Something I thought about:

  • I spent a few days participating in the DH Unbound 2022 conference, which was terrific. ACH 2019 was one of the best conferences I’ve ever attended, and I was not sure how it’d translate to a digital space. I missed the in-person conversations and post-talk drinks, etc., but the conference itself was terrific and translated well to a virtual space. I don’t think I’ve ever attended such a diverse event that wasn’t limited to PoC, and because it was online, it was more international.
  • Much of the conversation centered on data / narrative — who decides what constitutes data and how it’s used? How can a group own and analyze its own data? How do we decolonize “official” representations? Our talk coincided nicely with another project — we had a similar approach of adding voices/narratives to “official” maps — but there was a project that analyzed the Norton Anthology of American Literature’s attempts at diversity and inclusion, and the researchers argue that after a certain point, simply adding voices dilutes the impact of each. Our projects haven’t been large enough to encounter this, but there’s an interesting tension between inclusion and curation.

Something I did:

Something I read:

“…we really have to be careful about the commodification of pain and trauma within our work and what is required of us from outside of our community, and sometimes from within our community. I feel like we have to make sure that we’re giving ourselves permission to have the same type of freedom that any artist could have, an artist of any background. It’s really important to not just hang onto the joy, that’s important, and we need that for so many reasons, for survival, for resilience. But it’s also as a rebellion, you know, but I think that if by showing our whole self. What we’re doing is making an argument for our complete and beautiful humanity.”