Paper short abstract:

This paper examines material from semi-structured interviews with participants in the S4S: Designing a Sensibility for Sustainable Clothing project, to consider how affective relationships with clothing might provide a model for wider pro-environmental behaviour change.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines findings from S4S: Designing a Sensibility for Sustainable Clothing (S4S Project Exeter University | S4S Project (s4sproject-exeter.uk), which explored how creative making might promote pro-environmental behaviour change. A range of design tools were co-developed to reflect on fashion behaviours including short films, clothing diaries, and wardrobe audits - the latter produced the material considered here.

Drawing on processes of making and crafting, in the broadest sense, the research is underpinned by the relationship between ‘knowing’ and ‘doing’ and the knowledge that emerges from making things, including assembling, and managing clothing. This is viewed as a form of quiet activism (Hackney, 2013) – embodied activism that occurs within the routines and activities of everyday life at home, at work or, in this case, in the wardrobe. Wardrobe studies (Fletcher & Grimstad Klepp, 2017) is a growing area of research. Margaret Maynard (2022: 125), arguing for the need for more work on the relationship between ‘wearers and wardrobes’, considers wardrobes as material collections, spatial structures, and networks through which garments flow with ‘political implications’.

The S4S interviews reveal the very personal and often deeply emotional connections participants have with their wardrobes, as well as the equally personal strategies many have developed to make them more sustainable. This paper considers how these affective relationships might be understood as assemblages for promoting wider change (Deleuze and Guattarie, 2013). It also proposes that autoethnography might provide an meaningful method to understand/realise this.

Paper short abstract:

This paper will discuss the artist’s book series A Walk of Twenty Steps, a performative autoethnographic practice-based study considering the ways in which creativity performs tacit understandings of the self, and challenges marginalisation, shame, and isolation

Paper long abstract:

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Eugene Rochberg-Halton (1981) propose that objects contribute to the development of identity when they ‘help create order in consciousness at the levels of the person, community and patterns of natural order’(p.16). This paper will discuss the artist book series A Walk of Twenty Steps (Kealy-Morris 2016), designed and developed by the author over a four-year period to document both her estrangement from and resistance to the normative homogeneity of the suburban American main street of her hometown (Kealy-Morris 2017). Here was where a childhood diagnosis of a spinal disability separated her from everyday freedoms and dress of her peers. This paper proposes the artist’s book, as performative autoethnographic practice, evidences embodied knowledge of one’s identity and creativity by encasing the self within the book. The artist’s books perform a ‘counternarrative’ (Reed-Danahay, 1997) through which personal memories are explored as self-described evidence rather than a set of official truths. In doing so, these practices create a legitimized space for alternative narratives to be articulated and in doing so challenges marginalization, shame, and isolation.

References

Csikszentmihalyi, M. and Rochberg-Halton, E. (1981) The Meaning of Things: Domestic Symbols and the Self, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Kealy-Morris, E. (2016) A Walk of Twenty Steps. Available at: http://www.ekealymorris.com/a-walk-of-twenty-steps.html (Accessed: 08.12.2023).

Kealy-Morris, E. (2017) The Artist’s Book: Making as embodied knowledge of practice and the self, Unpublished PhD, Chester, UK: University of Chester. Available from: https://chesterrep.openrepository.com/handle/10034/620375

Reed-Danahay, D. E. (1997) Auto/ethnography: Rewriting the Self and the Social, New York: Berg.

Paper short abstract:

This paper will engage with ideas of agency and resistance by drawing upon early stages of a multi-sited ethnography with Afghan women politicians residing across Europe and Australia. A key connecting point between the women involved in resistance movements is the often un-seen, ‘quiet’ activisms.

