Wednesday, August 12, 2020; 7pm
40 minute talk followed by 30 minutes of public debate broadcast live at thelab.org
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The Holy Ghost in the Machine: Digital/Spiritual Storytelling in the Time of COVID-19

Marvin K. White explores and theorizes on the digitized new realities of sheltering-in-place and social distancing. Through poetry, prose, conversation and public theologies White invites us to reimagine what it means to operate in the creative and the prophetic during the twin pandemics of systemic racism and COVID-19. Without physical audience or congregation, how are we shaping or being reshaped creatively and spiritually in this virtualizing moment? How do we know without physical audience or congregation, that our art and our message have not become algorithmic? How do we know when we are experiencing The Holy Ghost in the Machine?

Marvin K. White, MDiv, is currently serving as the Minister of Celebration at the world-renowned GLIDE Church in San Francisco. He is a graduate of The Pacific School of Religion, where he earned a MDiv. He is the author of four collections of poetry: Our Name Be Witness; Status; and the two Lammy-nominated collections last rights and nothin’ ugly fly. He is articulating a vision of social, prophetic, and creative justice through his work as a poet, artist, teacher, collaborator, preacher, cake baker, and Facebook Statustician.

The Forum is a bi-weekly experiment in creating discourse within the context of isolation. Art creates a space for reconsidering our knowledge across various social and professional fields. It asks us: Why do we perceive things the way we do? What are we living for? How can we reimagine our relationships to the human and non-human world? The Forum proposes that the project of freedom is a project of making a world with others. So, we invite you to help us answer: what can we do now?

Please bring your ideas, proposals, questions to discuss following the talk.

Photo: Fox Nakai