The Beauty of Weirdos

Our final episode highlights two things: the beauty of weirdos & your human hope. Project organizer, Professor Alexandra Juhasz, penned these fragments, anonymously, at a Fake News Poetry Workshop held at the Toronto home of that workshop’s facilitator, Professor T.L. Cowan. Later, at another workshop held within an NYU Performative Writing class and led by Professor Barbara Browning, these words were transformed into a song—by Barbara—quite unaware of who had written them. Two fragments of poetry formed a crossroads between T.L., Barbara, Alex, and others. And, the gifts of time, thought, place, art, and care—so live in this episode—also allow it to model HardTruth #23 from the online primer on digital media literacy: "galvanize people at the crossroads of cinema and community." These words were originally penned by The United States of Cinema, a collective that organized a National Event Day in April 2017. The movie 1984 was screened across the U.S, as a way to speak against fake news, totalitarian rule, and censorship. At the intersections of moving images, artmaking, and ways of being together, we can and often do manifest power and hope. Poetry, songs, performances, movies, parties, and workshops are places where truth intersects with our knowledge, disdain, and plans for each other and the internet. This podcast has been another crossroads for people, poetry, community, criticism, activism and care. The generous, volunteer contributions of scores of poets, scholars, and activists allowed for the many connections that have been built here in the summer of 2020. The stellar efforts of director and editor, Matthew Hittle, social media specialist, Julia Gill, and copyeditor, Gavin McCormick have provided the steady pulse that underwrote and enabled it all. Thank you for listening!Twitter: @100HardTruthsInstagram: @100HardTruthsYouTube: 100 Hard Truths Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Om Podcasten

We engage in radical digital media literacy by enjoying a bite of education and a bit of poetry, creating humane responses to fake news and social media in the era of Covid-19.Each short episode assembles materials made over three related efforts. First, complex and consequential ideas about fake news: “hardtruths.” These were gathered in 2017 for an online primer in digital media literacy, #100hardtruths-#fakenews. There you can find scores of resources about fake news by artists, journalists, activists, scholars, and more. http://scalar.me/100hardtruths.Next we offer poems that build off of, respond to, or deepen a hardtruth. These were written in 2018 and 2019, at Fake News Poetry Workshops: encounters that address these complex concerns through art, intimacy, technology, and poetry. http://fakenews-poetry.org.Finally, given both the digital and viral truths wrought by the crisis of COVID-19, and to provide some small relief, we provide resources and methods to deepen connection and possibility during a time of social distancing and via technology.Each episode offers things to do with others as well as things that were done before and for you. Tender hand-offs of digital things remind us how we can use technologies that distance us physically for better. Making and making use of poetry and related knowledge can create verification engines that rely on belief structures outside the endangering logics of the internet and the fake news propelled therein.We are people, distanced but maintaining, and we need more than the transmission of messages and data. We want connection, goodness, reason, feeling, and change. In a time when we are more reliant on digital technology than ever, each episode demonstrates methods to take part in digital defiance, without collusion, and with care for our internet things and digital ways.Join us! Read or respond to a poem or hardtruth found on the two websites above.Organize your own Fake News Poetry Workshop.Reach out with questions or content @ 100hardtruths@gmail.com.Twitter: @100HardTruthsInstagram: #100HardTruthsYouTube: 100 Hard Truths   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.