Palah 파랗 Light Lab is a creative and critical space that fosters poetry, participation, and pedagogy through technology and equity. As a knowledge-design, new media, and poetry lab, the Palah Light Lab investigates critical questions in cultural criticism along with the networked arts and humanities. Based out of the University of Buffalo Department of Media Study, Palah Light Lab 2021 Spring series of cohort workshops emphasizes participatory queer and feminist digital arts and writing practices.
Glitch/Want: Conversations From the Palah Light Lab
We warmly invite you to GLITCH/WANT: CONVERSATIONS FROM THE PALAH LIGHT LAB held this Friday, June 11th. GLITCH/WANT features the exciting work of the Palah Light Lab cohort members in impromptu/informal panels. These panel conversations aim to ask and prompt questions across the diverse materials and projects as lab members’ work GLITCH-ES hegemonic ideologies and demonstrates WANT. While organized for generative dialogue with cohort members, we warmly welcome outside guests as interlocutors and allies to engage with the presentations and join the conversations with us.
REGISTRATION LINK
PROGRAM & SCHEDULE
1:00 pm EST – Brief Welcome – Margaret Rhee, Cody Mejeur, Blair Johnson
Panel one – 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm (moderated by Margaret Rhee)
Title: Queer and Trans Songs, Readers, Memories, and Poetry
| name + brief description | bio |
| Azalia Muchransyah – hybrid documentary film / Attention at Tension (2020, desktop documentary, 8m52s) or Tamu (2018, mockumentary, 14m51s) (tbc) | Azalia Muchransyah is an award-winning filmmaker, writer, and scholar from Indonesia. She received her Ph.D. in Media Study from the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York (SUNY) in 2021. Her research interests revolve around the intersections of media study, film study, film production, documentary and its hybrid forms, HIV study, feminist study, and activism, specifically in Indonesia. Her films have been officially selected and screened in international film festivals and academic conferences. |
| Charlie Best – video, media, drawing, and fabric mediums, expressing the nonbinary imagination+more | Charlie Best (they/he) is an artist, sometimes teacher, and sometimes sewist still figuring things out. They are from the Western New York region and currently reside in Providence, RI. |
| Rachid – E-literature, the reader, and the literary possibilities | Rachid Benharrousse is a doctoral candidate of Cultural Studies at the Mohammed V University of Rabat, a Research Fellow of New Media and Digital Studies at the University at Buffalo, Research Fellow at War, Conflict & Global Migration at Global Research Network, an Early Career Researcher at AMEWS, and a Research Collaborator at the Paris Institute for Critical Thinking. He was recently a researcher in the Digital Self-Determination Research Sprint at Berkman Klein Center & Digital Asia Hub, Harvard University. His research interests encompass New Media Studies, Game Studies, Postcolonialism, Cultural Studies, Digital Studies, and Diasporic Literature. |
| Jocelyn E. Marshall: posthumousbirds, hybrid poetry-creative nonfiction collection | Jocelyn E. Marshall is the 2021-2022 Dissertation Scholar at Brandeis University’s Women’s Studies Research Center and an English doctoral candidate at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Her work focuses on queer and womxn artists working at the intersections of traumatic experience, displacement, and gender and sexuality studies. Jocelyn’s scholarly and creative work have appeared or are forthcoming in the Journal of American Culture, Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Literature in Context (ABC-CLIO LLC, 2021), Tripwire: A Journal of Poetics, Assaracus: A Journal of Gay Poetry (Sibling Rivalry Press), Strange Stories Vol. 1 (Forty-Two Books, 2019), and elsewhere. Currently, Jocelyn serves on the College Art Association’s Committee on Women in the Arts and is co-editing a volume on trauma-informed pedagogy with Candace Skibba (Emerald Publishing, 2022). |
| Huan He – Poetry | Huan He (he/him/his) is a queer Asian/American writer and gamer based in Los Angeles. He is a Ph.D. candidate in American Studies & Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. His research engages Asian/American studies, media and technology studies, visual culture, digital game studies, and poetics. He also writes poetry that explores race, sexuality, intimacy, and belonging from the perspective of a queer Chinese American raised by the prairies. His critical writing has appeared in or is forthcoming in American Quarterly, College Literature: A Journal of Critical Literary Studies, and Media-N. His poetry is forthcoming in wildness, Alaska Quarterly Review, and DIALOGIST. |
