My interest in new media interactions centres on the ability of an interactive installation to respond or react to audiences as individuals, to create mirrored interactions of the real world – revealing things about ourselves, society, community and our place within it, for better or worse. Drawing on a family history of migration across three continents in four generations, against a backdrop of dwindling colonial empire, my work provokes questions around issues of de/coloniality, intersectionality and identity construction. I often work with existing products and objects imbued with meaning or history, and the role they play in societal structures. Textures, layers and abstraction are prevalent throughout my work as a means to convey emotion and to create juxtaposition. Ambiguity is a tool, used to create tension or to entice. In times of uncertainty, a lack of clarity causes anxiety, revealing actions not based on reality, but on emotion, often manifesting in repeated cycles in history.
LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Currently based in Toronto/Tkaronto, traditional territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinaabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples.
Janine Ramlochan is an Indo-Caribbean Canadian multimedia artist and writer exploring issues of identity construction, intersectionality and de/coloniality. Her work has been shown in film festival screenings, alternative venues, gallery exhibitions, conferences/ symposiums and cultural events. In 2015, she was commissioned by the City of Mississauga (a Toronto-satellite city) to mount an installation for the Pan Am & ParaPan Am Games as part of a 22-day city-wide art intervention. Other exhibitions include the New Media Program of the Trinidad & Tobago Film Festival (2014), The Carnival Project, New York (2014), and Sarai 09: Projections, New Delhi (2013). Initially focused on assemblage, installation and short experimental film works, recent forays into new media include an interactive audio and video works, short-form narrative projects anchored in virtual space and a VR stage play.
Janine draws on a background in strategic planning where she bridged conceptual ideas with an interest in human behaviour, cultural dynamics and media consumption. She has worked with ad agencies (across Omnicom, WPP, Interpublic, Publicis Groupe, Dentsu + boutique independents) in New York, Bangkok, Toronto and Paris on numerous local and international brands. She has taught classes at Centennial College (Toronto) and Mahidol University (Bangkok), and spent extended durations on education or independent research projects in Hobart (Australia), Kingston (Jamaica), and New Delhi (India). She recently sat on juries for the Ontario Arts Council (2016), the Toronto Arthouse Film Festival (2017) and the Independent Production Fund - Web Series (2019) in Canada.
As an Indo-Caribbean-Canadian female artist, my work is deeply informed by my experiences living at the intersection of multiple marginalized identities. I use my creative practice to reconstruct obscure histories, to challenge or question dominant narratives and power structures that perpetuate inequality and exclusion of those who were historically silenced or overlooked.
The The Vanishing Points (2009-2023) is an example of decolonial exploration. Altered Canadian passports, aesthetically burnt, collaged with currency from the global south (relative to the travel in each passport), elicits a broad range of meanings — contemporary globalization, to post-coloniality, and eliciting affective nationalism. A Decade’s Insomnia (2010), a series of ten mixed media works on paper, explores intergenerational trauma dreamstates. Saturday Mornings (2013), a short experimental video work using open-sourced cartoons from the 40s, emulates the mind as it attempts to reconcile alternate realities.
I often worked on small teams responsible for big international regions, where issues that surface are immediately taken seriously due to the implications to a large user and manufacturing base… small decisions affect millions of people. From fields to factories to distribution channels and office staff — an established business losing pace in high growth markets could mean eventual job losses across the board, in countries where there sometimes aren’t safety nets for employees. These are seen as real consequences, even when emerging market declines are unlikely to affect the share price of a large multinational, due to the currency value.
Working on dominant brands in a category (sometimes with century-old legacy companies), they tend to be less focused on $ growth and scaling due to their global dominance. The key focal points are usually how they’re pacing against category and global GDP growth vs. currency fluctuations across regions… and also emerging or competitive innovations. These tend to reveal where changes are needed to ensure market dominance is maintained. The domestic companies, startups and non-profits I’ve been exposed to, however, tend to be more concerned with attracting resources, scalability and capacity building (in that order) where addressing one gives rise to issues in the next.
Regional/int’l teams are an added layer or expenditure, and demonstrate returns by accelerating progress of the country teams. The prevalence of the overarching regional office culture is much reduced, partly because int’l teams prefer it, partly because it’s more expedient to the business needs of regional environments. Spaces where people from various geographies and levels of the organization continuously pass through, where insights/ issues on the business can be shared, experimented on or further developed. An idea that surfaces in one country might be developed at the regional level and tested in another before being elevated to a global team. Individuals from one country might collaborate in the regional office on an extended project for launch across multiple countries. The more successful capacity-building programs are often led from regional hubs due to proximity, better integration and inclusion.
My role was very specialized. I’d usually focus on a particular brand when a cross-disciplinary team couldn’t move the needle on a creative reinvention/ repositioning. I’d be involved for 8-10 months to lead a strategic and creative change, then turn it back over to the country team lead to continue for several years without any regional involvement. Increasingly, my insight was sought out more upstream in the product development process.
My interest is in experimenting with media, its evolving forms and its role as a catalyst for systemic and societal changes. It’s always an interesting time to experiment when technology is being absorbed into the social, ecological and biological. The role of media + technology in societal de-/re-construction and how individuals are using it to circumnavigate long-standing oppressions, are themes I am currently exploring. These are informed by navigating global infrastructures, seeing how legal structures and trade policies seem to shape them, and falling through structural gaps and perceptual disconnects in a rapidly globalizing economy.
