Decolonial Documentation: A Symposium

Decolonial Documentation: Symposium Featuring Kazakh and Uyghur Homeland, Belonging, and Survival

Thursday, Feb 6, Sidney Smith Hall SS2098, 9:30am-5:15pm

The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) is perhaps best known today as western China’s site of the largest mass internment of an ethno-religious group since WWII. Since 2018, the Chinese government has largely restricted access to international media, critical scholars, and diaspora communities; nonetheless, some individuals have developed creative and remote methods to reveal a grim colonial reality in a transnational and digital space through archiving and artistic solutions. Documentation itself has become a space for seeking truth and justice.

By “Decolonial Documentation”, we explore ways of decolonizing the Chinese state construction of minzu (ethnicity), administrative borders, and knowledge systems. Through filmmaking, art, and digital organizing, a new generation of filmmakers, scholars, and artists is working to prevent erasure and plotting a digital “new territory” for Indigenous survival and resilience. This symposium invites contributing members from the Xinjiang Documentation Project, Remote Ethnography, and diaspora documentary filmmakers to share resources, and methods, and build collaboration. Xinjiang Documentation Project based at the University of British Columbia systematically digitizes and translates Chinese state sources to critically analyze state mechanisms of violence. The Remote Ethnography, a multi-institutional team based in Europe protects precarious interview materials and theorizes remote methodologies. Documentary filmmakers and scholars across Kazakhstan, Europe, and North America record survivors’ visceral experiences of surviving the state violence and diverse narratives of homeland, belonging, and adapting to the host countries. Individually, these projects provide invaluable information about the violent realities unfolding in the Tarim and Junggar Basins and explore space for healing and building global solidarity.

This workshop will feature three thematically organized talks and discussions. Several central questions will guide the workshop. For example: What is the common ground for these different projects (positionality and politics)? How can our approaches complement each other? How can we rescue stories from being confined to archives and make them more accessible to broader audiences? What are the ethical guidelines and challenges when engaging with affected communities in the documentation work?

Schedule

Land Acknowledgement and Opening remarks: 9:30 am—9:45am

Round table I. Decolonial Documentation: What, Who, Why, and How (9:45 am — 11:45 am)

Questions: What are the mandates, principles, and motivations of your documentation projects? Who are the intended audience? How can the audience benefit from your curation? What are some of the challenges and surprises in your journey of curating this project?

Panelists: Tim Grose, Guldana Salimjan, Rune Steenberg

Moderator and Commentator: Anup Grewal, Assistant Professor of the Department of Historical and Cultural Studies

Lunch break

Round table II. Imperial Legacies and Contemporary Colonialism: The Central Asian Experiences (1:00 pm — 3:00 pm)

Questions: How have you come to position Xinjiang in theoretical frameworks such as settler colonialism and racialized capitalism and how do these conceptualizations broaden the scope of our inquiry and raise its stakes for different audiences? What are some of the limitations in theorizing from a global, contemporary perspective? How can our work contribute more directly to political struggles or social movements?

Panelists: Darren Byler, David Tobin, Zarina Mukanova, Guldana Salimjan, Rune Steenberg, Ifat Gazia

Moderator and Commentator: Erin Huang, Assistant Professor at the Department of East Asian Studies

Round table III. Making a New Territory: Cinematic Activism (3:15 pm — 5:15 pm)

Questions: What was your process in making your film? Speaking from your own positionality and personal struggles, what does the work of storytelling mean to you? Can you talk about your motivations in choosing particular stories, images, and moments? How do you see film as a medium to better our understanding of the situation in your homeland (does it complement other approaches to documentation)?

Panelists: Mirshad Ghalip, Zarina Mukanova, Yadykar Ibraimov, Tilek Yrysbek, Mukkadas Mijit, Sonya Imin

Moderator and Commentator: Lilia Topouzova, Assistant Professor of History and Creative Nonfiction

Sponsored by

SSHRC Partnership Development Grant, Xinjiang Documentation Project (Institute of Asian Research, School for Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia), Department of Historical and Cultural Studies (UTSC), Dr. David Chu Program in Asia Pacific Studies, The Emerging Interventions in Contemporary China Studies Working Group (Jackman Humanities Institute), Department of Historical Studies (UTM), Centre for Europe and Eurasian Studies, Department for the Study of Religion, Cinema Studies Institute, Women and Gender Studies Institute, University of Toronto

Please email [email protected] if you have any questions.

Host or Publisher Decolonial Documentation