3132 research outputs found
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Here I Stand, Still Guarded
Get PDFThis research project explores Indigenous dispossession and cultural hybridity through an
immersive and evocative mode, using digital facsimiles of material biography as vessels of
meaning. Under the mixed frameworks of Indigenous theory, hauntology, diasporic theory,
autoethnography, and material culture theory, family possessions are assessed as cultural
artifacts, highlighting the lived experiences of French-Canadians and Kanien:ke’ha:ka diaspora in
temporal and geographical overlap. Key objectives for this research project are the virtual
translation of physical belongings as a means of storytelling and experimental archival,
challenging official narratives of Canadian culture.
Keywords: Canadian identity, Indigenous Diaspora, Virtual Reality, Storytelling, Memory and
Environment, Material Biography, Experimental Archival, Hauntology
Sacred Spit
Get PDFSACRED SPIT is a curatorial thesis exhibition that explores the grotesque. Specifically, the act of
degradation. It aims to lower all that is high, moral, and abstract to the material level. The holy
descends to the bodily realm, and it renders our tactile intertwined forms as blessed. The
grotesque’s ability to mutate, shift, and destabilize ‘boundaries’ between self/other, us/them,
you/me, earth/body, and brain/spirit holds a powerful re-structuring of established order.
SACRED SPIT positions three artist’s works in dialogue: Karice Mitchell, Noelle Perdue, and
Lauren Pirie to investigate the potentialities of the boundless body in intrinsic unity with human,
animal, and natural worlds
Drawing from experience: exploring identity with individuals healing from brain injury
Get PDFAcquired brain injury often leaves an individual with long-term physical, cognitive and emotional impairments which can greatly impact their sense of self and relationships with others. Much of rehabilitation literature is focused on what is needed for the individual to return to a pre-injury ‘normal’, however that notion is rooted in a medical model of disability which puts most of the responsibility of recovery on the individual. This compounds the burden the patient and their caregivers have to carry. This study seeks to investigate the journey of recovery through a social model of disability to understand what a healing and supportive environment might look like to meet an individual where they are. Ten participants across Ontario living with brain injury were recruited from brain injury support groups and word of mouth. Qualitative art-based methods were used to deeper investigate the phenomenology of brain injury and its relationship with identity.Individual interviews and drawings produced rich data on the complex and diverse lived experience, building on previous arts-based studies with brain injury survivors.
Study findings offer further exploration into the lived experience of people living with brain injury through the challenges to their sense of self and coping mechanisms and solutions. Discussion centres around what shifts are needed in society to accommodate people with brain injury. Findings can also inform approaches for healthcare professionals and service providers. The research design intends to make a contribution to arts-based and participatory approaches in the current COVID-19 context, and to inform future researchers who intend to conduct research with remote participants who may often be excluded from in-person studies. Future work involves presenting the findings to family, friends, caregivers and professionals who work with brain injury through an arts-based knowledge transfer piece
InEx: A Show About Inclusive Design
Get PDFWhat does the term “inclusive design” mean to you?
Broadly speaking, the colloquial definition of “inclusive design” is the intersection between “something that looks inclusive” and “something that looks like it was designed.” This stands in contrast to the more holistic approach which makes up the Inclusive Design program at OCAD University, whose program is focused from the start on seeking out and empowering marginalized, minoritized and historically underinvested communities through all phases of product design.
The effect of this more superficial interpretation above taking hold is in shaping public perception. Embracing that superficiality by aligning the term to often fundamentally wrong-headed “design for” projects acts not only to further marginalize the purported users of these products, but to devalue the work of people trained in equity design, participatory action research and co-design, among other techniques and methodologies. Attention (and resources) flow to simple feel-good stories, at the expense of the more complex reality of inclusion and equity work in design roles: that they take time and effort, and don’t fit neatly in PR-friendly boxes.
To address this gap in understanding, as well as the range of constituencies involved in defining, or at least narrowing down, the term “inclusive design,” I conducted a series of interviews with six professionals in fields exploring inclusion and equity in design. The resulting conversations showed an expansive set of lived experiences, personal insights into academia and industry, critique into the theory of its inclusive design and how it is claimed, and a look at where we go from here
home sick, Notes on diasporic melancholia
Get PDFThe primary focus of my research is to investigate and explore melancholia in diaspora using decolonial methods and a return to ancestral knowledge and practices. Through objects and memories that are both intimate and estranged, I wish to consider the effects of assimilation and fragmentation that migrant experiences hold. Using interdisciplinary artistic practices that mix realities and center performative film, oil paintings, installations, embroidery, digital collage, poetry and short stories, my work is a play on expectations and translations of racialized and migrant bodies. I aim to empower racialized bodies through ritual while celebrating symbols of beauty like the brown skin and the black braid that have been undermined by colonialism, wielding ancestral knowledges as a way of offering, of healing, and of sharing. My work makes note of oppressive structures and attempts to undo colonial damage by creating decolonized safe spaces of healing while privileging the examination of diaspora through multiple, diverse, and intersubjective lenses.
