Life After New Media

*** Life After New Media ***
4-5.15pm Seminar Room, Oxford Internet Institute, 1 St Giles
* Please sign up by emailing [email protected]*

Sarah Kember, Professor of New Technologies of Communications,
Goldsmiths, University of London
With response by Nina Wakeford, Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford
Chaired by Dr Isis Hjorth, Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford

In this talk Sarah Kember will speak to her formulation of mediation
as a vital process, as outlined in her recent book Life After New
Media (MIT Press, 2012 – with Joanna Zylinska). In this book Kember
argues that we should move beyond our fascination with
objects–computers, smart phones, iPods, Kindles–to an examination of
the interlocking technical, social, and biological processes of
mediation. Doing so reveals that life itself can be understood as
mediated–subject to the same processes of reproduction,
transformation, flattening, and patenting undergone by other media
forms. Drawing on the work of Bergson and Derrida, Kember suggest that
the dispersal of media and technology into our biological and social
lives intensifies our entanglement with nonhuman entities.
Mediation–all-encompassing and indivisible–becomes a key trope for
understanding our being in the technological world.

This event is a collaboration between the Ruskin School of Art and the OII.
*** Please sign up by emailing [email protected]***

**About Sarah Kember**
Sarah Kember is a writer and academic. She is Professor of New
Technologies of Communication at Goldsmiths, University of London.
Recent publications include a novel The Optical Effects of Lightning
(Wild Wolf Publishing, 2011) and a monograph Life After New Media:
Mediation as a Vital Process (The MIT Press, 2012). She co-edits the
journals of photographies and Feminist Theory. Current research
includes a feminist critique of smart media (iMedia. The gendering of
objects, environments and smart materials, Palgrave, forthcoming) and
an affiliated novel, provisionally entitled A Day In The Life Of Janet
Smart. Sarah is also co-PI of an RCUK funded project on digital
publishing and part of the Centre for Creativity, Regulation,
Enterprise and Technology (CREATe).