1 Introduction

Based on research conducted in two public state schools in the Metropolitan Region of Buenos Aires (mrba), one specializing in educating students with learning disabilities and the other offering general education, within the context of urban poverty, this article explores the dynamics of inclusion as a right to appear (Butler, 2015) through an analysis of audiovisual materials produced by students. Building upon Judith Butler’s (2015) ideas, we propose that the right to appear entails entering the political arena, advocating for justice, and striving for livable living conditions for lives that have been regarded as disposable (ibid). A response to “precarity” understood as the political situation in which certain bodies are subject to violence, exclusion and deprived of their status as recognized subjects (Butler, 2015).

The individuals asserting this right are students residing in urban areas characterized by “radical inequality” (Davis, 2007). This radical inequality manifests in the form of material poverty, environmental degradation, and violence stemming from illicit networks. These embodied inequalities define specific urban circumstances that, despite exacerbating the vulnerability of bodies, offer those who have been profoundly excluded an opportunity to enhance their quality of life.

These struggles also involve bodies of students with disabilities in special education schools, where “radical inequality” intersects with lives that deviate from the conventional “norm” (Youdell, 2006). In this educational setting, these bodies find a shared space for the exchange of images and words (Grinberg & Armella, 2021), fostering the production of knowledge and safeguarding the right to appear within a context marked by precariousness.

Within this context, we propose the hypothesis that these productions facilitate the inclusion of students residing in urban areas marked by precarious living conditions by offering alternative narratives of their experiences in education and their surroundings. Alternative narratives refer to the stories told by the voices of the students. These narratives debate with the stories about students told by adults, mass media, social networks and institutions. Through audiovisual workshops held in schools situated in neighborhoods characterized by urban poverty, this article highlights how students “appear” as protagonists and narrators of lives that are traditionally recounted by others and often depicted as symbols of resilience, danger, or sensationalism. Their narratives serve the purpose of unsettling the audience regarding prevailing social inequalities. When these devalued bodies become objects of indagation, they become bodies who strive to insist and resist the capitalist system’s tendency to produce skilled and capable bodies.

This article also exposes the hegemonic ways in which bodies in poverty and precarity are typically portrayed. It delves into one of the contemporary forms of inclusion, partial inclusion, which conceals exclusionary elements within its structure, prompting subjects to assert their presence (Grinberg et al, 2022). To illustrate this, we focus on two segments of the students’ audiovisual productions from the participating schools. These two narratives, Ciudad Fantasma (“Ghost City”) and Voces Carcoveñas (“Carcova Voices”) serve as platforms for individuals to make themselves heard and visible in a resounding manner.

2 Appear on the Political Scene

We contemplate the concept of inclusion as the opportunity for silenced bodies to “appear” and construct an alternative narrative regarding the precarious lives of young people residing in the city’s impoverished neighborhoods. These bodies tend to be censored and their narratives are often silenced as well as positivized. Following Judith Butler (2015), to appear signifies a performative diversity of bodies that, in public, collectively form a “we” demanding a more “livable life” for those lives labeled as “disposable” (p. 18). They are seen as (non-)productive bodies, subjected to differential exposure to life and death. This differentiation empowers people to shape their destinies as self-reliant entities within a neoliberal rationality that compels subjects to be their own entrepreneurs (Rose, 2001).

Is it possible, then, a different way of seeing those hegemonic and ableist narratives about life in a city marked by precariousness and its inhabitants? How can muted bodies, viewpoints, and voices participate in public discourse? What narratives and declarations about precarity, poverty and inclusion emerge when it is those on the outskirts who venture into the city and recount their lives who lend their voices to these narratives? It is imperative to consider how to articulate these alternative narratives, especially when conventional means cannot adequately convey the social expectations. Instead, it necessitates a pause in time, care, and embarking on a journey to co-create knowledge (Bradley & Proasi, 2021).

In this work, our goal is to bring to light those potentials that have been silenced. We do so through audiovisual workshops in which students “appear” in the process of creating knowledge. This approach differs from sensationalist depictions that focus solely on personal perspectives of the material and structural conditions of exclusion. Instead, we offer alternative, active, and resistant ways of narrating the uncomfortable and harsh realities of contemporary inequalities. Our aim is to challenge the conventional narrative styles of embodied poverty and precarity.

