Please join RMIT University for a public discussion on Photography & Civic Engagement with NayanTara Gurung Kakshapati and Nuraini Juliastuti, moderated by Professor Daniel Palmer.

IMPERFECT SOLIDARITIES: PHOTOGRAPHY AS A COMMUNITY-ENGAGED CIVIC PRACTICE
NayanTara Gurung Kakshapati will discuss the participatory, communicative and pedagogic potential of photography and ‘visual politics’ to contribute to civic engagement at the intersection of creative practice and our broader responsibilities to our communities through her work on the Nepal Picture Library (and associated research projects) and the Photo Kathmandu Photography Festival.

NayanTara Gurung Kakshapati lives in Kathmandu, Nepal and works at the intersections of visual storytelling, research, pedagogy, and collective action. In 2007, she co-founded photo.circle; a platform that facilitates learning, exhibition making, and publishing opportunities for Nepali photographers who are working in increasingly trans-disciplinary ways. In 2011, she co-founded Nepal Picture Library; a digital archiving initiative that works towards diversifying Nepali social and cultural history, by centering the histories of women, Dalit, Madhesi, indigenous and queer people. NayanTara is also the co-founder and Festival Director of Photo Kathmandu, an international festival that takes place in Kathmandu every two years.

THE STUDYING-TURN: ARTISTS COLLECTIVES, FREE CLASSES, AND LONG-TERM CULTURAL STRATEGY
Nuraini Juliastuti will discuss recent developments in artists collectives, the creation of free classes and other models of alternative schooling. She will speculate on studying, or learning together, as an inter-relational thinking and a mechanism to develop long-term cultural strategy from below, using case studies from her ongoing research project in Cambodia and Timor Leste.

Nuraini Juliastuti is a co-founder of Yogyakarta-based Kunci Cultural Studies Center. Her research and professional practice focuses on alternative cultural production, art history in Southeast Asia, digital culture, commons-making, and politics of translation. To continue her work in Kunci's School of Improper Education, she is currently working on a research project about Studying-turn and artists collectives in Cambodia and Timor Leste.

Daniel Palmer is a writer and Associate Dean of Research and Innovation in the School of Art at RMIT University. His latest book is Photography and Collaboration: From Conceptual Art to Crowdsourcing (Bloomsbury 2017).

This event has been made possible through the support of the Design & Creative Practice Enabling Capability Platform at RMIT University, in partnership with the Centre for Contemporary Photography.

Photography & Civic Engagement — A Public Discussion, CCP

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Image: Kathmandu, 1981 from the Imperfect Solidarities/Feminist Memory project