Allan deSouza – Recycling Trash

Allan deSouza will discuss recent projects that utilize auto-ethnography as artistic and research practices, while drawing upon other methods of translation, fabulation, and counter-histories. How might ethnographic methods be useful to develop counter-histories, and to re-position power relations? What is it to create larger narratives of a collective self to skirt demands of authenticity and surveillance? What are the terms of visibility that artists negotiate, whether enacted by the art market or by their own communities? deSouza will discuss recycling European late 19th Century material culture, such as Paul Gauguin paintings or Joseph Conrad’s novella, Heart of Darkness, to investigate their colonial legacies in shaping current discourses. 

Participants are invited to read the introductory chapter of deSouza’s new book How Art Can be Thought: A Handbook for Change. To obtain the reading, email info@feministmediastudio.ca.