In this context, we suggest that schools function as environments where students engage with the world, crafting narratives that reflect their experiences within it. Following Hickey-Moody (2017), this act of narration transforms an individual and private act into a political and collaborative fact, empowering the re-elaboration of how bodies appear on the political scene and harness their potential. This implies that subjects have the possibility to use alternative resources to convey their stories. The perspectives offered by audiovisual production are rooted in this potential, expanding the modes of affection between bodies and objects that we cannot determine where they are going or heading (Youdell, 2010). The very act of narration becomes the medium through which the potential of these bodies is realized, allowing them to appear in public discourse and become objects of problematization.

These are innovative methods that weave together silenced bodies, objects, narratives and life experiences (Braidotti, 2002; Haraway, 1991) that, through these audiovisual productions, narrate the intricacies of the human experience while distancing themselves from dualistic and oversimplified conclusions. This process involves co-creating knowledge and broadens the potential for narrating it in other ways.

3 Methodology

The research results presented here were gathered through fieldwork conducted in public high schools, both in common and special education, located in areas of urban poverty. These schools have historically housed generations of populations whose bodies have been exposed to impacts of environmental pollution, limited resources, unemployment, risks associated with illegal activities and challenges accessing essential services such as healthcare, safety, public spaces and educational institutions. The audiovisual productions used in this research were created by 14 and 18 year-old students who have grown up in an era characterized by 21st-century inequalities. These inequalities are embodied in their experiences, and over the course of our research, they prompted us to reevaluate our methodological approach, seeking strategies to effectively convey these often-silenced inequalities, especially when they narrate their traumatic effects.

As a result, we began to work with audiovisual formats that challenged conventional techniques of educational research, participant interactions, ways of communicating complex ideas and the creation of knowledge. Following Burch (2022), this innovative way of research aims to “unlock the potential of the research enabling us to uncover and depict more fluid ways of comprehending and existing within the world (p.393). These audiovisual workshops, in turn, look for a “drift” in a journey for alternative forms of knowledge (Bradley & Proasi, 2021), amplified by artistic methods and audiovisual practices that give opportunities for the self-expression and manifestation of the subjects involved in these educational experiences.

They are performative reflections of a political commitment to the right to appear and the claim to be recognized as subjects in the contemporary social scenario. These are collective productions that allow people to express out loud that their lives matter. A mode of research that is not situated between the binary margins to understand the world, but rather seeks to think about what may appear, but that occurs in the very act of researching with others. A collective and participatory investigation, which eliminates hierarchies and it’s situated in the drifts, in what is to come.

The workshop aims to address the new methodologic challenges which involve understanding educational institutions, bodies and the effects of contemporary inequality (Grinberg et al., 2022). This approach entails collaborative and committed work, lasting in time, incorporating new creative methodologies (Kara, 2020; Hickey-Moody, 2017). These methods facilitate the exploration of topics related to strong emotions (Prendergast, 2009) and the articulation of feelings and ideas that “are often challenging to express in words” (Blodgett et al., 2013, p.313). This enables the activation of narration in situations where life experiences often remain silenced (Grinberg et al., 2022). Narrating through the audiovisual material provides a platform for students to exercise their right to appear (Butler, 2015), as they advocate for and demand improved living conditions.

The scenes presented below, as they also appear in the audiovisual component of this article, are the outcome of the audiovisual workshops conducted in these two schools. Through a proposal that bridges the university with the local community, and integrates research with the educational system, these workshops contain research, extension and transfer tasks. Each scene endeavors to illustrate both its creation within the workshop and the students’ call for improved living conditions.

In the first stage of the workshop, a series of activities were carried out in order to return to the daily life and concerns of the students under investigation. We developed group activities, exchange and problematization where the students chose the stories of their interest. Then, they built the script of their audiovisual productions through diverse artistic practices, such as drawing, painting, sculpture, collage, stop motion and music. After this, the workshop involved an exercise on basic elements of audiovisual production such as camera handling, types of shots and camera angles, sound recording, script development, editing, among others. In this stage, the students filmed both inside and outside the classroom. Finally, the students edited the filmed material and gave collective feedback on the productions. Ethical Standards were adhered to throughout the research process after all the parties have given their informed consent for both the written and the audiovisual components.