| George – poetry | George Abraham (they/he) is a Palestinian american poet and writer from Jacksonville, FL. Their debut collection Birthright (Button Poetry, 2020) won the Big Other Book Award, and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Bisexual Poetry. He is a board member for the Radius of Arab American Writers (RAWI), a recipient of fellowships from Kundiman and The Boston Foundation, and winner of the 2017 College Union Poetry Slam Invitational’s Best Poet title. Their work has appeared in The Nation, The American Poetry Review, The Baffler, The Paris Review, Mizna, and elsewhere. A graduate of Swarthmore College and Harvard University, Abraham currently teaches at Emerson College, and will be a Litowitz MFA+MA Candidate at Northwestern University in the fall. |
Panel two – 3:30 pm to 5:30 pm
Title: Personalities, Affect, and Games (moderated by Cody Mejeur)
| name + brief description | bio |
| jess erion – Rhubarb Roastery trailer (and maybe a bonus surprise) | Jess Erion (any pronouns) is a writer and game designer with an academic background in literature and anticolonialism. They are a recent alum of the NYU Game Center’s MFA program, and they studied at Harvard during undergrad. Currently, Jess is working as an editor at Red Thread Games while also developing the upcoming indie mobile game Rhubarb Roastery. |
| Jordan Clapper – Twine game and Indigenous games research | Jordan Clapper is a doctoral student in English at Brandeis University. They study Indigenous literature and video games and the queering effects these media have on the narratives they tell and the spaces they inhabit. They are looking to make games from an intersection of queerness and indigeneity as a way to promote Indigenous futurity. They are also studying the complicated ways that Indigenous identities manifest off the reservation. |
| Joan Nobile: “No Lone Wolves”, short documentary, 14:15 | Joan Nobile, as an emerging artist, has explored feminism, harassment, marginalized representation in media, media literacy & critique, and mental illness through her body of work. Her mediums include video games, glitch art, documentary, audio production, live video production, and video essays. She is pursuing a Master’s Degree in Media Art Production at University at Buffalo. She lives and works in Buffalo, NY with her partner and lots of books. |
Panel three + final reception – 6:30 pm to 8:00 pm
Title: Digital Memories, Mars, and AI Afterlives (moderated by Blair Johnson)
| name + brief description | bio |
| Sarah Sgro – poetry // introducing future collaborative multimedia project | Sarah Sgro is a PhD Candidate in English at the University at Buffalo and received her MFA in Poetry from the University of Mississippi. She is the author of If the Future is a Fetish (YesYes Books 2019) and has published work in Peach Mag, Cosmonauts Avenue, BOAAT, and other journals. Her research interests include queer theory, the non/human, and digital and electronic waste. |
| Hanyu Liao – intro presentation + video | Hanyu Liao is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher who is currently pursuing a practice-based PhD in the Department of Media Study at the University at Buffalo. Liao received her BA in Information Design, Tsinghua University, China; MFA in Digital+Media, Rhode Island School of Design; and Interdisciplinary MA in Humanities with a concentration in Film and Media Study and a secondary academic area in Art at University at Buffalo. With the bicultural and multi-disciplinary background, her artistic practice is diverse in medium and context, while unmistakably keeping its concept-driven quality. |
| Evan Moritz – poetry // a live performance of a poem about the Martian Soli Sanus Project. | Evan Moritz (he/him) recently received his MA in theatre and performance at University at Buffalo and is an incoming PhD student at the University of Toronto’s Center for Drama, Theatre, and Performance Studies. He is interested in the outer limits of science-fiction and fact with research focused on performance in Martian settlements of the near future. This work explores the relationship between colonization of planetary bodies, historic settler epistemes, the loss of liveness in the communication gaps between planets, global catastrophe on Earth and off, and more broadly, the sad or depressing aspects of the future. |
| Morgan Sammut – interactive fiction piece on twine based on Galatea, sff | Morgan Sammut is an undergraduate at Mount Holyoke College, pursuing a degree in English with a minor in Computer Science. Her interests include electronic literature, video games, and hybrid writing. She is working on two projects currently, a Twine piece and a digital reimagining of Frankenstein. |
Radical Poetics of Form: Digital and Visual Poetry
Facilitation: Keith S. Wilson
Description: The revolution will not be televised–what if it was? What would it mean then? In this workshop, we will talk about writing digital poems. What are the unique affordances that a digital poem grants us, and what are the ways that we can use those affordances to create something that communicates a message that could not be communicated in a traditional poem?