Paper long abstract:

This paper unpacks ideas of ‘resistance’ and ‘insurgency’, through the case of Afghan women politicians navigating politics and activism from positions of exile. Saba Mahmood’s work calls on anthropologists to expand definitions of agency, to not be a “synonym for resistance to social norms but as a modality of action”(Mahmood 2009), she raised questions about the relationship between ‘norms’ and individuals both as they ‘perform’ in the world and how they see themselves. Mahmood’s work challenges the connection between an individual’s desires and emotions with their practices and actions. This paper will engage with Mahmood’s ideas and by drawing upon the early stages of a multi-sited ethnography with Afghan women politicians who are navigating spaces of resistance across Europe, and Australia. A key connecting point between the women involved in resistance movements is the often un-seen, ‘quiet’ activisms that happen through craft, shared meals, conversations over tea, and care-work. Audre Lorde (Lorde 1988) argues that for people who are marginalised, care is a form of ‘political warfare’ where engaging in a care-role is a radical act in upholding the right to survive in a system that does not benefit from your survival. This research builds on Lorde’s (1988) work, and Mahmood’s (2009) conceptualisation of agency by drawing on ethnographic research that looks at the roles of care and ‘quiet’ activisms in the lives of Afghan women politicians who are continuing to advocate for their ‘constituents’. Are these quiet activisms not, in-fact radical acts of survival?

Paper short abstract:

The precarity faced by platform workers across the world cannot be addressed by regulation alone. The (spatial) interventions of creative practitioners are key to mitigating the isolation and atomisation experienced both inside and beyond the gig economy.

Paper long abstract:

In Melbourne, 90 percent of food delivery riders are male, 70 percent are aged under 30, and only ten percent are Australian citizens (Snapshot: On Demand Food Delivery Riders, Young Workers Centre/Transport Workers Union). As industries prone to abuse and underpayment, both delivery and rideshare have seen the recent introduction of regulations and support services intended to mitigate precarious conditions. Yet such measures do little to address the isolation and atomisation commonly experienced by these workers, which is where creative practice can help.

To address experiences, I established the Gig Workers’ Hub, an initiative offering gig workers a space in which to meet one another, receive support, and access much needed amenities such as toilets and power points. Using the development of the Hub as a case study, this presentation will explore the following questions: How does the ‘doing’ of a creative practitioner differ from that of an activist? How can these action-oriented modes of practice inflect the more methodical and reflective types of research, and vice versa? And how can design both problematise and solve issues concerning marginalisation, globalisation, and precarity? In addressing these questions, I will reflect on the difficulties I have faced in simultaneously working to develop creative interventions, produce visual representations, conduct ethnographic research, mediate relationships between stakeholders, and foster agency amongst precarious research participants.

Paper short abstract:

Drawing on contemporary art discourse as ways of conceptualising dynamic nature of the mother-child agency and embracing feminist debates on caring, the paper explores ways of representing maternal resilience and maternal peripherality.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores a notion of peripherality in the context of maternal care. Maternal periphery in this paper reflects a sense of disempowerment in a personal and professional life, a consequence of caring and a unique tendency for a mother to separate caring experiences and her thinking. Boulous Walker (1998) argued the separation of thinking and feeling for a mother-artist results in a shift to the margins to avoid ‘contamination’ of political and theoretical art discourse. This separation can be extended to any mother in a process that manifests itself in a constant negotiation of ‘porous multiple selves’ (Kosmala 2017, p. 94), concerning professional and occupational roles. Maternal resilience in the context of multi-layered dislocation stimulates the formation of othered ‘new’ episteme for creative praxis and research born out of peripherality. It also posits a challenge, resulting in deepening a temporary dislocation and disempowerment. Drawing on the examples of contemporary art discourse as ways of conceptualising dynamic nature of the mother-child agency and embracing contemporary feminist debates on caring, the discussion focuses specifically on ways of representing maternal resilience and maternal peripherality. The selected artworks are drawn from European artists who attempt to adhere to the complexities of ‘the maternal in and as art’ (Loveless, 2016). Yet narratives of mothering are not unfolding solely from mother’s perspective and also transcend purely affective dimension of maternal labour.

