Paper short abstract:

I will discuss the role of film in the strategies of climate activists working to effect change in Toronto. From the vantage of a participant ethnographer and filmmaker, I explore the creative possibilities of film as public engagement as well as its limitations as a means of political mobilization.

Paper long abstract:

Climate activists comprise a diversity of individuals and organizations whose political ideologies, strategies and goals frequently diverge and often conflict. Their one and sometimes only area of common ground is a belief in the urgency of the climate crisis and the need for collective action on the part of civil society. For many, the moment of decision to join the climate movement can be traced to the viewing of a compelling film or video. The apparent power of film to move and mobilize across time and space is one reason it has become so ubiquitous in climate advocacy work. Also fueling the ubiquity of film in activism is a belief that increasing the public's exposure to the right knowledge and perspectives on the climate crisis will lead to increased civic engagement. The significance of film in climate activism is evinced by the plethora of videographers and photographers at public demonstrations, the continuous stream of content being uploaded to websites like YouTube and Facebook, and the proliferation of environment-themed film screenings and festivals. My research explores the strategies of climate activists working to effect change in Toronto. In this panel I discuss the role of film in these strategies from the vantage of a participant ethnographer who has been attending and organizing public film screenings as well as producing a short video of my own. I aim to shed some light on the creative possibilities of film as public engagement as well as its limitations as a means of political mobilization.

Paper short abstract:

I study the poetry of a long-time Bulgarian protester and his technique of mimicking the rhythm of past revolutionary poetry and argue that this technique can help us rethink time, agency, the political, and authorship from a perspective that maintains a focus on that which could be.

Paper long abstract:

By studying the poetry of a long-time protester known in Bulgaria simply as grandpa Yolo, this paper explores how poetry could be used to negotiate and intervene into a precarious present by seeking to attune to lost worlds and the hopes and imaginations they sustain. Grandpa Yolo uses most of his tiny pension to write and print poetry that calls for a revolution today. I trace a specific technique that he has developed, one which he considers as one of the most important discoveries for his poetry writing: he strives to capture and mimic the rhythm of past revolutionary poems in his poetry writing and reading. While the language in grandpa Yolo's poems remains critically engaged with the present and its crises, the rhythm borrowed from other revolutionary poems provides an evidence of something shared and works to re-establish attachments to past struggles and imaginations. The rhythm allows for the creation of a shared empathic experience that promises belonging and togetherness in a-could-be future. I argue that grandpa Yolo's poetry can help us rethink time, agency, the political, and authorship from a perspective that maintains a focus on that which could be, rather than that which is.

Paper short abstract:

In this talk I explore the possibilities of reading for social change in Russia. In looking at the ways in which in Moscow activists stage public poetry readings of Victor Serge - a Russian revolutionary writer - I examine how literature becomes a pivotal place for insisting on a political "otherwise."

Paper long abstract:

In this talk I am interested in exploring the possibilities of reading for social change in Russia, and beyond. In taking my cue from the ways in which in Moscow artist-activists stage public poetry readings of Victor Serge - a Russian revolutionary and writer - I examine how literature becomes a pivotal place for keeping in view a political "otherwise." By otherwise I mean political configurations alternative to Russia's current anti-democratic and economically divisive formations, as well as anthropological modes of thought that differ from, for example, the calculations of electoral politics or the supposed effectiveness of social movements. Habitually, political anthropologists tend to be wary of the power of art to initiate change in the world. In this talk I center on recognition as one mode of investigation of opening up new political terrains - terrains for which notions of enchantment, knowledhe, and desire are also important.

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Paper short abstract:

An exploration of how theatre techniques can function as agenda-setting devices, this paper describes the creation of two short public performances that presented participants as political subjects, rather than allowing them to be viewed as simple illustrations of social problems.

Paper long abstract:

Processes of social marginalization often work by convincing people that their desires are so unimportant to collective life as to be unworthy of even their own attention. This can make it difficult for members of marginalized groups to formulate public demands and puts them in the position of reacting to the agendas of others, rather than trying to set political agendas themselves. It is no surprise then that, as political philosopher Nancy Fraser points out, the struggle for parity of participation in political processes like agenda-setting is a crucial feature of social justice campaigns in contemporary societies.

This paper reflects on the use of theatre techniques as agenda-setting devices with two different groups of anti-poverty self-advocates in the context of the Transforming Hamilton Stories project. The goal of this project was to explore ways to use story circles and image theatre workshops to create parity of participation in public life by encouraging socially marginalized participants to create stories about their own desires for the future of their communities. Performances arising from the workshops used theatrical alienation techniques to focus audience attention on the choices community performers were making about how to communicate their desires for social change and for increased solidarity with audiences. These performance techniques allowed community performers to present themselves as political subjects, rather than allowing themselves to be viewed as simple illustrations of social problems, and so changed their sense of how they could participate in political discussions of the future of the city.

Paper short abstract:

In contexts of austerity the education of students in social care disciplines becomes a more explicitly political project. The project described in this presentation emerges from the belief that arts-informed approaches hold vital possibilities for supporting students’ complex ‘response-abilities.’

Paper long abstract:

The past two decades have witnessed a profound challenge to social and community service disciplines. Cost efficiency and other narrowly-defined accountabilities have become key targets in public services and quantified, standardized and evidence-based procedures are more and more in demand. There is pressure in this context for educators to approach complex social processes as mere tasks, and to educate students to meet check-box, behaviourally-defined competencies. Many progressive educators are seeking ways to support students' abilities to evade and resist the narrowing of social work practice.

Over several months our research team worked with a group of women who have experienced homelessness and who are advocates for themselves and other women. The women participated in storytelling and image theatre exercises that formed the basis of a 20-minute dramatic vignette centered on their interactions with social service providers. The creative process was designed to value the knowledge carried in personal stories of lived experience, while harnessing the power of the arts to evade some of the problematics of personal storytelling in public spaces.

In this presentation we reflect on comments from entry-level social work students who witnessed the performance and offer our analysis of their responses in relation to specific features of the drama. In a discursive context that either rejects public services or makes workers responsible for the bureaucratic management and discipline of 'others,' we consider the potential of projects like this one for calling students into vivid apprehension of their place in relations of power.

Paper short abstract:

Drawing on trail anthropology and theatre artist Constantin Stanislavski’s notion of the “through line of action,” this paper tracks the feeling of awkwardness I experienced in a dramatic storytelling project in Poland in an attempt to re-envision anthropology as a radical epistemic politics.

Paper long abstract:

Drawing on trail anthropology and twentieth-century Russian theatre artist Constantin Stanislavski's notion of the "through line of action," this paper tracks the feeling of awkwardness I experienced in an imaginative ethnography project I conducted in collaboration with a Polish Roma woman, Randia, in an attempt to re-envision anthropology as an engaged, collaborative, and interventionist practice. I follow the trail, its offshoots, and connections to arrive at what I call an "awkward anthropology," which entails a radical and imaginative epistemic politics. Reflecting on how dramatic storytelling employed as a practice of political art-making and an ethnographic research methodology shifted reflexivity from the purview of the anthropologist to that of the interlocutor, the paper proposes an imaginative and creative praxis as a starting point for reinventing political and applied anthropology.