This project considers what it is to live, die and persist in the context of South East Asia and East Asia in a time when people engage in "multiple places of dwelling" (Graham et al., 2013). The project aims to examine practices online and offline, how they interleave and, crucially, how those practices are audienced, consumed and effected in the lives of publics (if at all). The project also aims to historicise current practices and displays through considering the evolution of sociopolitical and socio-technical context such as norms and normativities (e.g. gender), infrastructure and information and communication technology (e.g. mobile phones), ideologies and citizenship. The project's focus is not only on the past; through considering particular figures (e.g. bloggers) as well as technologies (e.g. the digital camera) the project will try to understand contemporary times and practices across different geographies as emerging from both the traditional and the modern. The project will be achieved through focusing on how people, for example celebrities and micro-celebrities, present and assemble themselves and their relations from the point of view of an audience or public, in pictures, in words, online and offline. The project will also examine persistence online and offline: how aging and death are audienced and their associated normativities. This focus of audiencing will serve as a conduit into the lives of young, educated, English speaking people of different genders, ethnicities and religious belief. The results will provide insights into the normativities, visibilities and configurations of a new generation of locally embedded, globally aware, hyperconnected (South) East Asians positioned in the midst of tradition and modernity.

PI & Co-PI(s): Connor Graham, Eric Kerr, Alfred Montoya, Jolynna Sinanan & Crystal Abidin