2022
Who Am I?: An Autoethnographic Study on Identity
Introduction:
As a researcher in this program, I tend to disassociate myself from my work. It may have stemmed from my undergrad where students are told to not be attached to their artworks. Suddenly, I am told to consider my positionality and to insert myself into my work during grad school. I am now left to consider and reinsert my identity and how my own lived experiences have shaped the significance of my research work.
This paper is an autoethnographic study on identity and remixing through augmented reality as a platform or space. I question how I can explore remixing my racialized and gendered form with history to create new meanings surrounding cycles of historical events repeating themselves. This paper will outline my process in making the augmented reality piece as well as some methods I have considered when creating this work.
Counter-Work through Pedri-Spade and Vasudevan:
Since my research practice revolves around the archive, I look towards not only my personal archive, but also local archives like the Toronto Star Archives or national archives such as Library and Archives Canada. In my non-personal archival search, I look for remnants of propaganda that were used to incite hatred and fear against South Asians (and to a wider extent, racialized communities) in Canada and turn them into a collage. This collage becomes a trigger for the augmented reality piece. I juxtapose this with a 2018 video augmented overlay of my racialized form in cultural clothing and dancing to music. My racialized form becomes a resistance to colonial shutter. Anishinabe visual anthropologist Celeste Pedri-Spade describes this method as:
Looking from the other side [which] disrupts dominant colonial narratives attached to colonial ways of looking and capturing the other by empowering a counter-history communicated visually by oppressed and colonized peoples (Pedri-Spade, 2017, pg. 107).
Even though the viewer is watching my racialized form, the reality of historical trauma against racialized communities still peek through through the duality of the augmented world versus the reality. Even though I was not directly affected by the historical trauma (mainly because I was not born at that time), I am, however, affected by the ongoing colonial legacies through systemic barriers and media portrayals. I view my work and research as a form of counter-work, where I disorient viewers from being disillusioned from colonial gaze. Pedri-Spade calls it “truth-telling”, where coupled with reconciliation:
implicates the viewer in a process of witnessing what is being communicated by the artist and reflecting upon how the message conveyed challenges particular dominant histories that have been normalized within mainstream cultures and societies (2017, pg. 109).
Truth-telling, counter-work, counter-archives and the likes invokes the importance of re-orienting viewers away from what colonial agencies hide. Thinking back to my own history education in the public schooling system, there were little discussions surrounding identity politics and how they play a role in concept of citizenship.
Education scholar Lalitha Vasudevan examines the “counter” through multimodality. As mentioned earlier in the paper, I am remixing my body. Multimodality “reconceptualize[s] not only how we think about reading and writing, but also the very notions of communication and representation” (Vasedevan, 2006, pg. 208). My work aims to create this narrative of parallel histories through the juxtaposition of my body and the collage.
Social Justice through Photovoice:
An aspect of my work (academia and artistic) includes the “why”. Why am I making this? To this, I always say it is because of the importance of social justice. Social justice is not always about the protests or activism (though there is some elements of it), rather social justice brings awareness to societal issues surrounding race, gender, sexuality, ability, and so on. Bringing awareness to societal issues breaks the neoliberal mould of continuing the cycles of oppressions. Social justice can range from empowerment movements to shocking truth-telling and counter-narratives. Images, I find, bring a level of power and voice to the silenced.
Health education scholar Caroline Wang and Ford Foundation program officer Mary Ann Burris describe photovoice as a “process by which people can identify, represent, and enhance their community through a specific photographic technique” (Wang and Burris, 1997, pg. 369). Photovoice became important to my work because it promotes a critical dialogue and knowledge about issues surround race and identity politics (1997, pg. 370). According to Wang and Burris, “photovoice enables participants to being the explanations, ideas, or stores of almost any variety of picture-taking situations” and contribute to voicing bigger social justice issues through qualitative means (1997, pg. 372).
Social work scholar Kathleen C. Sitter focuses on photovoice as a way to engage in and document social justice issues (Sitter, 2018, pg. 199). My work presents an almost documentary, attesting to media representation and propaganda against racialized communities. Throughout history, South Asians (and all Asians in general) have been subjected to negative portrayals through propaganda and politics. Anti-asian sentiments in the 1900s increased as immigration boomed. The evolving aesthetic of who was Canadian and who was not raised question on the idea of restricting immigration to those of European descent (AHSNB, 2022). Further tensions were raised through the Chinese Head Tax, disenfranchisement, and the “Continuous Passage” rule in 1908, which was later challenged by the Komagata Maru incident of 1914 (AHSNB). And thus my dancing form pays homage to victory and resilience. The ghost-like look of it serves as a reminder to the viewer that something is amiss and must be looked at closely (Gordon, 1997; Tuck and Ree, 2013).
Remixing the past and present:
What does it mean to remix the body? Literacy scholar Teri Holbrook and education scholar Nicole M. Pourchier using a/r/tography to fold in-between spaces of inquiries through binding images and ideas (Holbrook and Pourchier, 2014, pg. 759). My work combines (a)rt-making and (r)esearching to inform or (t)each in visual ways. Coupling this with Pedri-Spade’s truth-telling method, I aim to have the viewer look closely at clues and come to their own conclusions. The collage-work is similar as it allows “us to think some- thing, move somewhere, the piece becomes an equivalent of a snapshot of our thinking” (2014, pg. 761). In this case, I provide a timeline of visual clues for the viewer before they decide to augment.
While doing the overlay for the video AR component, I thought about my own resiliency having to overcome racism. Augmented reality brings a level of additional information to users. AR uses digital means to augment our real world experience. An example of this is Snapchat where users can augment their faces or environments through filters. By augmenting the collage, I immerse the viewer into a new experience with the feelings I have felt while making this video. The collage work engages the viewer through feelings of anger, curiosity, and possibly shock (many believe that Canada is not a racist state and are often shocked when confronted), while the video adds contributes to feeling of happiness and possible culture shock. The two work together seems disconnected or disorienting, when reality, they two works play into a larger role of parallels, truth-telling, and counter-narrative work.
Conclusion:
To conclude, this journey to inserting myself instead of my usual disassociation has made me reflect who I am and my positionality within my research work. I am a racialized and marginalized individual, and thus I come with unique perspectives of how I view our colonial systems. Through my work with collage, I visualized the adversity of historical South Asian figures, but through the video overlay work, I imagined their resiliency and victory for basic human rights and enfranchisement. Overall, the methods I have chosen allowed me to reflect on my own lived experiences and parallel them with historical events.
Bibliography
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The Story of the Sikhs”.http://www.ahsnb.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Early-South-Asian-Immigration-to-Canada.pdf
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