Youth Artists’ Conjuring "Anime’ated" Possibilities: Playful Fugitive Restorying and a Reimagined Present

• In Event: Decolonizing Magic as Research Method, Narrative Practice, and Instructional Design

Abstract

In this paper, I explore how two youth artists use their art as a clever subterfuge to reimagine possibilities– their present and futures (Carrington, 2015). In the face of state sponsored surveillance in online spaces, they create fugitive spaces of creation and resistance (Player, et. al 2020; Griffin & Player 2023). The youth artists use anime to transform still, banal, beauteous images of their land into fiery magical ‘anime’ted’ stories. The stateless modern aesthetics of anime (Posadas, 2014) that initially draws one in soon reveals a deeper speculative worldmaking practice in the language of youth cultures and anime not easily understood by many, hence allowing youths’ work to fly under the radar (Vieira, 2019). By layering particular anime characters based on the worlds they inhabit onto everyday images of their city in response to political events unfolding around them, youth engage in speculative practices that conjure images of ‘what could be’.

This research draws upon theorizing on speculative fiction and restorying (Thomas & Stornaiuolo, 2016; Thomas, 2018) and ‘play’ as a political act (Vasudevan, 2015) to understand how youth through their playful art-making and storytelling create a sense of infinite possibilities and futures. Further, by drawing upon endarkened feminist epistemologies (Dillard, 2000), this study understands body as a site of knowing and centers alternative ways of knowing and being. These epistemologies account for literacy practices that are not bound by time or space. Finally, this study engages with the conceptualization of literacy artifacts as laminated assemblages (Prior & Schaffner, 2011) that are layered with multiple histories, voices, and meanings.

To understand the fugitive-speculative storytelling practices, in this digital ethnographic case study, I traced two public Instagram handles (with artist’s permission) (2020 - 2022) using digital ethnographic methods (Gallagher, 2013; Markham, 2016). Twenty artifacts were analyzed based on user engagement and content. This tracing included i) art shared as posts/ stories, ii) hashtag networks, iii) tags on posts/ stories, iv) anime used, and v) socio political happenings that these artists respond to with their ‘anime’ted renderings. Data include analytical memos, screen capture videos and grabs (posts, stories, comments), news articles, and brief studies on anime characters. Platform scraping methods were not used keeping in mind the hyper surveillance of texts / media shared and produced by marginalized youth– this meant being open to the alternate sites, pathways, and methods that unfold along the way in this research (Toliver, 2021)

In 2019, hashtags #DrawForKashmir and #ArtAsResistance, started trending on social media in India in response to the ruling government’s political and civic actions that impacted Kashmir. These hashtags created a counterpublic (Jackson & Welles, 2016) that drew upon the participatory quality of art and social media to voice dissent. The artists in these networks validate each other's worldmaking by sharing, commenting, and liking their posts building solidarity. While these practices might not impact the sociopolitical conditions, speculative worldmaking offers a fugitive space from which the youth find community and conjure alternate possibilities for their bodies, spaces, and places; conjuring possibilities in itself being an agentic act.

Author

• Rabani Garg, University of Pennsylvania