PRESENTATION | Imagination as Resistance: Building Community Power in Chinatown
Wednesday, August 21, 2024
3:45 pm_4:15 pm
Monument-National
85$
(taxes and fees included)Linda Zhang, architect and co-founder of Studio Pararaum, bridges architectural memory, digital technology, and the transformative power of imagination to build community power. Through her work, she explores how architectural memory can safeguard and steward a community’s way of life beyond institutional acknowledgment and leverage digital tools to drive social change. Join us to discover two projects exploring speculative world-building and digital technologies as they inspire new collective reflections on the future of our communities.
“Reimagining Chinatown in 2050", co-created with Chinatown youth and community facilitators, exemplifies this approach. This anthology of community stories set in 2050 is accompanied by a narrative-driven VR world and short documentary film (co-produced and co-direct with Maxim Gertler-Jaffee) composed of 3D scans and drone footage of Toronto’s downtown Chinatowns. The project uses XR as a powerful medium for storytelling and community envisioning, acting as a tool of resistance to spark collective imagination and reshape the public and political imaginary.
"Planting Imagination: Community Co-Design for Chinatown" developed 5 bespoke VR platforms for co-imagining for a 200 square meter community garden at Cecil Community Centre in Chinatown Toronto. Addressing issues amid heightened anti-Asian sentiments during the pandemic, Planting Imagination mobilized over 200 stakeholders, fostering collective resilience and empowering communities through collective imagination and VR co-design.
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During the event, no interpreter for the Deaf will be present.
All activities held in the Salle Ludger-Duvernay will be simultaneously transcribed and translated in either French or English using an application powered by artificial intelligence. Those wishing to use this accessibility feature will find QR codes on site, which they can scan in order to connect to the live transcription. They may also click the “Transcriptions” button in the MUTEK Forum App homepage. This is a beta service, we cannot guarantee 100% accuracy.
Presented thanks to the support of the Canada Media Fund, in collaboration with CURRENT
Wednesday, August 21, 2024
4:45 pm_5:45 pm
