Channels of Testimony

How does art channel and reshape the way we listen to lived experience?

Join Amy Starecheski, Director of Columbia University’s Oral History Master of Arts, and Luis C. Sotelo, Director of Concordia University’s Acts of Listening Lab (ALLab), for a conversation with three artist–scholar teams funded by ALLab to explore bold new pathways for mediating testimony through creative practice. This symposium brings together innovative practitioners working at the intersection of oral history, performance, sound, and socially engaged art. Together, we’ll delve into the practical and theoretical challenges of transforming real-life stories into artistic forms

How can you participate? Join us in person or online by registering for the Zoom Meeting or watching live on YouTube.

Have questions? Send them to info.4@concordia.ca

T Braun and Franklin van Grieken

Sentir la Luz/Sense the Light 

A research-creation project that investigates how digital mediation and virtual reality, sound, and light reshapes perception and listening in a group of people with visual impairment. This project is carried out in collaboration with Kim Sawchuk, Kara Paul, and Teatro Ciego. 

Vanessa Terán and María Fernanda del Real 

Sucúa Haven

Migrant Stories: Embodied Listening Lab

Inspired by Sucúa Haven, a collection of migration stories created with Ecuadorian in Connecticut (United States), a group of Latin diaspora participants in Montreal (Canada), as well as Ecuadorians and other Latin American immigrants in Quito (Ecuador), will reflect on their own migratory experiences and create performances of embodied testimonies that places Sucúa Haven stories in dialogue with their own. 

Peng Hsu

Cucumbers, The Melancholy of a Turtle and a Girl's Otaku's Romance

A novel/play creative project that explores BBR. BBR, short for Broke Broke Recitation, is my translation of the Mandarin term 碎碎唸 (siu siu nian), a phrase commonly used in Taiwan and China to describe how women chatter incessantly about daily and seemingly banal trivialities. Theorized here as a technique of queer narration, BBR functions as a dramaturgical writing style through which the project examines housing justice, an endangered turtle, and the inarticulable experiences of constipation and yearning of romance.

Luis C. Sotelo Castro

Director, Acts of Listening Lab (Concordia University)

Amy Starecheski

Director, Oral History Master of Arts Program (Columbia University)

Organized by Acts of Listening Lab (ALLab), Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling (COHDS)