- Convenors:
-
Lana Askari
(University of Manchester)
Paloma Yáñez Serrano (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya)
Jose Luis Fajardo-Escoffie (University of Sheffield)
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- Format:
- Panel Discussion
- Start time:
- 27 March, 2021 at
Time zone: Europe/London
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
This panel will explore workers' resistance by discussing how audio-visual methods and representations seek to communicate their precarious experiences and protests. We welcome current and past reflections on worker's rights and resistances, encouraging feminist and political ecological approaches.
Long Abstract:
How can we understand, analyse and support workers' resistance through audio-visual methods? This panel seeks abstracts that explore the marginalized actors within labour structures, as the active agents of localized intersubjective knowledge, rather than mere resources of a capitalist commodity chain (Haraway, 1988). In the past century worker's rights have been advanced through popular (collective) resistance. However, workers' precarity remains a current issue affected by neoliberal policies and recent COVID-19 regulations as seen in continuing global protests, from factory workers to white collar flex jobs. We are interested in the construction of these resistances through 'sonic images'; "the set of postures, body movements, expressions, gestures" that expose the workers' social and political context through their affective relations, modes of performance and everyday forms of survival (D'Amico, 2015:2). These include localized audio-visual production among workers, which serve to disrupt "comfortable [visual] boundaries and encouraging transgression of rules" (Mitchell 1992: 223), create empathy in shared feelings of social immobility and entrapment, or other acts of resistance or forms collective or collaborative activism. The focus on audio-visual representation questions how existing forms of visualization of localised labour build a ubiquitous form of knowledge across the chain. It aims to draw attention to how the visualization of embodied forms of labour experience can help us understand the social issues and environmental sustainability within different industries. We encourage feminist and political ecological approaches that consider workers as active members of their environments who work to reshape dominant economic and gender norms.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
Sounding the Radical Catalog captures the complexities of cataloging through sharing the voices of activist librarians who, through their practice, challenge the narrow articulation of gender, sex, identity, class and the colonialist visions embedded in library classification schemes.
Paper long abstract:
An aural investigation of the socio-historic construction of library practices, Sounding the Radical Catalog amplifies the invisible work of catalogers. As these knowledge workers make daily decisions about how to describe and order library materials, they produce the bibliographic universe piece by piece. That universe is governed by the “master narrative” of knowledge organization systems like the Library of Congress Classification and Subject Headings. Their work creates meaning for library patrons who retrieve items from collections while reproducing--or interrupting--the existing knowledge organization structures.
Sounding the Radical Catalog captures the complexities of cataloging through sharing the voices of activist librarians who, through their practice, challenge the narrow articulation of gender, sex, identity, class and the colonialist visions embedded in library classification schemes. The invisible, often solitary labor and art of cataloging cannot be seen in the record. Cataloging in practice is often carried out in relative quiet, through an internal dialogue of the cataloger, who sits day after day adding complex codes; sifting through vocabularies in order to determine the best access points for an item. Recording catalogers at work allows us to capture this practice in action; to better understand the individual processes, thinking and decision making that goes into creating records; and how each librarian ultimately cannot remove themselves, institutional priorities or the constraints of standardization and time from their work. Understanding the richly human process of cataloging makes the case for continued support for these positions in the face of market pressures to automate and outsource bibliographic labor.
Paper short abstract:
Labor struggle documentaries produced by workers themselves in Spain are characterised by co-authorship,polyphony,feminization of voices among others as we analyse in Númax presents (1980), Iguazú effect (2003), Coca-cola struggle (2016), Hotel Exploitation (2018)
Paper long abstract:
The use of cinema as a tool for the continuation of the labor struggle, that is, produced by the workers themselves, dates back to the first decades (ie.Passaic workers [1926,USA], Cinema du Peuple [1913,France], anarchist CNT film collectivization [Catalonia, 1936], CGT-PCF cinematographic sections in France, etc)
In Spain, the production of labor struggle documentaries has been intermittent but it left several cornerstone films that stablish a film-struggle tradition from and for the workers themselves that amends traditional productions: co-authorship, polyphony , feminization of voices, integration of the struggle in everyday life and revelation of the structures of exploitation.
We have made four historical soil pit in order to choose the sample: The first of these films was produced with the resistance box of the workers of the Númax company in post-Franco reconversion [Númax presents (Jordà, 1980)], the second in the middle of the neoliberal decades of privatization of strategic sectors such as the communication infrastructure by Sintel [The Iguazú effect (Ventura, 2003)]; the third reveals the courage of the workers opposing a multinational in the era of radical post-crisis deregulation [Coca-cola in struggle (Cisquella, Ventura, 2016)]; and the last one reveals the fight against cleaning subcontractors in an tourism focus economy [Hotel Exploitation (Cisquella, 2018)].
These films reveal, in addition to specific discursive and aesthetic strategies, the precarious workers will to represent themselves during the struggle when they are defending their rights and putting in crisis a system that excludes them economically and from its visual representations.
Paper short abstract:
The unusual conditions under which the film Twenty Years Later began its production and the political aspects of its interruption are the focus of this paper. I propose an affective map generated through political oppression, evidencing the constant fights in favor of better labor conditions.
Paper long abstract:
Twenty Years Later (1984) is one of the most famous documentaries directed by the Brazilian Eduardo Coutinho. It is considered by many critics to be Coutinho’s masterpiece, beyond distinguishing this career as a documentarist, the film was also recognized with awards in several festivals around the globe.
This paper examines the unusual conditions under which the film first began its production and the political aspects of its interruption. It takes into consideration the spaces and displacements over the twenty years of interruption. Every conversation in the film seems to take the story to a different place. This method of filming and interviewing people produces what I’ll call an affective map generated in and through political oppression. By examining the political context in which the film’s production was initially suspended and the subsequent displacement of its cast and crew, this paper aims to demonstrate the film’s ongoing relevance to the current political situation in Brazil.
The story takes place in three different cities, but these places appear interchangeable. The spectators are guided into a single space based on the affect Elizabeth Teixeira, the protagonist, and the film kept with space. Moreover, the affect is what locates us, rather than the location itself. We understand that the relationship Elizabeth and other peasants have with the land is based on labor. By mapping their story, the director reveals the permanent class condition of Elizabeth and her family. We, as spectators, witness the constant fights in favor of better conditions for the peasants.