Abstract
Youth are facing more issues than ever from high rates of unemployment to the housing crisis with unsafe and unclean housing to racism to cyberbullying to misogyny and acts of feminicide. The unemployment rate is three times higher for youth ages 15-19 (17%) compared to the global population in Québec (5%) (La Presse, May 20, 2025). Additionally, youth have little to no access to proper housing if they need or want to live autonomously in Montréal (Agence QMI, June 27, 2024). Sadly, many influencers promote toxic masculinity, and misogyny as they consider it to be a threat toward young men (Renström, E. A., & Bäck, H., 2024). Acts of feminicide are high again in Québec (Arcand, June 4, 2025). At the cégep I teach at, we recently lost a young student to an act of feminicide. Investigative aesthetics’ primary job is to collectively diversify the practice of truth making (Fuller & Weizman, 2023). Drawing on work undertaken in recent decades in fields such as media theory, critical environmentalism and Science & Technology Studies, investigative aesthetics critically shifts the back-and-forth between the two meanings of the term “making” - making something out of a certain material (making of) and pretending something exists (making up) (Fuller, M., Weizman, E., & Citton, Y., 2023). In this paper presentation, I consider how can students at cégeps use forensic architecture’s investigative aesthetics to fight against systems of power, and by extension people with colonial mentalities, who commit continuous acts of injustice toward them.
Presenters
Jennifer Angela LopesLecturer, Researcher, PhD Student, Communication, Université de Montréal, Quebec, Canada
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Data visualization, Investigative aesthetics, Youth participatory action research, Data activism
