Viral Imaginations: A Digital Archive of Pandemic Times
Description
The Viral Imaginations: COVID-19 project, launched in the early days of self-quarantine, serves as a gallery and archive of the imaginative and artistic expressions of Pennsylvanians through creative writing and visual art in response to their first-person, lived coronavirus pandemic experiences. Current and former Pennsylvanians of all ages, have submitted—and continue to submit—their creative works, which are displayed in a publicly-accessible, online, curated gallery that will be preserved as a historical archive of this pandemic. An interdisciplinary project, Viral Imaginations, brings together scholars and specialists from multiple domains, including: art education; bioethics; women’s, gender and sexuality studies; communications; information technology; and data analytics. The Viral Imaginations: COVID-19 project addresses the theme of hybridity through the digital submission of creative works, lived experiences, and implementation of pedagogy and curriculum, as well as analysis of content in relation to art, history, bioethics, and education.
Takeaway
The Viral Imaginations: COVID-19 digital archive offers an innovative method of storytelling that reflects a hybrid, multimedia narrative form (Benmayor, 2009, p.188). Constructing a safe and empowering space for creative expression by Pennsylvanians across strata of race, ethnicity, language, age, socioeconomic status, education, and ability, the archive provides a platform for the preservation of unique and diverse narratives. Situated knowledge areas are illuminated through a collage of creative visuals and texts. This session will demonstrate how digital archives and hybrid modes of digital representation can yield critical theory, scholarly discourse, and pedagogical opportunities in various fields. Such archival work encourages ordinary citizens to share testimonials of their experiences in the form of creative writing and visual arts.
Benmayor, R. (2008). Digital storytelling as a signature pedagogy for the new humanities. Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, 7(2), 188-204. doi:10.1177/1474022208088648
Abstract
In an era of uncertainty, with simultaneous crises impacting health, social justice, the environment, and the economy, the arts and the humanities are more necessary that ever to sustaining human wellbeing. The arts and the humanities provide sensory ways of knowing and affect our emotions, attitudes, decisions, and behaviors. Archival galleries of creative expression capture and present hybrid ways of understanding historic events by documenting an array of narratives reflecting the lived experiences of those who have sheltered-in-art. Through visual and textual analysis, we can identify emergent themes captured in the Viral Imaginations gallery and derive insights into the physical and emotional experience of living during a global pandemic.
Moreover, such a collection of digital representations also provides opportunities for pedagogy. Even in the midst of this multi-fold pandemic of the coronavirus, racial injustice, economic insecurity, and environmental destruction, systemic change toward social justice unfolds, as the world is no longer as it was pre-coronavirus, and the Viral Imaginations project offers snapshots into that unfolding. This presentation will explore Viral Imaginations role in a new curricula, as health humanities and bioethics encounter artistic narratives.