The exotic Amazon and the exotic woman”: Practicing refusal through digital counter-storytelling

My project aims to be a creative digital intervention presenting illustrated AR vignettes and questions reflecting the gendered relations shaped by the long history of resource extraction in Iquitos (Peru). This project departs from the framework of refusal, a concept and practice rooted in Indigenous and Black thought. Refusal exposes and rejects the histories, knowledge production practices and relations of oppression taking away our subjecthood. However, refusal is also a creative outlet embracing the “possibility of living otherwise” (Campt, 2019). This presentation showcases three AR vignettes enacting a creative refusal by being a tool and entry point to explore the gendered violence and colonial resource extraction in Iquitos. I will discuss the possibilities digital counter-storytelling open as a process and site of political action exposing and unmasking non-innocent histories legitimizing resource extraction’s gendered violence of Amazonian girls and women.

Presenter Bio

Andrea Vela Alarcón (she/her/Ella) is a community educator, illustrator and doctoral candidate in Communication, New Media, and Cultural Studies at McMaster University. Her academic, creative and pedagogical practices are rooted in anti-colonial approaches and feminist care ethics to facilitate spaces of critical conversations and creation geared toward a world beyond extraction. Through her work, Andrea collaborates with communities in the crafting of stories that center refusal and resistance for environmental justice.

Presentation Recording

Coming soon.

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