Black Lunch Table (BLT) is an oral history project that mobilizes a democratic writing of cultural history through a radical reimagining of strategies for digital authorship and archiving. BLT engages in the production of discursive spaces wherein artists and community members engage in dialogue on a variety of critical issues. BLT roundtable events provide physical and digital infrastructure for community discourse, which is recorded and archived on the BLT website. Parallel to its creation of physical spaces that foster community and generate critical dialogue, BLT is creating a digital space for a Linked Open Data (LOD) approach to Black studies and social justice issues. BLT’s use of network analysis, as an organizing principle for its archive, is an innovative application of DH methods that disrupts traditional archiving practices.
The Black Lunch Table Archive : A Radical Reimagining of Digital Authorship
March 3, 2020
MITH Conference Room
Speaker Bios
Based in Chicago, Jina Valentine is a visual artist and Associate Professor of Printmedia at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (previously UNC Chapel Hill). Her independent practice is informed by the intuitive strategies of folk artists and traditional craft techniques, and interweaves histories latent within found texts, objects, narratives, and spaces. Jina’s work involves language translation, sourcing and mining content from material and digital archives, and experimental strategies for humanizing data-visualization. Her work with the archive is also informed by her work with Wikipedia—considering its organizational structure, collective content creation, and how metadata contributes to informational hierarchies (what’s visible, what’s accessible). Jina received her BFA from Carnegie Mellon University and her MFA from Stanford University.
Based in Chicago, Jina Valentine is a visual artist and Associate Professor of Printmedia at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (previously UNC Chapel Hill). Her independent practice is informed by the intuitive strategies of folk artists and traditional craft techniques, and interweaves histories latent within found texts, objects, narratives, and spaces. Jina’s work involves language translation, sourcing and mining content from material and digital archives, and experimental strategies for humanizing data-visualization. Her work with the archive is also informed by her work with Wikipedia—considering its organizational structure, collective content creation, and how metadata contributes to informational hierarchies (what’s visible, what’s accessible). Jina received her BFA from Carnegie Mellon University and her MFA from Stanford University.