Attuning to Presentimiento: Creating Visual Testimonios through Embodied Analysis in an Ethnic Studies Classroom

• In Event: Archival Pedagogy: Moving Images as Research, Resistance, and Relational Learning

Abstract

This paper explores what we might learn from moving images as pedagogy when we center relational vulnerability and presentimiento, gut feeling, in embodied analysis. Visual testimonios (Barrales, 2023) are photographs, drawings, and/or moving images collaged and paired with the most compelling moments from an oral history representing counter narratives from various communities of color. This paper features a visual testimonio entitled primer país, a short film I created from an oral history with my grandmother recounting early memories of motherhood in Veracruz, México. Throughout this paper I document how I used an embodied analysis of listening to images (Campt, 2017) and el conocimiento del cuerpo—“a language, or a knowledge system rooted in our bodies letting us know that our spirit has been impacted” (Juarez Mendoza & Aponte, 2021, p. 92) to create this visual testimonio and in doing so, how this process supported young people in creating their own visual testimonios for the Women of Color Archive (WOCArchive). The purpose of this paper is to 1.) center the vulnerable, relational, and embodied process of documenting, preserving, and amplifying women of color’s stories and 2.) elucidates what we might learn from moving images as both pedagogy and research finding. By modeling how a visual testimonio was created through embodied analysis and reciprocal vulnerability, I taught my students how to attune to the body as an analytic tool.
Data was gathered in a high school Ethnic Studies class that I designed and taught. Primer país chronicles an oral history with my grandmother describing tender moments of motherhood inspired by the work of artists LaToya Ruby Frazier and Ana Mendieta, who center matriarchs and the female body. As my grandmother recounts the instructions her mother gave her to create baby clothes --- cut it here, sew the button close to this part --- I use my body to replicate the creation of these garments. I shared primer país as an introductory lesson to the WOCArchive and explicitly shared the tender and vulnerable moments I experienced with my abuelita to ensure transparency of this process and model how I attempted to center enthusiastic consent. Students then created their own visual testimonios as culminating Ethnic Studies projects. Students conducted a series of interviews with a notable matriarch of color in their community and paired moving images with compelling audio from their interviews.
Findings elucidate the importance of arts-based pedagogy, in tandem with content centering the experiences and histories of BIPOC. The WOCArchive intentionally pushes archives to center WOC in the margins (hooks, 1984) - reclaiming, re-historicizing, and disrupting the archive and redefining what is preserved. I included arts-based methods through the collection and creation of this project to foster these skills in both the young people and educators who will apply them in their classrooms. Centering the visual testimonio showcases art as a legitimate and rigorous form of knowledge -- a research finding. These visual testimonios are not simply a video compilation of the notable women’s lives, but rather provide a kaleidoscope re-historicizing of their lived experiences & contributions.

Author

• Wendy Barrales, New York University