This event will include an introduction to Twine, web-based software for authoring games, poetry, electronic literature, and interactive fiction. The event does not require any prior knowledge or experience with Twine, or any programming experience––all you need is a computer with a web browser!
Date/Time: April 9th, 3 PM EST via Zoom
Registration Link: https://bit.ly/31E2Jpc
Bio:
Keith S. Wilson is a game designer, an Affrilachian Poet, and a Cave Canem fellow. He is a recipient of an NEA Fellowship, an Elizabeth George Foundation Grant, and an Illinois Arts Council Agency Award, and has received both a Kenyon Review Fellowship and a Stegner Fellowship. Additionally, he has received fellowships or grants from Bread Loaf, Tin House, the MacDowell Colony, Vermont Studio Center, UCross, the Millay Colony, and James Merrill House, among others. Keith was a Gregory Djanikian Scholar, and his poetry has won the Rumi Prize and been anthologized in Best New Poets and Best of the Net. His book, Fieldnotes on Ordinary Love (Copper Canyon), was recognized by the New York Times as a best new book of poetry.
Keith’s nonfiction has won an Indiana Review Nonfiction Prize and the Redivider Blurred Line Prize, and has been anthologized in the award-winning collection Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy. His poetry and prose have appeared in Elle, Poetry, The Kenyon Review, and Crab Orchard Review, among others.
Keith’s work in game design includes “Once Upon a Tale,” a storytelling card game designed for Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago in collaboration with The Field Museum of Chicago, and alternate reality games (ARGs) for the University of Chicago. He has worked with or taught new media with Kenyon College, the Field Museum, the Adler Planetarium, and the University of Chicago.
This event is co-hosted and sponsored by Palah Light Lab, The Poetics Program, the Department of Media Study, Game Studies, and the Digital Scholarship Studio & Network.
Brilliant Imperfection: Writing About Our Bodyminds
Facilitation: Eli Claire, UB Center for Diversity Innovation Distinguished Visiting Scholar https://www.buffalo.edu/diversity-innovation/distinguished-visiting-scholars/cohort.html)
Description: Join queer trans disabled poet-activist Eli Clare for a writing workshop exploring the embodied brilliance and imperfection of who we are, particularly as trans/non-binary/gender non-conforming and/or queer people.
Date/Time: March 5th, 2 PM EST.
Workshop Date/Time: March 5th, 2 PM EST via Zoom
Registration Link: bit.ly/3dVkIhY
Bio: White, disabled, and genderqueer, Eli Clare lives near Lake Champlain in occupied Abenaki territory (also known as Vermont) where he writes and proudly claims a penchant for rabble-rousing. He has written two books of creative non-fiction, the award-winning Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure and Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation, and a collection of poetry, The Marrow’s Telling: Words in Motion, and has been published in many periodicals and anthologies. Eli speaks, teaches, and facilitates all over the United States and Canada at conferences, community events, and colleges about disability, queer and trans identities, and social justice. He is currently a UB Center for Diversity Innovation Distinguished Visiting Scholar https://www.buffalo.edu/diversity-innovation/distinguished-visiting-scholars/cohort.html). Among other pursuits, he has walked across the United States for peace, coordinated a rape prevention program, and helped organize the first ever Queerness and Disability Conference.