Waterscapes – 交融的河流

The primary goal of this research creation project is to integrate community-engaged visual arts production and migration research to ignite discussion amongst migrant communities and to rethink the spaces of contemporary global migration flows. The research component of this project is thus directly and actively set within the creative process. We aim to open up the lines of communication between scholars, artists, and local migrant communities through interactive arts projects based on public accessibility, multilingual platforms, and collaborative design. We also intend to employ multimedia arts practices to critically rethink existing geographic frameworks used in the analysis of global migration. Multimedia arts has much to contribute to the critical analysis of local migration histories given its ability to capture visually and orally encoded meanings, such as native language dialects, performative contexts, spatial and bodily cues, and other subtle forms of place-making and embodied knowledge.

In particular, we will combine visual arts practices with critical approaches to “place” and “migrant” in cultural geography and postcolonial cultural studies to examine the role of waterways- oceans, lakes, rivers- in shaping specific migration flows and individual experiences of displacement, dispossession, and adaptation. Springboarding from the multimedia works of artist Gu Xiong and his interest in waterways as spatial metaphors of global migration, this project is situated within migrant communities along the Fraser River of Canada and the Yangzi River of China. From the mid 19^th century and onward, these rivers have played a central role in connecting migrants from around the world and thus provide a productive framework of analysis for exploring the historical links between China and Canada as joined in a global economy. As nexus of vital resources and transit access between the Pacific Ocean and inland areas, these rivers can also be understood as complex “waterscapes,” where critical negotiations of power and space result in variegated experiences of displacement, dispossession, and adaptation. By deploying this notion of waterscapes, our goal is to keep our research-creation practices grounded in the specific, situated experiences of migrants along these river routes while exploring culturally diverse representations of migration geographies.

In implementing these goals, we envision a dialectical and co-creative relationship between research and creative practice that produces beneficial results for the participating communities. By inviting members of migrant communities to participate actively in the documentation and sharing of local migration histories, we intend to advance community-engaged research methodologies based on transparent, non-exploitive, and mutually constructive relationships. By providing opportunities of creative expression for communities with limited access to cultural resources, our goal is to implement the innovative use of multimedia art (web, film, digital archives, interactive and site