Search
Laurence Butet-Roch
Laurence Butet-Roch is a photographer and writer focused on examining the tense relations between local communities and resource extraction operations, developing creative strategies to cover systemic environmental racism. Her relationships and commitment spurred the research-creation collaboration that culminated in her Master’s of Digital Media (Ryerson University) thesis. In partnership with the Aamjiwnaang Environment Committee, Virtual Aamjiwnaang: Indigenous Interactive Storytelling identifies strategies for the community to share their stories of resilience using digital interactive tools in ways that honour their knowledge-sharing protocols. She is continuing this work as part of Virtual Grounds, a workshop series dedicated to feminist perspectives on digital sustainability and survival presented by Trinity Square Video and the Digital Justice Lab. The lessons learned also served to co-design, with Dr Sarah Marie Wiebe, the Mixed Media Storytelling approach for the research-creation project Reimagining Attawapiskat, which exposes media biases by inviting community members to share their own narratives through a variety of digital and tangible communication formats. She is now pursuing a Ph.D. in Environmental Studies at York University and is a Graduate Research Associate at the Sensorium: Centre for Digital Arts and Technology. Her current research, supported by a Joseph Armand-Bombardier SSHRC Award, unsettles mainstream representations of environmental contamination in Canada through participatory visual discourse analysis and collaborative photographic approaches.
Contact: Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University, 137 Health Nursing & Environmental Studies Building, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, ON Canada M3J 1P3.