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Meme Lab

Meme Lab Menu
  • Meme Lab
  • Content
  • Programs sub-menuAffiliated Programs
    • Written Arts
    • Film and Electronic Arts
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The Bard Memetics Laboratory (Bard Meme Lab)
is an interdisciplinary research group focusing on digital memes, online media, and content dissemination.

The Bard Memetics Laboratory, aka the Bard Meme Lab, provides a space for examining online culture through the lenses of cinema and media studies, the experimental humanities, cognitive science, and the visual arts. By analyzing not just the content of memes but their very form, and through a focus on understanding meme creators themselves as artists, the Lab engages with the contemporary networked world to produce original research, publications, events, software, and other interventions.

 If you’d like to join the lab or receive updates, email [email protected]. We are open to all undergrads.
Our Publication

Our Publication

CONTENT: A Memetics Research Journal

Volume One of Content, A Memetics Research Journal is now available for download!  Featuring work by Tiffany Sia, John Olson, Markela Zeneli, Maruo C. Martinez,  Jovana Maksić, Idil Galip, Beatrix Horan, McKenzie Wark, autogynophiles_anonymous, Esther Neff, Jenson Leonard, Georgie Payne, Erin Taylor, Cecily Chen, Isabella Haid, Charlotte Foreman, Sacha Medjo, Patia Borja, Brandon Vanbach

About the Meme Lab

  • Our History
    The Bard Memetics Laboratory was founded in 2019 as an undergraduate-led research group in the Film and Electronic Arts program focusing on memes, online media, and content dissemination. Since its inception, it has grown into an interdisciplinary network, active throughout many different Bard communities, dedicated to the investigation and analysis of new digital culture.

    Follow Us
    Instagram: @brdmeme
    Twitter: @BadMemeLab2
    Twitch: @bardmemelab
  • Our Staff
    Ed Halter, Advisor and Executive Director 
    Mitch Anzuoni, Advisor and Head of Research

    María Bernedo, Student Co-Head: [email protected]
    Isabella Haid, Student Co-Head: [email protected] 
    Nik Slackman, Alumni Coordinator: [email protected]
  • Join our mailing list here!

Events

  • September 24, 2022
    Taraneh Azar
    Taraneh Azar is an internet reporter specializing in the feedback loop between politics and digital content. They have written extensively on what we can learn about American politics through memetic culture and previously worked as an investigative reporter for USA Today and NBC News. Taraneh will be sharing this expertise with the Meme Lab as we unpack Dark MAGA, Dark Brandon, and confront some important questions: what does it mean that the left can’t meme? Who is the common enemy between the political left & right? This event will kick start our 2022-23 Speaker Series. Taking place at Bard’s Center for Experimental Humanities, it will be open for in-person attendance and accessible online via Twitch.  
  • April 20th, 2021
    Jenson Leonard (Cory In the Abyss)
    While most meme artists create work that feeds off the daily news cycle and viral online trends, Jenson Leonard instead focuses on creating what he calls “evergreen” images—content that remains consistently relevant over a long period of time. Embracing the appearance of an almost absurdly high production value, @CoryInTheAbyss memes mine the visual language of mainstream news media, advertising, and mass entertainment. These carefully constructed images pit capitalist American visual culture against itself through pastiche and satire, subverting pop culture imagery that ranges from blockbuster Hollywood film posters to ’90s hip-hop T-shirt aesthetics.
    For our 4/20 special, Leonard will be visiting the lab to discuss his work with manuel arturo abreu and answering audience questions.

    WATCH HERE
  • Tuesday, April 6, 2021
    Patia Borja (Patia's Fantasy World) in conversation with Sacha Medjo (Bard College Memes)
    Patia Borja is one of the most significant and accomplished figures in the history of online memes working today. Together with Laina Berry (@mistervacation) and River Moon (@saint.deepthroat), she runs Patia's Fantasy World, a meme page which is known for posting "tongue-in-cheek memes, razor-sharp observations about Black culture and identity, [with] an activist agenda that counters the scores of superficial platitudes on social media." (The Cut) She is also one of the forces behind the page's "comprehensive database of anti-racism resources," spanning "a range of topics including bail funds to donate to, resources for the Black trans community, literature on radical politics and prompts for addressing racism in the workplace." (Hypebae) She will be in conversation with Sacha Medjo, the mastermind behind Bard College Memes. The two will visit the lab to discuss their work and engage in a Q&A with attendants.
    Watch Here
  • Tuesday, March 23, 2021
    Erin Taylor (aka @atmfiend) in conversation with Cecily Chen
    Presented by the Bard Meme Lab, the Hannah Arendt Center, the Office of Gender Equity, and the Written Arts Program
    Since December 2018, the poet and critic Erin Taylor has been creating memes for her Instagram meme page, @atmfiend. These memes display an emotional depth and textual playfulness which both innovates the form of memes and brings them into conversation with writers like Kathy Acker. She will be speaking about her works intersection with sex workers’ rights movement, complex trauma, and the power of memes as a digital art form. This will be followed by a discussion with critic and theorist Cecily Chen, a UChicago PhD student who focuses on queer and feminist theory, and a Q&A.
    WATCH HERE
  • March 12, 2021
    Memes and Neuroethology
    A talk by Doctoral Researcher, Jovana Maksic

    Jovana Maksic is a doctoral researcher at the Ernst Strüngmann Institute for Neuroscience, working on spatial orientation and navigation mechanisms in primates. In her talk on Memes and Neuroethology, she will first address misconceptions about the internet and its effect on the brain, attempting to differentiate the social and biological approaches to studying memes. Then, she will introduce recent advances in studies of animal behavior and neuroethology, presenting a novel and perhaps alien speculative perspective to memes and cognition.

    WATCH HERE
     
  • Feburary 9, 2021
    Inzane Johnny comes to Bard
    A talk + Q&A with the acclaimed meme creator / noise musician (Wolf Eyes)

    For the past two decades, experimental musician John Olson has been at the forefront of the intersection between electronic innovation and aesthetics. As Inzane Johnny, he has taken his expertise on this medium and interpreted it through the burgeoning phenomenon of memes. He has seen his own specific brand of humor, one which is serious about art but ludic about life, disseminate into a digitally ubiquitous sensibility. February 9th, John will come to speak at Bard College about how his innovative approach to technological art has shaped our culture at large. This inaugural event is going to kick off our season of artists and presenters that make us reconsider the meme format as a discursive site.

    WATCH HERE
     
  • November 23, 2020
    Screening of Feels Good Man
     
    Featuring a Q+A with director Arthur Jones and producer Giorgio Angelini

    WATCH HERE
     
Projects

Projects

This Wojak Does Not Exist

ML-powered Wojak generator trained on a bespoke Meme Lab data set 

thiswojakdoesnotexist.com >

Events

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