Media Projects

Produced by Stefan Christoff

Mixed and edited by Joseph Sannicandro

This special edition of the RAAH Podcast highlights audio from a walking tour in the spring of 2024 that took place in Montreal’s Garment District (Cité de la Mode), a neighbourhood, primarily along Chabanel Street, that has been considered the centre of Canada’s fashion industry since relocating there in the 1960s from the Mile End. The area experienced rapid deindustrialization in the 2000s, and is a key centre of both the textile industry in the city and labour organizing of immigrant textile workers. 

On 17 March 2024, a network of community organizers, artists and researchers came together for a walking tour of the district that highlighted particular labour struggles in the area including a garment strike in the 1980s and also the organizing driven by the Immigrant Workers Centre to fight for the rights of textile workers who were facing layoffs in 2007-08, as Lamour and other corporations began outsourcing manufacturing to the global south.

The walking tour included a gathering with cultural performances, including works by musician Philippe Battikha and sound artist Martín Rodríguez. From the walking tour we hear from mural artist Hélène Guay [Helenka (LNK)] who presented a public mural project in the Chabanel district painted to honour Italian women immigrant workers. 

Also in this podcast we hear key excerpts of oral history interviews co-facilitated by Stefan Christoff and Lauren Laframboise. The interview excerpts include the voices of Joey Calugay, Mostafa Henaway, Yumna Siddiqi and Bita Mary Eslami, who have all been deeply involved in the IWC and particularly the campaign to support garment sector workers in Chabanel district who were unjustly dismissed by garment manufacturer Lamour. 

Sound artist Joseph Sannicandro edited and mixed excerpts from the four interviews, creating a virtual round table set against a psychogeographic tour of Chabanel. Sannicandro isolates and draws out various sounds from field recordings made along the route, coaxing drones and rhythms that augment the virtual narrative. The sound design is meant to evoke the affect of the walking tour and the neighborhood’s ongoing struggle with deindustrialization and gentrification.

The original long format interview series is available through the Deindustrialization and the Politics of Our Time portal here.

Stefan Christoff is a media maker, community activist and artist living in Montréal. Stefan hosts the radio program Free City Radio, broadcasting weekly on nine community stations in Canada and shared globally as a podcast (Spotify + Apple Podcasts). Stefan makes music with many people globally, including Anarchist Mountains, Aidan Baker, Adriana Camancho, Aidan Girt, Lori Goldston, Nicolás Jaar and Sessa. Stefan is on the board of the Immigrant Workers Centre in the Côte-des-Neiges district of Montreal, organizes with Cinema Politica Network and is a regular contributor to Radio AlHara in Palestine. Stefan works with the Social Justice Centre and is also a graduate student in history at Concordia University in Montreal.

Joseph Sannicandro is a writer and artist based in Montreal, studying creative labor and (un)popular culture, with a particular attention to sound. He is co-founder of the music blog A Closer Listen, producer of the Sound Propositions podcast, and currently lectures in Media Studies at SUNY Purchase.

In October of 2024, the Raah Lab hosted a two-day event gathering scholars and community organizers for a series of presentations. Discussing what possibilities and frictions emerge at the intersections of academia and activism, this workshop is captured here as the many speakers and panels are placed into conversation with each other.

Listen to the episode here!

Recorded and edited by Jared Aronoff

Music by Stefan Christoff