OCR
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-whatto-do-with-my-indian-background-actress-cast-in-shakespeare-play-setin-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. e 155"