day 2

2nd day of the conference. The opener - the remainder of our Canadian contingent - was solid and left a lot of food for thought. The panel, called ‘Methodological Bodies/Social Change,’ featured documentary film, photo-documentary, auto-fiction and photo-voice projects - all of which connected via a shared concern for enacting and facilitating social justice work/projects/movement. Most fascinating was Susann Allnutt, Claudia Mitchell and Jean Stuart’s ‘reconfiguring the family album,’ which spoke to turning a social scientist’s eye on domestic photos to create a ‘snapshot’ of a larger sociocultural story. They did this in a South African context, but the possibilities for doing this kind of work elsewhere - anywhere - are endless...I liked the idea of reading cultural practices and forms as well as cultural change as embedded in images (as well as the use of the ‘everyday’ as an index) and the challenge that poses to being a critical re/viewer of one’s own history - that sort of recontextualization could have a real e/affect on perspective and has got me thinking about the possibility of adapting the method for pedagogical purposes in the near future. It also forces a rethinking of how we construct (via the looking at, to and for) various narratives and then retell them, as well as a reconceptualization of how we do and possibly could ‘chart’ not only social change, but also (and this is my own run-on on the method) re-map histories, theories, etc. etc. Nice to have a moment that got my head working, it was a pleasure.

Also interesting from that session was something Shannon Walsh, in the discussion of her presentation ‘Dirty Bodies: Girls, photography and AIDS’ mentioned: she did photo voice work with girls in Montreal on ‘seeing with the body’ and had them document with cameras their (artistic) perspectives on sex, sexuality and their everyday lives. One ‘moment’ she shared was a series of images that re-enacted rape or other variations on sexual assault - documenting the reality of violence in girls’ sexual experiences and also pointing to notions of desire that intersect with that violence. The commonality with the South African group who spoke in Oslo on the photo project they had done with schoolkids (taking photos of their everydays) that also included girls re-enacting rape scenes. What struck me was the very clear association of sexuality (particular the introduction to participating in sexual relationships) with violence - in a variety of forms, the most extreme of them being rape - among these girls from dramatically different spaces and places. An experience that seems to traverse national boundaries and speak to a more universal experience of girlhood. There’s a route there that I hope the two of them follow, and many more that could emerge...particularly around the ‘normalcy’ factor...

Bolted after this session after hanging around and not feeling a particular sense of community, and sought some solice with technology - headed to an internet cafe to check email and update the ol’ blog. I’ve been writing daily posts on the very old laptop in my room and saving them to disk in hopes of transferring the data to the cafe once I managed to get there. I settled in, checked email fast fast (cleaning out the unnecessary bulk that had accumulated for fear of hitting my online inbox limit) and had just posted the first entry for the 1st of August (and was just starting to feel more like myself again) when an older couple took the terminal beside me, sat down, opened their email and received some sort of traumatic news: the woman started sobbing and crying out, he kept on clicking and every so often patting her back, and I was pretty much done. I can’t fathom what it was that they read, but I know I wouldn’t want to receive news of that magnitude via email. Wandered back to the conference, didn’t have the urge to hang around - particularly after seeing insider/outsider (yes, prevalent here as well) politics play themselves out with a group beside me: a young participant heard that a group were going for lunch at a reasonably priced diner-style place and wanted to join, and (I couldn’t hear the conversation, just witnessed it from afar) either wasn’t invited or wasn’t encouraged to join. Ugh. The status game is alive and well, and it seems as though even the newly-minted tenure-track profs play the game.

Perhaps there’s a sort of secret society that you gain access to once you’ve gotten the lush post? With rings and secret handshakes and codewords? And a strict code of social conduct? And an 'understanding' of whose voices matter, and others whose don't? I’m beginning to devise my own conspiracy theories around it all...

Came back to the hotel instead - to eat some snacks (mmm...soya almonds), get some space and to clear my head...I had to be back at the conference venue for 4pm to chair a session. I left 45 minutes early, grabbed a coffee and planned to sit and relax with a smoke before I had to go on, sat on a bench outside of the Arts building, snagged a loose piece of wood and promptly split my pants! I dashed back to the hotel (again, so thankful for Blooms being so so close to Trinity, and for the weather that let me wear a long shirt and jacket) I changed and made it back to the event out of breath and just in time for the presentations. Only two of the three panelists showed up (odd, especially because the tech guy knew the second two presenters as pretty visable Trinity faculty members) and that was so much the better - we had far more time for discussion.

The first presenter was Chun-Shan (Sandie) Yi from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and she was, in a word, incredible. Her paper was titled "Call me disabled? Look at me again!" and the after colon read: "An artist's use of body adornments and photographic self-portraits as a means to revise the hurtful gaze and reevaluate disability identity." I don't know if I can even articulate her work and do it justice. Some of it is available online here, and it's also supposed to be on the www.womanmade.org site, but I haven't been able to find it yet. In essence, she interrogated "looking" via a strategic use of bodily difference - with images so gorgeous and sexy that they stole your breath. Activist strategy fused with political and personal embodiment. She gave me a copy of her paper, so I'll definitely have more to say once I've had time to think on it more...

The second presenter ran WAY over time - 36 minutes - and I was glad that Sandie chose to have questions directly after her talk...There were a couple of amazing questions/comments from someone who will be presenting on the token "queer bodies" panel tomorrow, so I'm going to have to make sure that I attend that one...

After Sandie, I don't really care if I see anything else - she's made the conference an event for me.