The first scene was created in 2018, in a special education school that focuses on the schooling processes of students with disabilities. In this scene, the students tried to address the material living conditions and environmental pollution they face. The second scene was produced in 2022, in a school situated within an economically disadvantaged neighborhood. Here, the students turned their attention to the voices and narratives within their community. By categorizing and analyzing these audiovisual materials, created by students, our objective is to propose a reflection of the dynamics surrounding inclusion and exclusion as a fundamental right to appear.

4 Scene #1: Ciudad Fantasma (“Ghost City”) (see minute 00.20)

From a question raised during the workshops with students with disabilities regarding environmental pollution, it was suggested to create a short film using the stop-motion animation. The students constructed models from recycled materials and developed a script that combined documentary and fictional elements. This script portrayed the story of a city with high pollution levels caused by industrial waste. Following a series of protests, calls for justice, and petitions, the city’s inhabitants opt to abandon it, and it is then titled ‘Ciudad Fantasma.’ What began as mere imagination ceased to be fiction when their personal stories intricately wove into the scripted narrative, revealing tangible forms of inequality and their chosen method of portrayal. To achieve this, the students were encouraged to capture images of their neighborhoods to document the sources of pollution.

In that exercise, a student who lives very close to the Reconquista river, the second most polluted river in the country, films a journey to the corner of his house following a night of heavy rain. Using his cell phone, he documents the unfolding events in his neighborhood. While doing so, a city bus passing by creates ripples, resulting in waves of gray water that rise due to the flooding. As the student captures the public transport, the driver honks the horn in support of this action. Almost like a game, the challenges of urban living in this moment are illustrated by the residents of that corner and those who pass by, amidst the flooded streets and the rising gray waters.

In the final video edit, the students choose to incorporate this segment. In a split-screen format, during an interview with a researcher who specializes in waste generation that regularly ends up at the region’s largest open-air landfill, situated just a few blocks from the student’s home, the student comments as follows: ‘Yes, I live in Lanzone, between Ceballos. The Ceamse[1] is there, and everything gets flooded.’ The interview continues, and another student asks, ‘What can we do to make this happen less often?’ The researcher offers some guidance, which is summarized at the end of the production as conclusions. At this point, different signs with written messages are used, as some participants have non-hegemonic oral language. This approach enhances their engagement in the video production and their participation in collective discussions, even when language is expressed through physical expressions, gestures, or moments of silence. This embrace of heteroglossia, as suggested by Donna Haraway (1991) as a means to break free, to some extent, from the dualisms that have traditionally defined us, aligns with Judith Butler’s (2015) perspective, leading toward the construction of a more democratic, diverse, and accessible life.

In the video’s conclusions, several written messages are featured, such as: #if you recycle, you reduce waste; #we want a better world; #we are the future. These messages are aimed at persuading the viewer. These messages are produced from the own thoughts of the students with disabilities who participate in the workshop; these are their voices demanding the future of their neighborhoods and their lives. A proclamation/manifest that becomes political and collective when the script takes shape and body as a result of the workshop. A workshop that without those voices this situation would remain silenced. These are statements, as Judith Butler (2015) mentions, of the precarious material life that they go through.

The effort to reduce pollution in their neighborhoods is rooted in the political necessity of expressing the ongoing issues and the demand for a more livable life for those residing in these areas. Leaving the city may not be the only option. As the researcher explains in the video, abandoning the city is not an individual’s sole responsibility, but a result of being exposed to specific conditions arising from the inequality present in these urban spaces. In this short film, it is the students with disabilities who, through the use of alternative narrative techniques, suggest a different form of inclusion. They provide a way to appear amidst the daily challenges and conflicts, thereby highlighting the need for a public discourse that warrants special attention.

This is a public commitment that emerges from life experiences narrated by students residing in urban areas characterized by environmental degradation and pollution. These circumstances not only expose them to health issues and neglect, but also to the risk of mortality. In their narratives, they purposefully convey this exposure through their voices, writing, messages for the future, and concerns. These messages contribute to indispensable discussions, reflecting a clear position and asserting a presence that cannot be overlooked, for they are the future.

