New Media and Civic Arts Series: Marisa Morán Jahn

Part of the New Media and Civic Arts Series, hosted with Comparative Media Studies

Marisa Morán Jahn is a multi-media artist, writer, educator and activist, whose colorful, often humorous uses of personae and media create imaginative pathways to civic awareness of urgent public issues. Working collaboratively, her projects include a classic American road trip, CareForce One, in a 50-year-old station wagon, advocating issues concerning care workers that became a PBS film series; and Bibliobandido, a story-telling initiative for Honduran children featuring a masked bandit who devours stories. Jahn, winner of numerous awards, is co-founder of Studio REV-, a non-profit organization of artists, technologists, media makers, low-wage workers, immigrants and teens who producing creative media and public art about the issues they face.

The Civic Arts Series, which is part of the CMS graduate program Colloquium, features talks by four artists and activists who are making innovative uses of media to reshape the possibilities of art as a source of civic imagination, experience and advocacy. Using a variety of contemporary media technologies–film, web platforms, game engines, drones–the series presenters have opened up new pathways to artistic expression that broaden public awareness around compelling civic issues and aspirations of our time.