Shoshanah is an arts practitioner working in New York for the past ten years.  She is currently researching the affective potentialities of digital technology and social media in relation to psychology, communication, and identity.  Additionally, Shoshanah is exploring how we can redefine the concepts of ‘liveness’ and ‘ephemerality’ in terms of digitization.  Combining her previous interest in avant-garde theatre, and her current research in technology, Shoshanah staged a “digital happening” through which to examine the ethnography of a digital community.  She is currently building the website for the second iteration of #digitalhappening, which will occur in April 2017.  Shoshanah hopes to delve further into the question: can an experience which is born-digital have tangible real-world affect... can something have presence, when no longer present?

Why PS @ NYU?

Being part of the diverse Performance Studies community at NYU has exposed me to new, intriguing, and sometimes jarring perspectives.  My ideas about art and life are challenged on a daily basis—by both professors and colleagues—teaching me the importance specificity, word-choice, and backing-up my claims with theory.  Learning to ask what digitizing live-performance does, rather than analyzing what digital performances mean, has opened up a “Pandora's box” of research questions.  Often overwhelming, but always fulfilling, coming to NYU (especially after being out of school for ten years) has felt like coming home.