Conference Presentation: CCA at Congress, May 30-June 1, 2012

I presented this at the Canadian Communication Association’s 2012 conference on Thursday, May 31. I was part of a panel called Body and Affect in Visual Communication. Though there were quite some gaps between the substance of our presentations, it was still a great pleasure to present alongside Sara Martel, Tess Jewell, and Gary McCarron. Comments on this paper, as well as criticism, are welcome. Some rights reserved: cc by-nc-sa 2012 Kris Erickson. The abstract is immediately below, with the full text of my presentation after the jump.

Photography, Community Cultural Development, Emancipatory Communication

This paper will consider how contemporary uses of camera-based technologies in instances of Community Cultural Development (CCD) effectively function as emancipatory communicative strategies. In New Creative Community (2006), Arlene Goldbard positions CCD practices as cultural in the broadest sense: that is, as concerned, on the one hand, with nourishing the diversity of cultural life and preserving the variety of it forms of production; yet interested, on the other hand, in dismantling artificial boundaries erected within mainstream culture between and amongst the spheres of art, economics, and politics. In this paper, I will draw on my dissertation field research and interview data from contemporary CCD practices and practitioners utilizing camera-based techniques, and located in Southern Ontario. Through a discourse analysis of these sources and their products, I will explore how camera technologies coupled with CCD practices constitute a transformative cultural practice. I will argue further that such a creative, emancipatory politics suggest important techniques for opening up the possibilities of who can participate in public discourse and democratic action by shifting the grounds upon which such discourse occurs, and by expanding the repertoire available for cultural action. I will draw on the interdisciplinary thought of Goldbard, Steve Edwards, Diana Taylor, Jacques Rancière and others to critically interrogate the possibilities, as well as the limits, of such camera-based communicative strategies and the varieties of community and culture they claim to foster.

Conference Presentation: Historical Materialism Toronto, May 11-13, 2012

I presented this at Historical Materialism Toronto on Sunday, May 13 at York University, Toronto. I was part of a panel entitled Spaces and Forms of Resistance, with distinct but complementary (and very good!) presentations by Clare O’Connor and Elise Danielle Thorburn. Comments on this paper, as well as criticism and so on, are welcome. Some rights reserved: cc by-nc-sa 2012 Kris Erickson. The abstract is immediately below, with the full text after the jump.

Creating Resistance: Exploring the Spaces of Community Artists’ Work

This paper will consider how contemporary uses of camera-based technologies in instances of Community Cultural Development (CCD) effectively function as counterhegemonic cultural strategies. In New Creative Community (2006), Arlene Goldbard positions CCD practices as cultural in the broadest sense: that is, as concerned, on the one hand, with nourishing the diversity of cultural life and preserving the variety of its forms of production; yet interested, on the other hand, in dismantling artificial boundaries erected within mainstream culture between and amongst the spheres of art, economics, and politics. In this paper, I will draw on my dissertation field research and interview data from contemporary Southern Ontario CCD practices and practitioners. Through a discourse analysis of these sources and their products, I will explore how camera technologies coupled with CCD practices constitute a transformative mode of cultural production. I will argue further that such a creative, emancipatory politics suggests important techniques for opening up the possibilities of who can participate in public discourse and democratic action by shifting the grounds upon which such discourse occurs, and by expanding the repertoire available for cultural action. I will draw on the interdisciplinary thought of Goldbard, Steve Edwards, Diana Taylor, Jacques Rancière and others to critically interrogate the possibilities, as well as the limits, of such camera-based communicative strategies and the varieties of community and culture they claim to foster.

Conference Presentation: International Visual Sociology Association (IVSA), July 6–8, 2011

I presented this at International Visual Sociology (IVSA) 2011 on Friday July 8 at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. I was on a panel called Sensing Community: Toward an Ethics of Collaboration in Visual Research Practices with colleagues from Communication and Culture (Andrew Bieler, Paul Couillard, and Sara Martel). Comments, criticism, and so on all welcome. Some rights reserved: cc by-nc-sa 2011 Kris Erickson (panel abstract © 2011 Andrew Bieler, Paul Couillard, Kris Erickson, and Sara Martel).

A brief of the paper is immediately below, with the panel abstract below that; full text after the jump.

Paper brief:

Ethics and Community through Photo-voice

This paper will explore the ethical implications of photovoice research. It will challenge the assumptions of this compound term – namely, photographic realism and expressive communication – to envision how photovoice might enhance its collaborative and democratic dimensions. To this end, it will examine commonalities with and amongst related practices such as community cultural development or media democracy.

