Description

How do individuals make diasporic spaces in cities, and how might we photograph these spaces and their material aesthetic markers? This seminar looks to bring together undergraduates, postgraduates and faculty from both the University of Toronto and the National University of Singapore to explore a small part of Toronto’s Chinatown and Graffiti alley as a way of better understanding the opportunities and challenges of using visual methods, particularly digital photography and new media to document, explore and problematise material migrant spaces.
The seminar will run on Wednesday, April 2nd from 0900hrs to 1700hrs. If there is a sufficient number of interested participants, there will be with an optional night walk that will explore the challenges of low-light photography in urban environments.

Technical Workshop for Beginners in Visual Methods:
The seminar will take place at the University of Toronto. Participants will be expected to bring along their own digital imaging device, which can range from a smartphone to a compact camera to a professional-grade DSLR, and preferably a laptop to edit their photographs after the afternoon walk. The morning will begin with a short technical introduction to the use of cameras in urban environments, and the limitations of newer imaging devices like the iPhone and Android systems to capturing urban spaces.

Exploring Chinatown and Graffiti Alley:
Participants will work in groups of 2 or 3 (preferably pairs of NUS and UoT participants) to explore the nearby Chinatown and Graffiti Alley south of the UoT campus. This will involve a short train ride to Osgoode station, followed by a walk down Queen Street West to the junction of Soho Street. Participants will be encouraged to visualise the area based on a specific item, aesthetic marker or theme of their choosing. This could be religious artefacts, graffiti, litter, reflections in the glass, shadows, etc.
Once the photographs are taken participants will convene back at UoT for an informal discussion and critique of their work.

Schedule for 2nd April 2014
9:00 Gather at UoT for Technical Workshop – Optional for intermediate to advanced users
10:30 Tea Break
11:00 All participants gather for discussion on visualisation of migrant spaces and share existing work
11:45 Lunch + Seminar break-out to Chinatown and Graffiti Alley (groups of 2 to 3)
15:00 Meet back at UoT to show and discuss work, peer critique
16:50 End of Seminar
20:00 Optional: Urban Night Photography Walk (max 6 participants)

About the Speaker:
Dr Terence Heng is a documentary photographer and visual sociologist. His research interests include the visualisation of spiritual spaces in urban Singapore, ethnicity-making in Chinese wedding rituals and visual methods for the social sciences. His work has been published in Cultural Geographies, Sociological Research Online and is forthcoming in Visual Communication. Terence is concurrently an adjunct lecturer at the Department of Communications and New Media, National University of Singapore, and the exhumations and re-interment documentation co-coordinator for the Bukit Brown Cemetery Documentation Project, where he is photographing one of the key material spaces of Singapore’s Chinese migrant past. In 2013, Bukit Brown Cemetery became the first site in Singapore to be listed on the World Monument Fund’s Watchlist.