#community making

[tulipisagarden]

This better work or I'm crying.

[kkatot]

tumblr

by Katrin Tiidenberg, Natalie Ann Hendry & Crystal Abidin

Katrin Tiidenberg, Natalie Ann Hendry, and Crystal Abidin offer the first systematic guide to tumblr and its crucial role in shaping internet culture. Drawing on a decade of qualitative data, they trace the prominent social media practices of creativity, curation, and community-making, and reveal tumblr’s cultlike appeal and position in the social media ecosystem.

"Sharp, perceptive, and empirically solid, this book is nothing short of a scholarly eulogy to the platform and community that tumblr used to be."Jenny Sundén, Karlstad University

"So much more than just an overview of tumblr, this book is a generous examination of an all too rare form of online sociality – and a platform designed to help it thrive. It is also a sharp reminder that, though platforms can protect their communities, they can just as easily cut them off at the knees." Tarleton Gillespie, Microsoft Research look at the extended table of contents here

UK: September 2021 / US: November 2021 | Paperback 978-1-5095-4109-6 | £15.99 / €19.90 / $22.95

20% discount*: go to politybooks.com and use code POL21 (*promo code is valid until 31/12/2021)

Free exam copies are available to full time professors teaching classes of over 12 students for whom this book may be appropriate as a core text. For more information, get in touch with us [email protected]

[queerephemeralities]

Insubordinate Spaces, 180

The future of scholarship concerned with social justice requires scholars to know the work we want our work to do; to frame scholarly relations not as competition but as accompaniment; to insist that our ideas and activism be infused with ethical judgement and wisdom; to clarify the significance of different aspects of our scholarly lives; to acknowledge that our work speaks for us but also for others; and to recognize the dialogue and dialectical nature of our views of society. Honing the critical edge of scholarship concerned with social justice depends not only on what scholars know but also on how we go about knowing.

[queerephemeralities]

Insubordinate Spaces, 32-33

Acts of accompaniment can generate creative alternatives to the limitations of hte current historical conjuncture. They can help author and authorize a new social warrant grounded in preferential options for the least powerful, in a politics of respect, friendliness, and humility. A social warrant is a widely shared consensus about what is desired and what is feared, what is permitted and what is forbidden, who is included and who is excluded, what has been done and what should be done. A social warrant is rarely written down or openly announced. It comprises a collective common sense that guides attitudes, aspirations, and actions. A social warrant functions as a de facto social charter that contains foundational principles about obligations, rights, and responsibilities. Accompaniment can be an important crucible of a new social warrant because it recognizes that solidarity is not simply found, but rather needs to be forged. It is poetic and pragmatic, diagnostic and therapeutic. It does not see itself as creating „the“ revolution but rather moves in the direction of thinkers such as the EZLN‘s Subcommandante Marcos, seeking experiences of sharing that might ultimately make a revolution possible.

[queerephemeralities]

Insubordinate Spaces, 23-24

Accompaniment is a disposition, a sensibility, and a pattern of behavior. It is a commitment based on a cultivated capacity for making connections with others, identifying with them, and helping them. Three different formulations of accompaniment inform the deployment of the concept in this book: (1) the articulation and implementation of liberation theology as accompaniment conceived and advanced by Archbishop Oscar Romero in El Salvador in the 1970s, (2) the ways in which accompaniment functions as a practice in music making, and (3) the metaphor of accompaniment as the movement of a community of travelers walking down a road together. ... Accompaniment recognizes the inescapably social nature of living in the world. It focuses on making connections with others, finding common ground, and uniting around the concerns, interests, and ideas of the people with the greatest need for profound social change.

[queerephemeralities]

Insubordinate Spaces, 20

The insubordinate spaces that Jerome Smith has inhabited and created have provided him with beliefs, values, and a way of life that proceed from principles very different from he market logic of neoliberalism. Insubordinate spaces are innately social, collaborative, and collective. They are places where strangers meet and where unexpected associations, affiliations, and alliances are envisioned and enacted. They are sites where people think in terms of „we“ instead of „me.“

[communityofcolours]

The Inspiration

The project is inspired by the idea of community making and union between different people of different ethnicity. My sculptures aim to represent what every human being have in common with everybody else, specifically in relation to: physicality, environment and culture.

Physicality is about the body features that are similar for all human beings: two hands, two feet, two eyes, a heart; the environment in which everybody lives is composed by: fauna, flora, urban areas, energy production. Cultural traits might be different between one ethnicity and another, but all deal with the same topics, including: food, knowledge, music, the arts.

From an artist perspective, my work is inspired by the colourful, playful sculptures of Niki de Saint Phalle. She used materials and mediums that are hard, though, I want to transpose that vitality into a more soft, feminine medium, that’s why I chose to use fabric. The idea of composing large scale fabric installations is inspired by another artist: Joana Vasconcelos, whose work I find fascinating, too.

The festival target audience is mainly of young people, so I chose to use bold, toy-like colours and a visual, icon based language.

Niki de Saint Phalle

Joana Vasconcelos