Speaking Out on Violence and Social Change: Transmedia Storytelling with Remotely Situated Women in Nepal and Canada

Abstract

In 2008–2009, Crossing Communities Art Project based in Winnipeg, MB extended its international transmedia project lookinginspeakingout.com  to Nepal, in partnership with the Women Foundation Nepal. In this essay we describe the relational creative process between women in our projects in Canada and Nepal, including our collectively directed videos and public forums. Participating women in both countries worked collaboratively with Canadian artists to portray their lives; they described personal histories of gendered violence, enforced widowhood, self-harm, and living with HIV-AIDS. The videos described in this essay including documentary footage of the project are available for screening on the website, www.lookinginspeakingout.com . While the lookinginspeakingout.com project and this essay contribute some new understandings to the emerging field of collective transmedia storytelling in particular with women in remote locations, we recognize that our exploration of participatory video, authorship, social change, and the impacts of relational art projects have raised more questions than answers.