The Resemblage Project: May 2019 – present
This multimedia “scrapbook” documents some of the inspirations behind The Resemblage Project, beginning with its launch in 2019. Section One, Background, captures emergent themes and challenges in our work through candid conversations among project participants. Section Two, Process, maps the aesthetic visioning behind the project, from the initial banner image to the final logo. Section Three, Inspiration, brings to life the source materials that gave shape to our creations, in spirit and form. Section Four, Readings, references some of the scholarship we engaged with, including links to articles and PDFs.
The intent behind this scrapbook is to provide a partial snapshot of the stages of The Resemblage Project until present, while offering points of departure for future work by students, scholars, artists, and activists situated at the intersections of age studies, social justice, and digital humanities.
Background
What is the potential of digital storytelling in age or aging studies? What can interdisciplinary work do? What is the story behind your story?
These roundtable conversations took place following two periods of intensive collaborative work on The Resemblage Project involving two sets of storytellers: in May 2019 and June 2021.
These documents capture the spirit of our group conversations, collaborative processes, and critical provocations to age studies and digital storytelling: from issues of race and representation (the “Unicef-esque”), the potentials of interdisciplinarity (“interdisciplinariness” and the sublime), to creative practice (“forced creativity”, tips on storyboarding, the generativity of the unresolved)—and readiness, or lack thereof, to decolonize these fields. It can be, we hope, a catalyst for further exploration. It certainly was and remains for us.
Process
Banner image created by April Brust in collaboration with Andrea Charise.
The The Resemblage Project logo and colour palette were designed by Iqra Mahmood in a deliberate visual conversation with the The Resemblage Project banner image created by April Brust. The simplicity of the logo—its straight lines and clean circles—contrasts with the busyness of the banner image, perhaps to recall the possibility of serenity within the chaos of memory’s accumulation. The dominant colour is a warm maroon. Two maroon circles, one solid and one a track-like outline, together illustrate the holistic approach of age studies to individual and collective experiences of aging. Against this backdrop, the Toronto Subway Font emphasizes this project’s focus on Toronto and more specifically, Scarborough-based perspectives on aging. The final three letters, ‘AGE’, are situated on the threshold of the logo’s inner and outer boundaries. While age/ing is similarly left on the fringes of society, The Resemblage Project aims to bring it back into the common fold of thought.
Our assemblage. Artefacts from throughout the month. By Larissa Lac, Iqra Mahmood, Deborah Ocholi, Mia Sanders & Xiaoli Yang.
Leaving Warden Station. By Andrea Charise.
Inspiration
- Digital Storytelling Guidebook by Sonia Chavez
- Inter/Generate: Remixing Scarborough’s Stories of Aging. Edited by Andrea Charise with pieces by Angelus Baliwas, Aretina Chan, Kristen Cain, Fredriz Cantilado, Gulamhussein Khalfan, and Kaamil Khalfan
- Depression Quest: An Interactive (Non)fiction About Living with Depression by Zoe Quinn, Patrick Lindsey & Isaac Schankle
Readings
- Chandler et al. (2015). Project Re•Vision: disability at the edges of representation. Disability & Society, 30, 513-527. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2015.1037950
- Charise A., & M. Eginton. (2018). Humanistic Perspectives: Arts and the Aging Mind. In M. Rizzo, S. Anderson, & B. Fritzsch (Eds.) The Wiley Handbook on the Aging Mind and Brain (pp. 78-99). New York: Wiley. [PDF].
- Charise, A. (2017, October 13). Stop dehumanizing old people by using the phrase “grey tsunami.” CBC Radio. Retrieved from https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thesundayedition/the-sunday-edition-october-15-2017-1.4353223/stop-dehumanizing-old-people-by-using-the-phrase-grey-tsunami-1.4353251
- Chazan, M., & M. Macnab (2018). Doing the Feminist Intergenerational Mic: Methodological Reflections on Digital Storytelling as Process and Praxis. Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 19, Art. 8. http://dx.doi.org/10.17169/fqs-
- Chazan, M., et al. (2016-2020). Stories of Resistance, Resurgence, and Resilience in Nogojiwanong (Peterborough, Ontario). Aging Activisms.
- Hamraie, A., & K. Fritsch. (2019). Crip Technoscience Manifesto. Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience, 5, 1-33. https://doi.org/10.28968/cftt.v5i1.29607
- Rajan-Rankin, S. (2018). Race, embodiment and later life: Re-animating aging bodies of color. Journal of Aging Studies, 45, 32-38. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaging.2018.01.005
- Ratto, M. (2011). Critical Making: Conceptual and Material Studies in Technology and Social Life. The Information Society, 27, 252-260. https://doi.org/10.1080/01972243.2011.583819
- Various authors. (2014). Age Studies: Credos, Manifestos, Reflections. Age, Culture, Humanities: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 1, 11-54.
- Woodward, K. (1999). Figuring Age: Women, Bodies, Generations. Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.