Rearguard remix : a practice of political listening

Abstract

Rearguard remix is a creative practice that aims to be a non-extractivist form of inquiry and a practice of political listening that fosters activists' interpretations and conceptualisations of their situated political experiences. Video remix is used as a way to explore, research and create relations among diverse knowledges and political practices that resist colonial, capitalist and heteropatriarcal oppression. I consider these practices what Boaventura de Sousa Santos calls "knowledge born in struggle" (2014). These knowledges center on political, ethical and critical thinking in collective terms, and form a digital oral archive including anarchist, feminist and indigenous activist, intellectual activists/militant researchers and their collectives, mainly from Latin America. I examine the remix literature in relation to these sources and reconceptualise remix in terms of Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui's Ch'ixi epistemology. The practice of remix works with the logic of sharing, in this case of knowledge and media productions available on the internet, by remixing these videos and offer access to the original materials. Rearguard remix is also a way to recirculate both the articulation of knowledges by remixing them and the complete media productions shared online. I also reflect on my creative process through the use of the metaphors: aphorism and memory, weaving and the weaver, ingesting, and the idea of intimacy without proximity.

Date of Award	2021
Original language	English