a wonderful profile on Shadowpox:

Interactive video game highlights the impact of vaccine decision-making
https://yfile.news.yorku.ca/2019/02/07/interactive-videogame-highlights-the-impact-of-vaccine-decision-making/

The piece also included a new video with Steven J. Hoffman, the scientific director of Shadowpox: The Antibody Politic (among his many other titles):

Debajehmujig Catches Shadowpox

This past week I had the joy of collaborating on a pilot workshop for Shadowpox: The Cytokine Storm with Debajehmujig Storytellers on Manitoulin Island. Shout-out to the talented and fabulous Bruce Naokwegijig, Joahnna Berti, Daniel Recollet-Mejaki, Sheila Trudeau, Sheldon Mejaki, Reece Wabegijig, Samantha Brennan and Bradleigh Steven Trudeau.

The Debajehmujig Creation Centre in Manitowaning, Manitoulin Island, Ontario

Discussing a scene with Debaj artistic director Bruce Naokwegijig 

Bradleigh Steven Trudeau records in the sound studio.

In the loading dock for Sheila Trudeau's "video journal" scene 

Friday's Shadowpox workshop – Debajehmujig Storytellers, Val O'Leary, Andrea Letander-Trudeau and Adrian Rampersad of Wikwemikong High School, and Maurianne Reade of the Northern Ontario School of Medicine – having waaay too much fun. 

Shadowpox technical director LaLaine Ulit-Destajo joined us on Saturday, and got to catch the company's brain-bending Christmas clown show Gulchmuss. (Of which songs still stuck in head...)

Inoculating at the Ideas Digital Forum

Ideas Digital Forum was two fascinating days in October of "engaging conversations between artists, curators, digital specialists, and scholars dedicated to thinking critically and collectively about the future of digital technology, digital art and public art galleries."

The symposium was supported by the Canada Council for the Arts’s Digital Strategy Fund, whose principles include:

• "a focus on collaboration, partnership and networking; 
• open-mindedness, and willingness to share knowledge, results, ideas and lessons learned; 
• experimentation, risk-taking and iterative development."

The forum's organizers have just posted videos from the full lineup of speakers, including this one where I had the chance to share some of the thoughts and challenges from the creation of Shadowpox: The Antibody Politic.




I'm hugely grateful to Linda Jansma of the Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Zainub Verjee of the Ontario Association of Art Galleries, and everyone else who worked to create such an inspiring meeting of minds.

We are one month away from our #ideasdigitalforum symposium with @theRMG . Visit the website to see more from our awesome line-up of presenters. https://t.co/h5epNeQLI8 pic.twitter.com/jBs5H9snD3

— OAAG (@OntArtGalleries) September 19, 2018

Viral art at the exhibition Public Notice

Toni Hafkenscheid took some beautiful official installation shots of the exhibition Public Notice, curated by Sonya Jones at The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, where Shadowpox: The Antibody Politic is showing until January 19, 2019. Here's the full exhibition catalogue:



And here are a few of my favourite images:

Abraham Anghik Ruben, The Right of Passage

Abraham Anghik Ruben, The Right of Passage; Ruth Cuthand, Trading

Shadowmapping

You know that feeling when... you suddenly realize your doctoral research may have been influenced by a comic book you read when you were sixteen?

(This post is a not-yet-coherent collection of thoughts and extended quotes bouncing between a 34-year-old superhero storyline and a raw, recent theatre controversy, by way of the design of the Shadowpox virus. One day it may yield a succinct essay, but for the moment I'm ruminating out loud as an academic experiment.) 

Artist Bill Sienkiewicz's brief but legendary run collaborating with writer Chris Claremont on the X-Men spinoff comic book The New Mutants (issues #18-31) had two highlights. The second was the introduction of the character Legion, who is currently enjoying a mindbending television adaptation by Noah Hawley.

The first was the 1984 Demon Bear Saga (currently in production as a feature film). In these three issues (#18-20), according to Jay Edidin and Miles Stokes of the podcast Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men, "you’re watching the definition and scope of superhero comics change and stretch. We are – literally and figuratively – off the map."

It’s worth remembering, as you flip through these, that you’re watching the definition and scope of superhero comics change and stretch. We are–literally and figuratively–off the map. (New Mutants 

That's the "literal" map, up there in the left-hand corner. (New Mutants #20) 

New Mutants #20, "Badlands", brought our heroes to a climactic battle on an astral-Plains. The shadowy Demon Bear, which the team originally believed was a figment of their leader Danielle Moonstar's nightmares, had attacked her and left her in hospital fighting for life.