Spotlight

A Pop-Up Cloud Panel on COVID-19, Dystopian Reality and Online Carnival

UCI's Comparative Literature doctoral student, Shiqi Lin, is a co-organizer and key-speaker for a virtual pop-up session this Thursday, 4 p.m.

Join us for a cloud panel on COVID-19 and online sociality, organized by Shiqi Lin (UC Irvine) and Kaiyang Xu (USC). Details on the speakers, suggested readings, and panel format in the attached panel description and flyer.

In the Clouds: COVID-19, Dystopian Reality and Online Carnival
March 26, 2020 4pm PST / 7pm EST Cloud Panel on Zoom
In light of the global spread of COVID-19, we invite colleagues from all disciplines to join us for this pop-up cloud panel. Bringing expertise in biopolitics, media studies, visual ethnography, urban studies, diaspora studies and Chinese cultural studies, this panel is an experimental endeavor to discuss digital media and societal fears in the online clouds - Zoom, that is. Speakers will gather on Zoom from four universities and explore a collaborative model of virtual conferencing with all audiences. We draw inspiration from “cloud clubbing,” a creative practice engaged by self-quarantined Chinese web users to create sociality and boost online economies amidst the COVID-19 outbreak. We will discuss comparatively Chinese and American media infrastructures and emergent forms of online sociality that respond to the epidemic spread, government control, infrastructural breakdowns, splintered transnational media and shared vulnerability. In a time of global crisis, we invite all interested to gather together for solidarity, playfulness, mutual care and collective thinking.

Join Zoom Meeting
https://uci.zoom.us/j/215830254?pwd=Q2c5b1dQaXZyN200cDZyOWtBZ3hndz09
Meeting ID: 215 830 254 Password: 068551

Please feel free to direct questions to Shiqi Lin (shiql11@uci.edu) and Kaiyang Xu (kaiyangx@usc.edu). We look forward to seeing you at our “cloud clubbing”!

Shiqi Lin authored, "CUT! Community, Immunity, Vulnerability in the Time of Coronavirus," UCHRI Foundary (March 2020)