Crossroads in Cultural Studies Conference 14-17th December 2016 Program Index

2012). Before delving into the discussion on participant views on the case, I refer to some online generated
analytical data on overall patterns of how the image of Alan Kurdi spread and circulated in debates on
Twitter in Norway and the UK, and themes that came up in these debates. This helps to give an idea of the
socio-political context and the nature and scope of public engagement that surrounded the case.
Daniella Trimboli
storytelling
Everydayness in the future tense: performing the attainment of inclusion in migrant digital
Community-based arts programmes are sites at which the “work” of Australian multiculturalism frequently
takes place. ACMI, Big hART and Curious Works facilitate digital storytelling projects that are often
compelled by a vision of a culturally-inclusive Australia. Indeed, Curious Works has recently posited that
cultural diversity is the catalyst for social revolution. This paper examines this suggestion by considering how
digital interventions deploy particular figurations of the everyday to drive migrant narratives into an
inclusive future. It pauses to consider the affective modalities fuelling these programmes and asks: is the
performance of a future-oriented inclusiveness counterproductive to the deconstruction of racialised
migrant narratives? How do we harness a future-oriented performativity without collapsing into utopic and
ultimately restrictive formulations of cultural diversity? The paper takes particular interest in the momentto-moment
translations that occur in community-based arts projects that may not be captured by futureoriented
narratives. It argues that it is these moments of art-making that open up our capacity to construct
alternative, non-racialised configurations of everyday life in Australia.
1B
Indigenous politics and resilience (Chair, Adam Gall)
Matteo Dutto
Resistance Stories as Cultural Resistance: the Legacies of Pemulwuy
In March 2013, “Welcome to Redfern”, a mural by Kamilaroi artist Reko Rennie, was unveiled in Redfern,
Sydney. The paste up stencil of Bidjigal warrior Pemulwuy - who between 1788 and 1802 fought against the
British who had first invaded and settled the area that we know today as Sydney Harbour – constitutes a
central element in Rennie’s work and establishes a clear connection between past and present Indigenous
history. This paper reflects on the persistence of Pemulwuy as a heroic figure for Indigenous Australians and
a symbol of the ongoing struggle against colonisation. I investigate how, starting from the late 1970s, his
story has been strategically recovered from the colonial archive and retold by different Indigenous artist
across different media. I argue that these different embodiments of stories of early Indigenous resistance
can be best understood as interconnected acts of cultural resistance that question the place of these
historical figures within contemporary Australian history and society and propose instead different ways of
doing and understanding history.
Lilly Brown
Regenerating concepts of Indigenous childhood & youth: From problems to possibilities
There is a profound interdisciplinary absence regarding both the conceptual and theoretical emergence of
Australian Indigenous childhood and youth as social categories, despite decades of concerted research and
practical intervention into the life worlds of these young people. Indigenous young people, globally, are still
too often framed in terms of risk, disorder and disadvantage, underpinned by a seemingly self-evident
assumption: that Torres Strait Islander and Aboriginal young people are a problem in need of fixing. In this
contribution I will engage with a renascent movement in popular cultural production that can be read as
responding to, but also opening up possibilities for, moving beyond the limited and limiting frameworks that
currently guide and inform research and practice in relation to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children
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