TRANSGRESSING MEDIA APRIL 5 | Conference Opening

SAT APRIL 5
Critical Themes in Media Studies presents Transgressing Media
Opening Keynote: Helen Nissenbaum, New York University
Opening Transgressive Media Exhibition
Wollman Hall, 5th Floor, 66 West 11th Street, NY, NY 10011
6 p.m. – 7 p.m.

“Obfuscation as a Transgressive Practice against Data Tyranny”

Obfuscation is a tactic proposed by Helen Nissenbaum as a means of resistance against online surveillance and surreptitious data collection processes. As digital technologies become more sophisticated in data collection, replication, and retrieval, it is less possible for one to maintain privacy and untraceable online activity. The concept of obfuscation draws from a history of diversionary tactics, and informs a strategy in rendering one’s data obsolete, raising a series of philosophical, ethical and technical challenges. Helen will present her obfuscation projects and their critiques.

This discussion will begin our conference’s exploration of transgressive options and dilemmas when online users to obscure their traceable data.

Featuring Original Media Works:
No Pic No Reply Jessica Kingdon
Hopelessly Devoted Josephine Skinner
Hand to Heart Kara Stone

Reception to follow Opening Keynote Address
CRITICAL THEMES IN MEDIA STUDIES is an annual conference run by the graduate students of the School of Media Studies in the New School for Public Engagement. This year marks the 14th year of Critical Themes in Media Studies Graduate Conference. Critical Themes provides a distinguished forum for students from The New School, New York City, and the world to present original scholarship on topics related to the study of media.

We invite you to join us in exploring the theme Transgressing Media, and to explore the ways media theory and practices respond to the notion of boundaries. We can understand transgressing as a mutable process, analogous to the perpetual progression of our media landscape and the discourses embedded within society. What results is a definition of transgressing that is dynamic, individuated, and always subject to change.

This year’s conference demonstrates an exhilarating heterogeneity of responses and approaches with which we can begin to address this question, ranging from the interrogation of ‘fixed’ epistemological legacies, to a resistance against corporeality as a fleshy and material body. Critical Themes in Media Studies creates a productive space to think and create anew and one, which motivates the continuation of a dialogue to transgress beyond the bounds of this conference.

For more conference schedule and collection of abstracts, please visit criticalthemes.newschool.edu/2014