The Same Time and Place (2021-ongoing), Rana Nazzal Hamadeh
Infrastructures of Dissent
Curated by Mitra Fakhrashrafi + Tara bursey
In 1945, Ford auto workers in Windsor went on a 99-day strike and won. Leading up to this historic win, workers and their families gathered in the nearby restaurants and cultural centres of Drouillard Road to learn, to dance, and to act. In his writing on the infrastructure of dissent, sociologist Alan Sears suggests it is these forged networks of solidarity and celebration that nurtured the militancy of the strikers.
Infrastructures of Dissent pays tribute to the parks, restaurants, shisha lounges and cafés, clubs, sanctuaries and union halls that have seeded both the formal organizing efforts and the informal knowledge exchanges that lead to collective action. Tings Chak 翟庭君, Hannia Cheng, Rana Nazzal Hamadeh, and Lynn Hutchinson Lee & Ingrid Mayrhofer and Anthony Youssef with Alan Sears ask: what ways can we rebuild infrastructures of dissent and foster community power?
Accompanying programs: Histories Erosions & Futures interview with Anthony Youssef and Alan Sears, Tatreez Circle: Palestinian embroidery, dissent, and labour with Razan Samara.
Presented by Mayworks Festival at the Workers Arts & Heritage Centre from May 10 to August 5, 2023.
