Uncommon Knowledge: Larissa Hjorth

In a few years time, there will be more dead people than living people on Facebook. This lecture by Professor Larissa Hjorth explores how social media affects how we think about life, death, afterlife and the everyday. Hjorth considers the role of social media in art practice to consider how emotional and social playbour is presenting new forms of digital intimate publics. Drawing on her research and recent book, Haunting Hands (with Katie Cumiskey 2017), which investigates practices of loss and trauma in, and around, mobile media, Hjorth discusses how loss and grieving on social media creates new ways of understanding the relationship between life, death and afterlife in everyday life. Distinguished Professor Larissa Hjorth is an artist, digital ethnographer and currently the Design & Creative Practice ECP Platform director at RMIT University. Hjorth has two decades experience working in cross-cultural, interdisciplinary, collaborative creative practice and socially innovative digital media research. Presented by Abercrombie & Kent, ACCA’s 2018 lecture series, 'Uncommon knowledge: artists on their special interests' gives eight artists a microphone and an hour to speak about topics that inspire their art and thinking. Featuring a trans-generational cast of artists, Uncommon Knowledge brings together elements of history, lifestyle, philosophy, sound studies, sexuality, cultural politics and more, to challenge us to think differently about society and the world around us. More info: https://acca.melbourne/program/uncommon-knowledge-larissa-hjorth-on-the-lives-deaths-and-afterlives-of-social-media/ Image: Larissa Hjorth, Still Mobile 2010. Courtesy the artist