In this workshop, we will consider and explore the oral history interview as an ‘act of translation.’
About this event
Part of the 2023-24 OHMA Public Workshop Series:
Listening for Embodied Knowledge: An Approach to the Oral History Interview
What does it mean to have BIPOC voices at the center of our practice—what are we inviting them to speak on, or claim authority over? We know that oral history has the ability to document the experiences of BIPOC life, but can our approach to the interview go beyond the chronicling of what has happened to them? Can we also prioritize and harness oral history’s potential to record, elevate, and assert ‘ways of being’ and ‘ways of knowing’ our shared world that have been historically delegitimized and overlooked? Our embodied experiences are also our particular expertise on the world. The reality of BIPOC life becomes a particular education, one that shapes unique strategies of surviving and thriving; of sense-making; ways of seeing, interpreting, and “reading” the moments, politics, and interactions of daily life—it is embodied knowledge, embodied authority.
How can our practice better ‘hear’ and legitimize embodied knowledge(s)? In this workshop we will consider the oral history interview as an ‘act of translation’, an approach that permissions the narrator to be both the ‘teller’ of their story, and also the first interpreter of their lived experience. We will discuss forms of un-hearing that can interrupt this process; reflect on the making and un-making of agency and authority in the interview by introducing both the language and concept of permission; and consider the oral history encounter as a ‘space of remembering’ and translation.
Workshop Lead:
Nyssa Chow is an oral historian, multidisciplinary artist, and writer. She is core faculty at the Oral History Masters Program at Columbia University, teaching oral history theory and practice, literary nonfiction, and documentary arts. She is a Visiting Scholar at The Humanities Council at Princeton University. She is the Lead Artist Facilitator for the DocX Labs at The Center for Documentary Studies (CDS) at Duke University, co-founded and conceived with documentarians Martine Granby and Stephanie Owens. The DocX Fellowship was founded to support BIPOC emerging and mid-career artists in the documentary arts.
Chow was an Assistant Professor in the John B. Moore Documentary Studies Collaborative (MDOCS) and Film and Media department at Skidmore College, teaching interdisciplinary documentary arts. She was a Research Affiliate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) at MIT Media Labs (Poetic Justice Group led by artist Ekene Ijeoma), and a co-director of the NYC Covid-19 Oral History, Narrative, and Memory Project at Columbia University (I.N.C.I.T.E). She was the 2019-2021 Princeton Arts Fellow at the Lewis Center for the Arts and has served as Lecturer in the Creative Writing Department at Princeton University, as Visiting Faculty at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (CCS Bard), as Writer-in-Residence at Fordham University, and as Visiting Assistant Professor in the BFA Film Program at Purchase College.
Chow was the 2018 Recipient of the PEN/Jean Stein for Literary Oral History won for the immersive literary oral history project ‘The Story of Her Skin’. This project also won the Columbia University Jeffrey H. Brodsky Oral History Award. Her writing has been published in Ploughshares literary journals, and she was a finalist for the 2023 Narratively Profile Award for literary nonfiction. Chow has collaborated with filmmakers and artists, most recently with Jennifer Wen Ma on the exhibition An Inward Sea for the New Britain Museum of Art. Their current collaboration with artist Daniel Arturo Almeida, an expansion of The Inward Sea: Oral History, earned fiscal sponsorship from the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA). Her solo exhibition Still, Life., a series of installations using sound, light, and assemblage was held at Gallery One in Trinidad. Her artwork Trace: A Memorial was featured in the group exhibition ‘How We Remember’ at the Miriam and Ira D Wallach Art Gallery in New York City. Her work will be featured in the upcoming exhibition (2024) hosted by The LatinX Project.
Chow has conducted oral histories on behalf of arts institutions such as the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, and has lectured widely on the intersection of art and oral history; embodied knowledge and listening; and literary oral history.
Nyssa was born in Trinidad and is a graduate of Columbia University’s MFA Film program and Columbia University's Oral History Masters Program.
Workshops will be 2 or 3 hours long and will feature interactive elements. Registration will be on a sliding scale, with registration free for participants based outside of the United States, and starting at $5 otherwise.
All events will be hosted either in person or online via Zoom. They are open to the public with pre-registration required. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.