Producing the Public in Arab Societies: Participation Working Group

Laila Shereen Sakr: An Egyptian Virtual Body Politic

Laila Shereen Sakr is VJ Um Amel online. She is a PhD candidate in Media Arts and Practice at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts and the creator of a knowledge management system, R-Shief. Her practices include digital media art, visualization, and projection. Her doctoral work maps the recent uprisings through semantic analysis of social media feeds in Arabic, Persian, French, English, Spanish, and German. As a VJ (video jockey), she uses digital performance to demonstrate how embodied habits of communication are expressed virtually, and to understand how communities use technology to design their own narratives and worlds. She has shown her work at the San Francisco MoMA, National Gallery of Art in Jordan, Camera Austria, Cultura Digital in Brazil, and DC Fridge Art Gallery. Previously, she has published poetry as Laila Shereen. Currently an Annenberg Fellow, she comes to USC with an M.A. in Arab Studies from Georgetown University and an M.F.A. in Digital Arts and New Media from University of California, Santa Cruz. Recent reviews have been published in The Wall Street Journal, Science, Art Territories, Fast Company, the Digital Media and Learning Blog, Egypt Independent, and The Creators Project.