#Metoo: embodiment, activism, and archives

Since October 2017, the hashtag #metoo, created in 2007 by activist Tarana Burke, has been used on social media as a vehicle for telling intimate, personal stories of sexual assault, abuse, and harassment. In 2018 I began collecting a library of over 2 million English-language #metoo data points on Twitter using all open source tools to create a new series of immersive video installations. Since the majority of #metoo content is hosted on proprietary, monetized platforms whose purposes are often antithetical to those of scholars, activists and artists, continuing to archive or interpret this data raises critical questions around embodiment, digital activism, and ownership as they relate directly to digital scholarship, digital art, and online community building. This is an ongoing discussion in collaboration with archivists managing the #metoo Digital Media Collection at the Schlesinger Library at Harvard University. For this presentation, I will discuss critical questions around embodiment, activism, and identity as they relate directly to digital scholarship and online community building, proposing how we might be able to use technology as a form of restorative justice. You can learn more about this work at www.CodedGlass.com