Paper short abstract:

The paper investigates the entanglements of feminist artivism, political protest, and reproductive justice by exploring the 2022 exhibition “Who Will Write the History of Tears. Artists on Women’s Rights” at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw.

Paper long abstract:

Tabooed, stigmatized, or prohibited: The debate over abortion has raged for decades. Even today, in an era of rising populism, anti-genderism, and religious fundamentalism, the fight for reproductive justice is being waged around the world, and the contested approach to abortion serves as a seismograph for the transformations underway in contemporary societies. In 2022, the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw hosted Who Will Write the History of Tears, an exhibition that articulates new and transformative relationships between feminist artivism, reproductive inequalities, and repressive laws. The architecture of the exhibition and the works presented underlined the arduous process of women’s pursuit of their rights, especially from Argentina, Ireland, Poland, Portugal, Spain and the United States, countries that have become the site of mass protests and heated public debate. The all-female artists refer to real stories, emotions such as rage, and include in their protest art a wide range of visual and poetic references, images and symbols that convey the complexity of the experience of pregnancy and abortion. Drawing on theoretical approaches to the politics of aesthetics, movement framing, and affects as practice, the paper explores the relationship between artivism, political protest, justice, and the political within the framework of a transnational feminist pro-choice movement. The paper situates the artistic interventions within the (trans)forming feminist legal discourse on justice and protest by analyzing the women’s works as (1) articulations of new subjectivities within the prevailing legal orders and their authors as potential idea generators of new dissensual orders, (2) tools of affective practice-based protest artivism, and (3) expressions of gendered solidarity for reproductive justice and their implications for feminist mobilizations in times of uncertainty, global crises, and reproductive injustice.

Paper short abstract:

This paper contributes to a broader theoretical-methodological reflection on visual policies, especially with respect to the ways of representing sociocultural and subaltern otherness, in order to address the need for an ethical aesthetics, which can only be decolonial.

Paper long abstract:

Based on a specific ethnographic case study such as that of the Dominican bateyes, the aim of this paper is to contribute to a broader theoretical-methodological reflection on visual policies in the anthropological discipline, especially with respect to the ways of representing sociocultural otherness. Finally, the purpose is to address the need for an ethics of aesthetics, or an ethical aesthetics, which can only be decolonial.

The bateyes are communities of colonial heritage, whose origins are rooted in the slave plantation system, where people still reside in deplorable living conditions, without access to basic services or fundamental rights.

Since the 1970s they have been the subject of attention from the academic world and international organizations.

In recent years numerous visual and audiovisual products of an informative nature have been created, spreading both photographic and video images throughout the world. Generally, these images have had a great impact on the public, due to their reference to the theme of slavery.

Although animated by intentions of solidarity and denunciation, the question of the representation of otherness is forcefully planted, and especially of subaltern otherness.

In some way, what we encounter is the production of an additional victimization, so as not to consider the dignity of the victims as people, as people alive now, relegating them to a condition of passivity and lack of agency.

The open question that animates this paper is therefore the following: is a decolonial aesthetic intended as an ethically sustainable aesthetic possible? If so, how?

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the use of Zines as a research method emphasizing their role in community building and agency. Through Riso printing and strategic distribution, participants claimed control over their narratives turning the Zines into powerful tools for queer migrant representation and activism.

Paper long abstract:

This research contributes to the growing adoption of Zines as a research method (Biagioli, Pässilä & Owens, 2021), highlighting their multifaceted role in community engagement, exploration of feelings, narrative control and as a form of resistance. Focused on a creative research project with queer women, trans*, non-binary and genderfluid people with migration experiences in Berlin, this paper elucidates how participants crafted Zines using materials from earlier project phases, including a Photovoice stage and strategically distributed them. Through collaborative Zine making and Riso printing, participants forged connections rooted in shared experiences of (mis)representation. Being able to use their own materials and representing themselves how they would like to be represented, this method allowed for participants to deepen emotional exploration, interpersonal understanding, and collective resistance to popular discourse. By seizing control of Zine (and followingly also research outputs) dissemination, participants transformed their narratives into potent calls for increased queer migrant representation, reclaiming agency in the face of misrepresentation. This arts-based approach converges community and expression, providing a fertile ground for activism. Disseminating the research results in the form of Zines makes them easy to use in interventions and the first step towards strategic organized activistic activity for some participants. This study underscores Zines' potential for community building, embodiment, participant-driven dissemination, and activism. Disseminating research results via Zines enables easy integration into interventions, marking the initial step toward organized activistic endeavors for some participants. The study underscores Zines' potential for community building, embodiment, participant-driven dissemination, and activism.

