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.

Continue reading →

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.

Continue reading →

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.

Continue reading →

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.

Continue reading →