Harleen Kaur is a recent graduate of the University of Michigan with a BA in English and a minor in Community Action and Social Change. This fall, she will be embarking on an 8-month solo travel around the world as a Bonderman Fellow. Upon her return, Harleen will be moving to New York to work with The Sikh Coalition, the nation’s largest Sikh civil rights organization. In her dispatch, Harleen talks about her reflections on this trip as part of the documentation committee and the complications that come with attempting to memorialize one’s experience through photos and film. You can hear Harleen read a portion of her dispatch here.
I have viewed much of my first POA experience through a thin layer of glass. Whether it has been the lens of a camera or a computer screen, the process of documenting the 15th year of the Pedagogy of Action has given me a sense of distance from my own learning, allowing me to question the presence of technology in our time here.
Nesha assigned me to assist with the documentation of our own trip; I would be filming, photographing, and live streaming most aspects of our days. I initially understood the significance of this work, as we wanted to share the wonderful experiences we were having with as many people as possible, in order to spread the message of POA.
However, the difficulty came the first time I was involved in the set up of the cameras and live stream for our Johannesburg Symposium, which took many hours and days in the week before the symposium. After these moments, I reflected that the documentation of the experience had started to take priority over the experience itself.
Documentation has allowed us to share our experiences with you all, and after POA finishes its current form, it will allow us to remember our experiences and recall what an impact it made on our lives. Photos and video have given us the power and privilege to immortalize a message, share a moving moment, and include those who were not present to share in the experience. Yet, one must continuously question the balance between experiencing a current moment for how it will be portrayed in the future versus how it will be lived in the present. If we are continuously worried about how we can share our great experiences with those at home, we will be absent in the most crucial periods of our learning, never to experience them again.
So, when I return, I hope not to show you pictures, but paint you portraits with my words, emotions, and memories. I hope to describe the beauty of the students of Charles Hugo through their smiles, warm eyes, and melodic laughs. I hope to tell you of the things that my fellow POA members taught me through their wisdom, talent, and curiosity. I hope to show you the curves of the valleys and mountains of Vulindlela, the glistening blue of the Indian Ocean, and the concrete structures of Constitution Hill. I hope to sit with you and tell you, face-to-face, how this experience has changed me, for good.
