In a few years time, there will be more dead people than living people on Facebook. Explore how social media affects how we think about life, death, afterlife and the everyday with Professor Larissa Hjorth. In this lecture, Hjorth will consider the role of social media in art practice to consider how emotional and social playbour is presenting new forms of digital intimate publics. Drawing on her research and recent book, Haunting Hands (with Katie Cumiskey 2017), which investigates practices of loss and trauma in, and around, mobile media, Hjorth will discuss how loss and grieving on social media creates new ways of understanding the relationship between life, death and afterlife in everyday life.
Please note, doors open from 5:30pm for a 6pm start.
Tickets: $35 includes complimentary cocktail on arrival made by the Melbourne Gin Company
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ABOUT THE ARTIST
Distinguished Professor Larissa Hjorth is an artist, digital ethnographer and currently the Design & Creative Practice ECP Platform director at RMIT University. Hjorth has two decades experience working in cross-cultural, interdisciplinary, collaborative creative practice and socially innovative digital media research.
Since 2000, Hjorth has been researching the socio-cultural dimensions of mobile media and gaming cultures in the Asia–Pacific and has published a dozen books on the topic with presses such as MIT and Oxford University Press. Recent solo exhibitions include The Art of Play at Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne (July 2015). She co-curated Design & Play at The Design Hub with Lisa Byrne (April 2016) which included artists and designers exploring play. Hjorth has been a CI on five Australian Research Council grants as well as numerous arts funding and fellowships including Australian Council for the Arts New Media fellowship, Japan Foundation, Brain Korea fellowship, Asialink arts residency and Australia Council Tokyo studio.
ABOUT UNCOMMON KNOWLEDGE
ACCA’s 2018 lecture series, Uncommon knowledge: artists on their special interests gives eight artists a microphone and an hour to speak about topics that inspire their art and thinking. Featuring a trans-generational cast of artists, Uncommon Knowledge brings together elements of history, lifestyle, philosophy, sound studies, sexuality, cultural politics and more, to challenge us to think differently about society and the world around us.
Presented by Abercrombie & Kent, these hour-long lectures will be presented monthly on Monday nights at 6pm from April through to November. Each lecture will be accompanied by a unique cocktail created by our partners The Melbourne Gin Company and Starward Whisky.