My thesis exhibition is a space that blatantly celebrates the differences in media and interdisciplinarity to “disrupt” the white cube through decoration while evoking a sense of feeling “at home” to honor the mother, the motherland, the mother tongue and rituals lost to the onslaught of overwhelming eurocentrism and patriarchal colonialism
Unstill Life
Get PDFThis interdisciplinary project aims to reimagine the position of still life in the context of contemporary art. Derived from my memories and relationships with objects that represent my cultural background, this studio-based research traces my interest in visual perception. By intersecting analogue and digital media of art making, this project challenges the notion of stillness and expands on the idea of still life painting. Drawing from ideas of evocative objects, objecthood, stillness and expanded painting, this project opens dimensions of how still life is represented and experienced in contemporary diasporic art
Contemporary Black Choreo-Performers: Intersecting Bodies, Dis/Placement, Race
Get PDFThis major research paper investigates “dis/placement” as an aesthetic strategy and probes into how it intersects with race, memory, and trauma. The text problematizes the position of racialized, displaced subjects through the perspective of those who deal with this experience continuously – including myself. The case-studies, Okwui Okpokwasili and Kettly Noël, use a variety of methods to reflect their experience of displacement: from autobiography, narrative, and memoir to utilizing their body and identity in explicit ways. They benefit from an emerging artistic genre that I call “choreo-performance”; a kinetic medium that combines choreography and performance to engage audiences affectively and empathetically
Pill Assist: Using Principles of Design to Improve Medication Adherence among People Living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) in Ghana
Get PDFPeople's lives are made easier through design and technology, whether it is a smartphone or a device that assists visually impaired people. This research explores new approaches to pillbox design for people taking medication. Pillboxes are meant to support patients with serious illnesses like HIV/AIDS for which regular medication-taking is necessary. Using electronics, experiments were conducted on different designs, forms, and structures of traditional pillboxes. This research uses a qualitative research and prototyping strategy to investigate the potential of good design on technological advancements to improve low medication adherence rates due to stigma for people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) in Ghana, while also making medicine-taking a more private experience. The Pill Assist prototype is a wearable device that takes a traditional wallet design and transforms it into a dual-purpose medication storage and reminder system. This device assists people with pill-taking in a timely manner while keeping their status private. Pill Assist introduces new ways in which wearable design can be integrated into pill-taking and as a lifestyle solution. Findings from this study are an initial step toward applying good design principles and technology to develop solutions that cater to all stigma-related diseases
Tiptoe of The Patchwork Pierrot: A Search for Belonging in Nowhere Land
Get PDFMy studio-based research plays with the concepts of disguise, the trickster archetype, sweet kitsch, and sentimentality to explore and reclaim male femininity. These topics are explored through a performance piece which contrasts the visual aesthetics of a Pierrot character I designed within a supermodern, non-place setting. This paper argues that the ethos behind sweet kitsch and sentimentality becomes significant when contrasted with the concept of non-places, chromophobia, and network sociality, all hallmarks of supermodernity. If supermodernity is concerned with efficiency and uniformity, and rejects expression and personal connectivity, then sweet kitsch is the remedy to the isolation and disconnect it creates. The purpose of this paper is to explore what it means to create a sense of belonging and to give oneself permission to exist in a space which is indifferent to interpersonal connection, and how the act of performing a Pierrot character within an environment which is hostile to interpersonal connection can generate meaningful connection within one’s life through sentimentality
Designing in the Context of Time: On Annetta Pedretti, practicing cybernetics and futuring
Get PDFThe lesser-known work of cybernetician and architect Annetta Pedretti on designing in the context of time provides an alternative way to think through questions related to open-systemic practices, futuring and the politics of difference. By tracing her projects across different forms and scales (from objects to buildings), I will propose two ways Pedretti’s position on time becomes significant. The first relates to the ways in which she formulated the link between time and the idea of an open-systemic practice. Pedretti’s work presents a different version of better-known discussions on conversational and learning processes in systemic and second-order cybernetic practices, such as those of Gordon Pask and Ranulph Glanville. However, Pedretti’s work was not limited to institutional research settings and often took place in the context of her everyday life. As such, her work is closer to the work of MC Bateson and explores what it means to “attend” and “compose differences” within everyday practices. The second relates to how Pedretti’s move on making time public enables alternative ways of navigating our present—a present defined by phenomena such as accelerationism amplified by the problematic positive feedback loops between technology and design formulated within the logical categories of the market. Design and real estate relations exemplify how accelerationist processes act ontologically to take away the future of many life forms to preserve the interests of a few. Pedretti’s house at 25 Princelet Street acts to this date as a site of resistance against such processes. It provides a way of thinking through the impasse many designers face in dealing with time under defutured conditions