An experimental counter-archive of oral histories and multimedia stories created by cohorts of scholars, artists, and activists working in communities in Philadelphia and beyond, directed by Dr. Alissa Jordan at the University of Pennsylvania.
How do entangled histories of resistance and complicity (with imperialism, racism, and state violence) shape our shared spaces? |
How might storytelling through these entangled networks illuminate the slow, difficult, and vital work of accountability, healing, and world-making in the midst of haunting violence? |
Reckoning and Repair is part multimedia counter-archive, part laboratory, of the possibilities and challenges of transformative social and structural change by listening deeply to the situated knowledge and embodied stories in our cities. Each season traces a legacy of exclusion/withholding/erasure within urban environments, and the networks of resistance and repair that emerge in response. Through immersive oral histories and collaborative storytelling, student scholars, activists, and creatives engage with artists, organizers, and communities to illuminate the slow, difficult, yet vital work of accountability, healing, and world-making in the midst of haunted terrains.
The Art of Remembering: Healing a Nation’s Wounds through Art with Marcelo Brodsky and Anya Miller, and voice work by Emilio T.
Body Politics: The Provocative Power of Performance with Santiago Cao and Anya Miller, and voice work by Gregorio F.
Las Paredes Tienen Ojos: La Visión de Esperanza de un Muralista con Cabaio Spirito y Anya Miller
Mirarnos en Color: Ennegrecer el Arte con Mar Diaz Pacheco y Anya Miller
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Seeing Color: An Endeavor to Make the Art World Black with Mar Diaz Pacheco and Anya Miller, and voice work by Julieth Montenegro
The Walls Have Eyes: A Muralist's Vision of Hope with Cabaio Spirito and Anya Miller, and voice work by Ian Zang
El Arte de Recordar: Aliviando las Heridas de una Nación a través del Arte con Marcelo Brodsky y Anya Miller
Políticas del Cuerpo: El Poder Provocador de la Performance con Santiago Cao y Anya Miller
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Telling Our Own Stories with Louis Massiah & Chrislyn Laurie Laurie
And I listen to the Robin Sing with Sheida Soleimani and Angel Gutierrez
The Question of Home is Complicated with Tausif Noor and Angel Gutierrez
Behind the Scenes of Rising Sun
with Juan Omar Rodriguez (Formerly of PAFA) Ellie Clark (PAFA) and Adrianna Brusie |
Bodies in Flux with Saya Woolfalk and Wang Yao
Crafting Black Survival and Joy through Time and Space with Emily Carris and Katleho Kano Shoro
Life Like Fragile Clay with Arlene Schechet & Rachael Borthwick
We Are Here with Dejay Duckett (AAMP) and Hakimah Abdul Fattah
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The Urgency of Art and Life with Va Bene Elikem Fiatsi and Anya Miller
Some Histories Are Not Beautiful with Shwarga Bhattacharjee and Hakimah Abdul Fattah
To Call a City Home with Aisha Khan (12Gates Art) and Hakimah Abdul Fattah
Connection, Collaboration, Conflict with Christina Vassal (FWM) and Katie Parry (FWM) and Jeanne Lieberman
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Center for Experimental EthnographyThe Center for Experimental Ethnography was founded in 2018 to promote multi-modal research practices as both method and theory, integral dimensions of scholarly research. Directed by Deborah A. Thomas (John L. Jackson, Jr., Co-Director), we are a group of faculty across eight of Penn’s twelve schools who facilitate and support multi-modal research practices among undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, and our partners within the City of Philadelphia and beyond. We coordinate scholarship, research, and public partnerships related to multi-modal work practices; consolidate those activities in which we (and our students) are already engaged; and grow these generative connections by hosting Visiting Scholars, coordinating workshops and conferences, supporting multi-modal project based courses, facilitating visual, sonic, and performative undergraduate and graduate research projects, producing rigorous criteria for assessing those projects, engaging with arts and community-based institutions throughout Philadelphia, and forging connections with other like-minded institutions worldwide. We see creative practice as intellectual work that necessarily historicizes the inequalities that pervade our society, and that develops solutions for their present iterations through collaborative and participatory practice. We believe that multi-modal research practices transform how we conduct research, how we generate and disseminate knowledge, how we train students, and how we remain accountable to the communities in which we interact and through which our research circulates.
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Photo Credits:
PAFA. César Sánchez, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
PAFA. César Sánchez, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons