Organizing Stories: Mythography, Digital Storytelling and Counter-Colonizing the Heteropatriarchal Gaze

Organizing Stories is a student-focused project founded and directed by Professors Autumn M. Womack (English; African American Studies) and Monica Huerta (English; American Studies). The project connects students with veteran organizers to investigate the long histories of anti-racist activism, racial justice organizing, and coalition-building as they relate to questions of storytelling and humanistic study more broadly.

In the final Organizing Stories event of the academic year, multidisciplinary mythopoeic artist, anthropologist, and social justice advocate Indrani Pal-Chaudhuri invites audiences to participate and collaborate in a student-faculty activist workshop on participatory visual and digital storytelling, with her in-progress series of works, “Mythography, Digital Storytelling and Counter-Colonizing the Heteropatriarchal Gaze.”

“Having colonized the globe, the white straight male gaze dominates contemporary film and art, distorting humanity’s representation and self-reflection through a narrow lens. The normalization of this gaze and its heroes privileged via violence often obscures the ways it objectifies and marginalizes women, LGBTQ communities, and people of color, amplified intersectionally. Using cinema verite, magical realism, and participatory visual and digital storytelling, my work invites audiences to reflect and counter-colonize the gaze, with an intersectional multiplicity of perspectives, to inspire a more just and equitable world.” ––Indrani Pal-Chaudhuri

Indrani Pal-Chaudhuri is a multidisciplinary artist working in photography, film, anthropology, and social justice advocacy. Her work explores the intersection of mythology and reality from diverse perspectives to inspire change. A protege of Iman and David Bowie, Indrani helped launch many artists’ careers including Beyonce and Lady Gaga, creating their solo debut album art. She is a Max Mark-Cranbrook 2019 Global Peacemaker, a United Nations WEDO Fellow, and recipient of 34 awards including the Tribeca Film Festival Disruptive Innovation Award, Best Picture at CNN Expose Awards, two Gold Lions at Cannes Festival of Creativity, Best Picture and Best Director at the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival. A keynote speaker at the Harvard University Kennedy School “Pride and Progress LGBTQ Film Symposium,” she is Organizer / Host of “The Art of Anti-Racism and Social Justice,” and a Visiting Lecturer at the Lewis Center, Princeton University.

This event is open to the public. Registration required.

For more information, please visit the Organizing Stories website.

Organizing Stories is supported by an Exploratory Grant in Collaborative Humanities from the Humanities Council, as well as the Dean of the Faculty, the University Center for Human Values, the Department of African American Studies, and the Princeton African Humanities Colloquium.