While I was in New Orleans I had the opportunity to meet DJ Invinsible (see her company emergence music for insight into independant hip hop world), who was doing some media training for the new young writers at the Neighborhood Story Project who were about to launch their books. She is a very cool...
The photographic exhibition Mundanzas: Migraciones Múltiples, which includes work from 4 photographers associated with AFI/CPP in Chiapas Mexico is opening in Mexico City this week and then in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico on the 21st of November 2009. Selected materials from the exhibition and catalogue can be seen online through the...
In my ongoing research about practices and experiences in projects that unite collaborative art and collaborative ethnographic practices the topic of ethics has come up time and time again, mostly in discussions with project facilitators who find themselves face to face with ethical dilemmas which were unanticipated at the outset of their work. From...
I wrote a few weeks ago about projects in the Pacific region that are using participatory visual practices to advocate for social and environmental issues, such as Pacific Black Box addressing displacement due to climate change. In the Middle East – where conflict colours the daily life of everyone and the perceptions of the...
All sorts of interesting collaborative art/social change/community doco work has been going on in various parts of Africa for many years – I recall several years ago at the first 2 Fires Conference in Braidwood NSW (Australia) meeting a woman who had been facilitating participatory art projects with AIDS orphans with fascinating result… HIV...
Check out another project from the Pacific region – this one going on in Papua New Guinea – in a settlement near Port Moresby called 8 Mile. 8 Mile Settlement project is a nice example of an increasingly popular approach to community development – using creative arts (painting, photography, storytelling and traditional weaving) to empower...
Documenting the names of people in the AFI photos is not a priority here in Chiapas. Indeed, anonymity and confidentiality is a necessary part of the ethics of participatory photographic practice in the region. The naming of Indigenous subjects in photographic archives, has an entirely different meaning in a contemporary Australian context.