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THIRD SPACE: AN INTERCULTURAL NEGOTIATION OF SOUTH ÁSIAN DIASPORA IN CANADA
casteist rhetorics. The festival explored temporalities of the diaspora (being
home abroad) intersections of gender, sexuality and South Asianness. Artists
accessing such space, often define various belongings (interruptive hybridity
and intersections) in a Third Space, with focus on both anti-heteronormative
and anti-sexist ideas within South Asian patriarchy as well as an anti-racist
stance in Western host societies.
Like many South Asian diasporic artists and filmmakers, I firmly believe
that our location in the vast swath of Western, South Asian and the global
mediascape can be found, relayed and understood through the occupation,
creation and invitation in the postcolonial-postmodern-urban Third Spaces
where “arts-based methods” can be employed to create inquires and seen as
important “identity works,” which can reach wider audiences.™ Similarly, my
performance of South Asian belonging in a Western cultural landscape is an
artistic exercise which can be effectively seen as a part of growing South Asian
diasporic cinema, media art and experimental processes. Such processes
both celebrate and critique discourses, identities and performances relating
to interculturality and hybridity. I am of the opinion that Canadian media
landscape shouldn't just act as an orifice in intercultural dissemination but an
outlet of multicultural flows. It should provide intersections of minority and
mainstreams, divulge differences and bring together East and West in such
a way that immigrants and hosts ask themselves and each other in “authentic”
modes: What does it truly mean to be a Canadian?
BIBLIOGRAPHY
---, Arrivals and Departures, The Colonies and India, 5 June 1897,
https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/35686721/ (accessed 10 March 2020).
---, National Household Survey, Statistics Canada, 2011,
https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm/2011/dp-pd/prof/index.cfm?Lang=E
(accessed 20 March 2020).
BALUJA, Tamara, I struggle with what to do with my Indian background:
Actress cast in Shakespeare set in South Asia, CBC.ca, 21 July 2020,
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/i-struggle-with-what¬
to-do-with-my-indian-background-actress-cast-in-shakespeare-play-set¬
in-south-asia-1.5218789 (accessed 1 April 2020).
BARRETT, Estelle, Introduction, in E. Barrett — B. Bolt (eds.), Practice as
research: Approaches to creative arts enquiry, London, I. B. Tauris, 2010.
BHABHA, Homi K., The Location of Culture, London, Routledge, 1994.
34 Estelle Barrett Introduction, in E. Barrett — B. Bolt (eds.), Practice as research: Approaches
to creative arts enquiry, London, I. B. Tauris, 2010, 1-13.
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