Paper short abstract:

Feminist, ethnographic, and arts methodologies can foreground knowledge, perspectives, and art forms traditionally excluded in climate action. We highlight two creative projects engaging women in Indonesia: Madihin, a Banjarese form of comedic musical storytelling, and Trans Superheroes for Climate.

Paper long abstract:

We borrow our title from a famous line of Wiji Thukul’s poem Peringatan (translated as Warning), about the everyday lives of the working class and their struggles to be heard, resonating with our experiences in working with marginalised communities to decolonise climate knowledge production and challenge the inequalities shaping climate impacts. As in Thukul’s words: ‘There is only one word: Fight!’ In this paper we critically reflect on our recent experiences in Indonesia working with artists, communities, activists, and practitioners to better understand and address the gender–age–urban interface of climate change: how climate impacts and responses are shaped by gender and age, intersecting with wider systemic injustices, in urban settings. We frame our presentation around two different examples of our creative practice that have engaged with women’s responses to climate change: Madihin, a Banjarese tradition of comedic musical storytelling and Trans Superhero Perubahan Iklim (Transgender Superheroes for Climate). We centre these two different forms of knowledge and voice to invite researchers and practitioners to think creatively about the languages we use, the creative methods and arts we draw on, the collaborations we build, how we apply and disseminate ‘academic’ knowledge, and push at institutional barriers and the boundaries of what practicing ‘inclusion’ can truly mean at each stage of our research processes.

Paper short abstract:

This presentation discusses a research project currently in development that proposes a transformative methodology of performance involving the poetic narrative across a range of contexts to explore emotions experienced in climate change. Eco-emotions are both elicited and performed as poetry.

Paper long abstract:

The climate emergency is a transformative stressor, contributing to the global increase in emotional distress, but also important to climate resilience and action. This presentation discusses a research project currently in development that proposes a transformative methodology of performance involving the poetic narrative across a range of contexts. Poetry possesses a unique performative value that taps into our emotions. With this approach, eco-emotions are both elicited and performed as poetry. It contains, therefore, an element of eco-poetics, enhancing awareness of climate issues, but it goes further in that it uses poetry in research settings and in disseminating research as public performance. This research brings to the forefront the work of contemporary philosophers such as the work of Glenn Albrecht on the notion of ‘solastalgia’ (the sense of loss of place) and Timothy Morton’s ‘coexistentialism’ (ethical entanglement with the other). Our research throws light in our ethical entanglement with climate issues that can be acknowledged, as we aim to demonstrate with this project, through hearing feelings; how we, as individuals, in other words, feel about the climate change and the various environmental effects that we experience emotionally upon our lives.

Paper short abstract:

This paper investigates re-branding practices that conjure new subjective and institutional processes of reflexivity about local culture on the Indonesian island of Sumba, as exemplified by the wide circulation of the brand-like notion of ‘Very Sumba’ (Humba Ailulu) in national creative network.

Paper long abstract:

Based on my 18-month doctoral fieldwork on Sumba island between 2019 to 2020, this paper documents the structures of social connection to national and international political, commercial, and art elites that are important conditions of this transformation of reflexive Sumbanese representations of Sumba-ness. For example, the origin of the phrase itself is national, even as it appears local and vernacular: the phrase is a back-translation of the distinctively south Jakartan colloquial frame utilizing the adjective banget (‘very, truly, really’). This small further detail is again exemplary of the highly particular links that have emerged between south Jakarta (the centre of the nation), and Sumba island, which is in the periphery of the nation.

