Tania Canas, University of Western Ontario: Archiving the Present: Memory as creative practice Multi-local and site-specific creative memory work between Australia and El Salvador
Archiving the Present (AtP) is a multi-site digital community archive project of “remembering as insurgent practice” (Cusicanqui 2020, p.xxxii) and memory as creative practice, from a Central American, site-specific, and multi-local perspective. The project is made up of artists and community members who are primarily of the Australian Salvadoran community, having arrived in Australia through the refugee and humanitarian program in the 80s and early 90s. Archiving the Present seeks to develop alternative practices of remembering through digital, material and public interventions that sit at the intersection of practice-as-research methodologies (Nelson 2013), critical community frameworks (Nancy 1986, Joseph 2002, Tuck 2009) site-specific art and public intervention (Kwon 2004, Jackson 2011). Importantly AtP does so from the context of forced displacement, Central American and border studies (Anzaldúa 1987, Cañas, 2015, Cárdenas 2018) decolonial theory (Cusicanqui 2020, Tuhiwai-Smith 2012) as well as literature which contextualises setter-colonialism specifically within Australia, including perspectives from Blak1 feminist Aboriginal academics (Wolfe 2006, Moreton-Robinson 2015, Watego 2021, Ball 2018). Archiving the Present began in 2021 as a collective quick-response activism to the destruction of a Salvadoran community mural (painted by the children of the Salvadoran community in the Kensington public housing flats in 1990) as part of a $10.2 million ‘redevelopment’ of a community recreation centre. Since then, AtP has expanded to run a series of interventions including: a community library of Central American texts in Náhuat, English and Spanish, an online 8-month introduction to Náhuat course for the displaced diaspora, exhibitions, and public projects as well as events. This article explores some of the key methodological questions considered in the ‘making’ of research alongside ‘making’ in the creative sense, and memory ‘making’; in ways that seek to counter hegemonic heritage regimes (Ireland, Brown & Schofield, 2020).
Suvi Keskinen, University of Helsinki: Memory, Epistemological Justice and Disobedient Knowledge in Nordic Activism and Art
This presentation examines how activists and artists racialised as non-white or ‘others’ narrate marginalised histories of colonialism and racism and, by doing so, create understandings of Nordic societies that challenge prevalent ideologies of colour-blindness and national self-images as champions of human rights. The chapter analyses the actions through which activists and artists call for epistemological justice and create disobedient knowledge. It argues that histories of overseas colonisation and slavery are central for the disobedient knowledge created in activism in the Nordic region, as in other parts of Europe, but such narratives are also placed in dialogue with histories of colonisation of Indigenous lands within the Nordic region and commemoration of more recent events of racist violence. The presentation shows how the activists are combining academic research, collective memory and art to create disobedient knowledge that challenges the silencing of past and present racism. Addressing responsibility over the effects of slavery and colonialism on current European societies, their organisation of welfare and the groups given possibility to enjoy its benefits can open up new discussions of social justice and inclusion. Accounts of responsibility can provide resources to thinking that moves beyond the legacies of colonialism and slavery, as well as for politics that seeks to counteract the racial hostility characteristic of present European societies. The analysis is based on extensive fieldwork, interviews with activists, and media material collected in Denmark, Sweden and Finland in 2015-2019.
Aino Nevalainen, The Centre for Research on Ethnic Relations and Nationalism (CEREN), University of Helsinki: Contention and Concerted Consensus Over (Anti)Racism: Tempering Black Lives Matter in Finnish Mainstream Media
Black Lives Matter broke through to the Finnish mainstream media in the summer of 2020, surfacing into the consciousness of the general majority White Finnish audience from the networks and activities of activists of color and Black activists. The scarcity of mainstream media discussions on racism before BLM emphasizes the significance of this contention. It highlights the efforts of media-savvy activists in connecting to media to mobilize people and to create and maintain contention, making visible and challenging the conditions and practices of belonging and exclusion based on racialization. This presentation, based on an article currently under review, focuses on what happens when mainstream media do engage with contention related to race and racism. Utilizing frame analysis, this research examines 263 articles published in three Finnish mainstream media news outlets between May 2020 and September 2021 to analyze what kind of frames were mobilized and how specific frames were (de)prioritized in mainstream media contention related to racism and antiracism during and following the demonstrations. Of the five most prevalent frames, three represent antiracist frames—the frames of experiential racism, structural racism, and colonial complicity—and two represent frames challenging antiracism: the frame from moderation to anti-wokeness, and the frame of denial of colonial/racial history. I argue that while legitimizing and amplifying antiracist frames in general, mainstream media coverage of the BLM demonstrations in Finland and the consequent contention related to (anti)racism also imposed new demands and restrictions on how this contention unfolded and what kind of (anti)racisms were (de)legitimized.
