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.

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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.

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