Panel abstract:

Sensing Community: Toward an Ethics of Collaboration in Visual Research Practices

This panel explores the ethics of locating, interacting and learning alongside communities in relation to a number of visual research practices: aerial photography, community arts, performance art, photo-voice, and photography within an Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis. Although each report is substantively distinct, all challenge preconceptions of the ‘visual’ in academic research in order to move toward more collaborative paradigms of visual research. These experimental visual methods will be reflected upon as places of learning about ethics, where the meaning, practice and difficulties of ethical knowledge production are questioned. What are the stakes when research is understood not simply as impartial observation, but rather, as a potentially active force of production and transformation? To what extent can projects be structured to allow participants to share in shaping their direction and outcome, and what impact does this have on the very notion of research? What relationship can or should exist between ‘researcher’ and ‘participant’? Andrew Bieler will reflect on the socio-ecological dimensions of community arts and aerial photography practices aimed at mobilizing residents to challenge suburban sprawl and build support for local food security. Paul Couillard will report on a three-day performance project undertaken in Beijing, China in which he positioned his body as a public marker of personal wounds–whether physical, political or spiritual–identified by local citizens. Kris Erickson will explore the practical and political roots of the photo-voice method in an attempt to challenge certain implementations that minimize the emancipatory possibilities democratic photography offers its participants. Sara Martel will explore how a methodology like Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis invites participants to understand their own visual experiences, considering the Heideggerian “care” behind personal photography specifically. By bringing together these case studies, artist reports, methodological histories and theoretical interventions, we hope to find some significant, troubling and inspiring questions involved in collaborative research.

Conference Presentation: Historical Materialism Toronto, May 13-16, 2010

I presented this at Historical Materialism Toronto on Saturday May 15, 2010. Comments, criticism, and so on all welcome. Some rights reserved: cc by-nc-sa 2010 Kris Erickson.

The abstract follows immediately; the full text is after the jump.

Processing Photographs: Challenging the Legible Image

Abstract: This paper will consider the critical possibilities offered by treating images as more than simply a variety of text. By addressing photographic production as a crucial example of a contemporary image-making mode and not simply another decodable symbolic form, I intend to demonstrate how the purported legibility of imagery masks the decisive relations of production and consumption by which such images are constituted and circulated. More importantly, I intend to discuss how the dominant tendency to privilege images as meaningful – that is, rather than as spurious or ambiguous statements or gestures, as inextricably relative to the conditions under which they were constituted – obscures a version of history in which image-making is a fundamentally constitutive rather than simply reactionary practice. By briefly exploring the practices and images of worker-photographer collectives and war photographers during the 20th Century, I would like to demonstrate how photography is a particularly compelling communications technology with which to challenge the hegemony of textual meaning in contemporary social relations. This is not simply because photography is so ubiquitous in contemporary society, but also because its productive technologies are so widely accessible as means of symbolic production.

Conference Presentation: Making Media Public, May 6–8, 2010

I presented this at Making Media Public in Toronto on Saturday, May 8, 2010. Comments, criticism, and so on all welcome. Some rights reserved: cc by-nc-sa 2010 Kris Erickson.

The abstract follows below; full text after the jump.

What “Public Photography”? Towards a New Vision of Democracy

This paper is about a public photography: a set of practices to give people – all people – the skills and tools necessary to communicate in photovisual media. The idea of a public training in photography has been so absent from policy discussions around culture and education that the idea sounds absurd. Yet as representations in visual media continue increasingly to define and shape our understandings and assumptions about the world and its inhabitants, and as visualizing technologies become more available for people to use (and, possibly, abuse), perhaps a basic training in how to construct, see, and make public visual imagery should not be so readily dismissed. Indeed, given the recent history of misinformation perpetrated by corporate and state power alike – from the tacit complicity of American media during the Bush administration, to the unsettling manipulation of the media exercised by the Harper regime, to the mainstream silence on the continuing aftermath of the elections in Iran (or of the fate of Tamils in Sri Lanka, or of the crisis in Darfur, and so on) – it may be that now is the time that a public image education joins universal adult suffrage and universal primary education as hallmarks of a truly democratic society, one that claims its democracy is founded inextricably in the public interest.

Even if from the margins, photography is currently playing an important role in certain successful policy initiatives: from “photovoice” in healthcare and social work research, to digital photography in media literacy education, to photojournalism in community media practices, among others. Yet prior to these practices, still images of our worlds – local and global – have acted powerfully and iconically to galvanize public opinion and contribute to real-world change through their ability to symbolize meanings beyond spoken language and conventional experience. Utilizing the strengths of these and other vital photographic practices, this presentation will outline a theoretical justification of a public photography practice, and offer up suggestions for an implementation that will simultaneously address local and national concerns, existing institutions and emerging possibilities, state educational institutions and informal community training, as well as the participation of photographic professionals and the general public. By attempting to reconcile opposing forces, this paper will remain responsive to state-controlled educational and cultural policy while offering suggestions that tap into the grassroots of a creative and concerned public.