My name is Estelle Mi, and I am a French student entering my third and final year at McGill. As an International Development student minoring in East Asian Cultural Studies, I am very interested in the international relations between Asia and Western societies. By combining several fields of study (political science, economics, history...), which my program allows me to do, I wanted to question and learn about the representation of the Asian community; how to fully appreciate Asian culture in the West without falling into orientalism and stereotypes?
Therefore, I decided to intern at Festival Acc猫s Asie, whose mandate carries my vision in advancing the appreciation and understanding of Asian arts, cultures, and histories. During the month of May, which is Asian Heritage Month in Canada, this festival promotes Asian artists in Montreal to foster dialogue between the Asian communities and the West. Its missions are multiple: not only to break down the barriers of the dominant white culture by affirming plural Asian identities, but also to reunite Asian communities that have been fragmented by Canada's racist history. Through artistic performances, ranging from visual arts to contemporary dance and culinary workshops, the public discovers multiple independent artists from Canada and other Asian countries.
As an intern working with another student (Dilara Bhuiyan) in a small group of four other people, our responsibilities vary as the festival needs change throughout the month. We needed to be flexible; one week before the festival, we mostly worked in the office and our jobs consisted of promoting our events on social media. For example, one of our tasks was to create Instagram posts to advertise in Canada鈥檚 council for the Arts Instagram鈥檚 page. During the festival, we were asked to welcome spectators and artists, and to create content on social media.
In fact, one of the highlights of my internship was the viral spread on social media of one of our TikTok on the 鈥淎sian Horror and Cynicism鈥� exhibition. The digital media MTLBlog reposted us up on their Instagram page, and this event became the most visited exhibition of the month. This experience showed me that social media and communications are the future of cultural events; we need them to increase our visibility. Other highlights included attending amazing and beautiful shows. Beyond our work, we had the opportunity to see the Montreal cultural scene with incredible artists. One of my favorite shows was PANJ, a story on stage that traced the identity journey of the artist, Himmat Singh Shinhat. It was very moving to follow his struggle with his Indian and queer identity and his difficult acceptance of his father's death. Through these shows, I was able to meet important political actors inside the Asian community in Montr茅al that attended the festival. It was a way for me to connect with Montreal society and my own Asian roots.
Some of the challenges I have faced during the internship are based on the difficulty to promote some events. In fact, some performances were very vague in their descriptions, hence communication was difficult for us, and we sometimes found ourselves giving very little description to our audience before the show. To counter these problems, we had no choice but to create content during the performance itself, but this was sometimes not a problem in promoting the event, especially for long-term visual art exhibitions.
In addition, some of the events were very focused on a particular community, such as the Pakistani concert, and no translation was in place. This made it difficult for us to fully understand the Pakistani culture and the meaning of some of their actions during the show. Fortunately, our internship mentor, Khosro, who is Iranian, and Dilara, who is from Bangladesh, understood some Urdu and explained!
In a sense, in overcoming this challenge by listening to people who know the language of the community, I understand how cultural exchange and dialogue a very relational and human experience is. No matter how hard I try to learn the history or the socio-political context of a community with my degree, talking and listening to people is the only way to fully appreciate a culture. This internship allows me to see international relations not as a one-sided or top-down approach, but as a cycle; not only do we receive sensorial and emotional experience from these cultural events, but by listening to them and appreciating them, we also create our own Western representation that is reflected to these communities. Representation is always double-sided.
Finally, I would like to thank Mr. John Blachford for offering me the Archie Malloch Undergraduate Internships in Public Learning. It was an incredible opportunity to enrich my academic career, which has surely left a lasting impression on me.
