Improvisational Transmediations as Decolonial Literacy Tactics and Activism

• In Event: Transmediation in Motion: New Directions for Theory and Inquiry on Multimodality in School Spaces

Abstract

This presentation focuses on story data (Patel, 2019) based on research conducted in Puerto Rico since 2017 with pre-service teachers and arts activists. As pedagogues, scholars, and artists with an interest in critically engaged research, we position notions of decoloniality (Ndimande, 2018; Quijano, 2000; Paris & Winn, 2013; Patel, 2015; Tuck & Gaztambide-Fernandez, 2013; Zavala, 2016) at the core of this presentation and explore how improvisational transmeditations may be understood as decolonial literacy tactics (Author 1, 2020). We situate our thinking within a framework of multiple literacies and multimodalities (Jewitt & Kress, 2003; New London Group, 1996) to articulate how youth may make sense of themselves in and of the world “in crisis.”

Primary to our exploration is an examination of the processes used to navigate meanings across complex learning ecologies. Of immediate interest are moments of collective multimodal communicative engagements viewed through concepts of embodiment especially of and through improvisation as a social practice (Colleague & Author 1, 2011). To look at these moments the concept of transmediation (Author 2, 1984, 1995, Suhor, 1991) “a special case of semiosis in the sense that learners use one sign system to mediate another” (Author 2, 2006, pg.70) functions to localize semiotic phenomena articulated as instances of decolonial literacy tactics.

Key research questions
How may improvisationaly transmediated youth knowledge productions be understood as decolonial literacies and social activism? How do active moves across embodied sign systems produce new social imaginaries in spaces of crisis in Puerto Rico?

Decolonial Methodologies
For over 10 years researchers 1 & 2 have explored decolonial and critical literacy approaches in Puerto Rico. Moving across formal schooling and out of school practices, the emphasis has been to interpret and construct creative experiences which look at local social issues (Author 1 & Colleague, 2014). The longitudinal data includes; interviews, videos, photos, and personal reflections of the processes of local artists, pre-service and in-service teachers, and children in elementary schools. This presentation focuses on two youth performance groups, key to social intervention during the latest resistance movements in Puerto Rico, Jovenes del 98 and Agua, Sol y Sereno.
Grounded in a decolonial “ethnography of voice” (Patel, 2019; Zavala, 2016) this study foregrounds local ways of knowing that act to humanize research in/with Puerto Rican communities (Paris & Winn, 2013). In this way our story data provides visibility to the importance of: 1) Transcending disciplines and modalities grounded on the immediate available resources 2) Participatory, inclusive and expansive “actionings” (Gaztambide & Mignolo, 2014) which create emergent networks of participation by recruiting within the improvisational moment. 3) Reclaiming and remaking spaces where all locations are considered potential generative dramatic and critical spaces. 4) Intentional improvisations where participants create in transmediated moments, to constantly negotiate the deliberate with the unknown within a set of newly proposed political interventions.

The most significant finding and contribution relates to how improvisational and imaginative performance activism generated opportunities for participants and audiences to map past, present and future histories in new and unexpected political ways.

Authors

• Carmen L. Medina, Indiana University - Bloomington

• Gustave John Weltsek, Indiana University - Bloomington