"CONNECT.CONNECT.CONNECT." with performances, script, poems and images by Carina Albrecht, M. Astley, Ioana Jucan, Alexandra Juhasz, Lieke Rademakers, Kim van Ruiven and Bruno Zilli and a bot, conceived and built by Roopa Vasudevan, was made into a fake news poetry video through a collaborative process at the Digital Methods Summer School held in Amsterdam, July 1-5, 2019. It was edited by Matthew Hittle and refers loosely to the #100hardtruths #4 the internet is built on deceptions. It also speaks to a script written at the HASTAC conference in Vancouver, May 17, 2019 and a poem by M. Astley (here) written at the University of Sussex on March 20, 2018.
Group script-poem produced at HASTAC by responding over two sessions to a meme, and a
poem, and some feelings, and technologies
By Anne Balsamo, Alexandra Juhasz, Gary Lai, Nicole Manson,
Tara McPherson, Roopa Vasudevan, Aneesh Vashisht, Michele White
I'm a veteran.
I'm a refugee.
I'm a veteran and a refugee.
I'm a veteran refugee. I always leave home every chance I get because home is not enough to
satisfy everything you need. So, you go other places. And I've never felt at home
anywhere because I was always on the move looking for the next place to go. On
the other hand, I've always been at home wherever I've been.
Does anybody like that story? Does anyone here feel like that story resonates for you? Can you join us?
Yes. That resonates because I moved a lot when I was growing up and so I don't have one place that's really home except where I make home with people I love.
After hurricane Katrina there was no food or water in New Orleans. Cuba offered to come and provide us with water. The US said no.
I feel terrible that that happened to you. I feel awful. That means that you didn't have enough resources when you could've had some.
Everywhere I walk into, I walk in with my identity as a First Nations woman. Everywhere I go
that's how I identify. Yes, I've been mistaken for a Mexican or Polynesian when
I've been in those places or even in Southern California I was mistaken as
Mexican. But I went to Africa for the first time with my daughter cause she's half
Kenyan and I was told I wasn't indigenous, in fact I was white. To everybody
there because my skin wasn't black, I was white, and I actually on a drive got
referred to, cause my daughter's stepmom was driving us, the police officer asked,
"oh are you taking the boss around?"
That story resonates with me because I was born and grew up in the U.S., and I have traveled
around a lot of places in the world and I'm never identified as an American. I'm
always identified as something else. "Where are you really from?" And, in the
moments that I go back to India, I am always not identified as an Indian because I
carry myself in such a Western way that I couldn't possibly be from there.
A loose response to #100hardtruths-#fakenews #58: "choose to know, name, and share your own internet truths (an invitation)."
Referring to the poem by M. Astley
A script-poem conceived over two sessions at HASTAC by, Wendy Chun, Marika Cifor,
Kelly Dobson, Caelin Finnigan, Jace Harrison, Hannah Holtzclaw, Ioana Jucan, Alexandra Juhasz,
Brenda Longfellow, Sylvia Miller, and Karl Surkan, Daniel Temkin, Roopa Vasudevan
Narrator: Okay, there's one person standing alone on stage, we can see their activity on the
screen, and the way that they're represented on the screen is not what they actually look like.
There are ominous warnings flashing on screen that the power is about to go out.
Our character is tapping on the screen.
Person: Oh no! I heard about this happening in another place, is this real?
On-Screen: No, that's not real, that's just fake news, somebody trying to fool you. That never
really happens. “Do not be distracted from the truth of your own body.”
Person: Did you hear that?
On-Screen: What was that? I heard something too!
Narrator: Crashing sounds, the power cuts and the screen disappears, there is the sound of
feedback, then silence. .. the person is alone, they take off their headsets, they are
disheveled and disoriented.
Person: What just happened? Is this real?
On-Screen: “Tectonic assurance is fragile ground.”
Person: What happened to the network? They won't reboot it, what's going on?
Narrator: The voice-over actor comes on stage.
On-Screen/IRL: “The truth is the emptiness in the middle of the atom.”
Person: Who are you? Did you destroy my network? Are you some kid of terrorist?
On-Screen/IRL: “The truth is the impressionability of matter, of us, the truth is a space we fight to shape.”
A loose response to #100hardtruths-#fakenews #59: "silicon valley’s entrepreneurial capitalism leaves rubble in its wake" which was written by digital artist, Natalie Bookchin.