These innovations, which parallel similar processes in many other world regions, have also been supported by a general rise in consumer culture and middle-class consumption in Indonesia, including expansion of national domestic tourism and national middle-class interest in regional cultures that impact places like Sumba very directly. Unlike a top-down, corporate-led branding process, ‘Very Sumba’ was created through decentralised and erratically-innovated collaborative activities of networks of like-minded people. While my fieldwork tracked the great diversity of events and sites where this new configuration of cultural self-consciousness has been fashioned, the main subjects of my study are participants in two collectives. The paper also looks at how these subjects created the brand idea against the backdrop of extractive mining and plantations, growth in tourism, and state administrative decentralisation.

Paper short abstract:

This paper shows how by creatively engaging in EU funded cultural initiatives, civil society actors in Southeast Europe develop ‘counterpublic’, self-managed spheres to address hegemonic structures and trigger alternative democratisation processes within the local as well as international context.

Paper long abstract:

The role culture in democratisation processes has been increasingly emphasised by the EU. Insisting on the value of culture for peaceful inter-community relations, the European Commission argues that cultural and artistic spaces can become spaces for deliberation facilitating alternative engagement with politics through debate, education and free expression. The need for such spaces has grown due to rising populism, xenophobia and discrimination, not only in Europe, but also in the rest of the world. It has led to an increasing emphasis on the relevance of EU cultural funds that operate both within and outside the EU. This paper examines how civil society actors in Southeast Europe create spaces of deliberation by engaging in EU funded cultural initiatives. What do these spaces look like and what is being discussed at these spaces where theatre plays are performed, discussions are held, and exhibitions are installed? In the projects that are being developed, civil society actors experiment with different forms of community-based management of resources and co-production, opening up new perspectives for social and political transformation. It has led to a boost of citizen participation in cultural projects which opened up for the emergence of ‘counterpublic’, self-managed spheres. Moreover, it has resulted in forms of ‘artivism’ in which grassroots movements dispute the hegemony of radical movements through new forms of artistic discourse. In indirect and contradictory ways the EU funding schemes are both subject as well as facilitators of the discussions held at these spaces adding new alternative dimensions to European democratisation processes.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores symbolic, direct, gender, and racial-based violence in design education at the Faculty of Architecture, Design, and Urbanism in Buenos Aires. It delves into activist creative efforts using design as a tool against such violence and centering complaint as feminist practice.

Paper long abstract:

Drawing upon ethnographic material gathered during fieldwork at the Faculty of Architecture, Design, and Urbanism (FADU) in Buenos Aires, Argentina, this paper sheds light on the distinctive aspects of symbolic, direct, gender, and racial-based violence unfolding within design education. It also explores activist initiatives aimed at countering such violence amidst transnational debates on decolonizing and depatriarchalizing design and the rise of large-scale feminist movements in Argentina. By following student activists and educators engaged in exposing and resisting acts of violence, it analyzes the ways in which design exacerbates these aggressions. Additionally, it scrutinizes how design emerges as a tool of resistance, as evidenced by the ethnographic material.

Drawing on Sara Ahmed's scholarship (2021), I lend a "feminist ear" to listen to the grievances reverberating within the corridors of FADU, driven by feminist "complaint collectives" and individual concerns. Through this lens, the paper unravels the affective ties formed among participants in spaces of complaint. Furthermore, it examines how activists harness design as a tool to make their complaints visible and amplify their resistance.

Diverging from sole focus on complaints channeled through established institutional protocols, a trajectory Ahmed explored in “Complaint!” (2021), this paper will veer toward active listening to these complaints, trying to understand the nature of the violence and follow the creative practices that strive to confront, resist and counter it. The resulting narrative weaves together snippets, fragments, stories, and voices from both micro and macro levels, providing an ethnographic exploration of the intricate tapestry surrounding complaining as feminist practice.