Visual Culture in Black Protest
Prakash Krishnan & Kristen Young
Note
Prakash Krishnan wrote this description and did the voiceover
Speaking in this video is Prakash Krishnan, a South Asian adult in his late 20s wearing black glasses, a textured grey sweater, and with straight chin-length black hair parted on the side. In the background is a standing lamp and a black shelf filled with small potted plants
Kristen Young
In this video, Kristen Young is a Black woman that presents in front of a white walled room with a large filled white bookshelf. Young wears medium sized gold hoop earrings on each ear with a necklace, as well as a black ribbed sweater on top.
Unless indicated otherwise, the written descriptions were done by Nicholas Goberdhan from the Access-In-The-Making Lab, and the voiceovers were done by Jamilah Dei-Sharpe from the Respond to Crisis Team. Image descriptions are constructed based on how the participants identified themselves in their videos and in consultation with the AIM LAB. If you would like to make changes to any part of the description, please do not hesitate to email us at info@respondtocrisis.com.
Visual Culture in Black Protest
with Prakash Krishnan and Kristen Young
Prakash Krishnan is a media practitioner, scholar and artist-researcher, currently pursuing a Masters in Media Studies in the Department of Communication Studies at Concordia University.
Kristen Young is a community archivist and records manager.
In this video
Themes
Anti-Black racism
Race, Media, Technology
Krishnan and Young, co-hosts of the podcast Do the Kids Know?, use three case studies of protests against anti-Black racism to explore the relationship between visual culture and protest. They illuminate how iconic moments of visuality inform a cultural understanding of history, thereby canonizing protests as a historical imaginary.
Taking action
Remember why people protest
Use images of protests as motivations for what has been and can be done
Use social media to strategically mobilize images as a protest culture
Resources
Do the kids know? Podcast hosted by Prakash and Kristen
Van Ness, Grace and Prakash Krishnan. “Art of the March: Archiving Aesthetics of the Women’s March” In Design and Political Dissent: Spaces, Objects , Materiality, 81-94. New York: Routletdge, 2021
Marie-Jospeh Angelique – Canadian Encyclopedia
The Hanging of Angelique – Afua Cooper
Radical History: The Computer Riot