5 Scene #2: Voces Carcoveñas (“Carcova Voices”) (see minute 04:05)

After a year of engaging in artistic practices centered on the themes of portraits and landscapes, the students decided to create a short audiovisual piece where they could merge these concepts within the context of their immediate community – Carcova, their own neighborhood. Voces Carcoveñas is the fruit of their exploration into diverse narratives within their community, brought to life through a variety of artistic methods including drawing, image intervention, photography, and writing. These elements converged to form an audiovisual production that interweaves portraits and landscapes, all while spotlighting the personal stories of those leading the narrative. Even during the script development phase, which entailed selecting interview subjects and locations, a conscious decision was made regarding how each individual wanted to shape their own narrative, present themselves, and reveal their stories. This becomes a chance to craft a distinctive way of presenting oneself to the world, one that stands apart from the portrayal often seen in the media. While some media persist in highlighting crime and contamination, the students opted for a different approach, featuring an interview with a working mother who candidly shares her journey to the neighborhood and her hopes for her children. They also introduce a young rapper who underscores the notion: “I pursued a career in music because the neighborhood is often labeled as dangerous. I hope that in the future, people will say, ‘This is the neighborhood where Alan Daniel came from,’ and that more people will come into the neighborhood. There are a lot of talented people here, including many athletes.” Thus, the ongoing political struggle for a “more livable life” unfolds in the ways in which individual lives, in this case, those of the students, their neighbors, and their neighborhood, are presented to others, to the world, and to the political sphere.

Wherever words are shared, where multiple voices and their stories come together, the opportunity to appear arises. In the course of the audiovisual short film, the students actively encourage the exchange of words. Instead of focusing on creating self-portraits or selfies, they shift their attention to others, granting a voice to neighbors, family members, and friends. It is within this collaborative context that a new approach to self-presentation takes shape, allowing for the portrayal of one’s own life experiences and advocating for improved living conditions.

Political struggles, recognition, and the right to appear are subjects of discussion, even in matters that may seem trivial, as the neighbor points out. The act of incorporating their neighborhood into geolocation systems or naming the streets where their homes are situated holds great significance. In this context, the ordinary aspects of life become politically relevant, and the opportunity to appear, to “exist,” is emphasized. As Haraway (1991) emphasizes, we are part of naturecultures where the spaces we inhabit are closely connected to what we are and what we are becoming. In this sense, acknowledging the environment where we live and where we exist is an ongoing political struggle. In the present context, the political efforts of the students, as well as those of their families and neighbors, encompass not only the appreciation of their individual bodies and lives but also the advocacy for the spaces that sustain their bodies, namely, the neighborhood.

6 Conclusions

In this study, we have illustrated the role of audiovisual productions in shaping inclusive processes that allow subjects to become visible through their narratives. This is of significant importance as it empowers students to engage in public and political discourse concerning the persistent inequalities of a century that continues to establish new boundaries and margins of exclusion. In line with Hickey-Moody (2017), we contend that the research methodology, as a practice, offers an alternative means of involvement in these discussions for workshop participants. It provides a platform for recounting everyday issues, which are sometimes overshadowed by conventional voices that fail to address unvoiced concerns.

Throughout the text, it is proposed to rethink the ways of doing research in schools, taking into account the multiple conditions that affect subjects and institutions located in contexts of urban poverty. This work presents research results that show how audiovisual productions enable narratives that allow students to understand the significance of interpretive frameworks of contemporary precariousness. It is about making experiences of precariousness knowable through the use of different research tools that expand the fields of perception and registration of students’ everyday lives. The empirical material presented is the result of a methodological research, the search for which consists in making more complex the readings of the living conditions of students who live in those neighborhoods distressed by urban poverty.

This underlying concern, as emphasized by Grinberg et al. (2022), finds expression in the myriad struggles of these students and their neighbors, whose lives are closely intertwined with the vital space underpinning their existence, namely, the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires, its neighborhoods, and schools. It is crucial to analyze how these productions reintroduce methods for constructing and nurturing more livable lives within these spaces. They are performative reflections of a political commitment to the right to appear on the political scene and the claim to be recognized as subjects in the contemporary social scenario. These are collective productions that allow people to express out loud that their lives matter.

Funding

The research presented in this article was made possible with support from the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (conicet) and the Human Sciences Research Laboratory (lich-unsam).