Hae Seo Kim: This is a story of re-location, quite literally and figuratively: moving North Koreans into the body politic of South Korea. The spatial story told here could be about techniques of re-location: plastic surgery, learning to vote; etc. I can imagine a photo essay, with each image about a technique of re-location, linking to a photo essay with supporting material.
Gehad Abaza has a story about repatriation… moving people back into places (demonstrating something about ways modern states work). It is first a story of recurrent displacement and dispossession -- Circassian Forced Migration [1843] forward… So the story goes against itself, working backward as well as forward… Gehad draws on Kate Brown’s portrayal and conceptualization of spatial dispossession (2015). It seems to be a story about efforts to reverse history? I can imagine two photo-essays, placed side-by-side in a PECE essay: one telling the story of repeated dislocation; the other (purporting to) reversing this dislocation through repatriation….
Tawfiq has a story about different imaginaries of a particular place -- the East African coast. I can imagine two separate photo essays that build up distinctive ways of seeing the coast -- that are put side-by-side in a PECE essay (that sets the stage -- narrating the the “Swahili paradox,” etc). Tawfiq points to things that could be included to demonstrate these different ways of seeing -- political cartoons in publications that circulate in different groups; ways real estate is represented for rental or sale; images of the “other group.” This kind of photo essay could build off diverse literatures on how history and education (formal and informal) produce particular ways of seeing, problem identification, etc. Think, for example, of James Scott’s Seeing Like a State, Ludwig Fleck and later work in STS on “thought styles,” ' and work in linguistic anthropology on “professional vision” (like Charle’s Goodwin’s 1994 article, "Professional Vision," American Anthropologist 96(3): 606-633).
Marwa’s story is about spaces that are uninhabitable, but inhabited nonetheless. Without basic infrastructures of living nor places to bury their dead, these spaces are the inverse of intentional spaces. They are spaces into which people are inserted (Arendt), stripped of capacities|capabilities. Here, a photo essay depicted what undermines and bares life might be in order….
Scott Jung seems to be telling a story about making a place online for oppositional work (by bureaucrats) that needs to stay out of view.
Rose and Benedict want to tell a story that prompts an imagination for decolonized computing… They see this as work toward “regenerative narratives” that helps us imagine decolonized futures (referencing Octavia Butler, et al and Horkheimer & Adorno, 1944)... that work toward “right relations” that are/include reciprocal relations, companion planting, et al.
Dijia Chen has a story about the emergence, decline and remembrance of a stimulating, creative space online (ABBS), within other spaces -- broader media spaces in China, the space of academic architecture. The forum as a democratizing force that welcomes pluralism.
Ben’s story is about building spaces within spaces -- oppositional spaces within hegemonic ones -- spaces where “the hack” can happen. This reminds of the work of scenographers -- who build performance spaces -- turning spaces into resonant places (as in Ethnography By Design: Scenographic Experiments in Fieldwork).