First stop in this Con Extravaganza series is Nova Albion, based in Santa Clara, California. This con was formerly named Steam Powered, and I first heard about it from Mike Perschon‘s blog years ago. This year’s Nova Albion is the first steampunk convention to address a non-Western theme, and I was intrigued when they had invited me as a speaker back in the fall of 2010. Obviously, having a theme like this was an opportunity to break a lot of ground in the community…. or it could’ve easily been flooded with cultural objectification (because we all know how much white people love consuming and commodifying Asian stuff & people) without any equally reciprocal interactions with, well, other Asians & Asian-Americans and our history and culture.
To be honest, this con was great in a lot of ways, but its treatment of the theme wasn’t perfect. I had a bunch of fantastic experiences and a bunch of uncomfortable ones. The reports and footage from this event, then, address a lot of different aspects, and our guest reporters and myself definitely walked away with dynamically different impressions of the con.
In addition to my own report, the Airship Ambassador Kevin Steil returns to give an event-by-event account, as does my intellectual comrade-in-arms Jaymee Goh. Krishna Raghunath also did some film reporting about the con for a class project and graciously offered to post her project here. All images from Nova Albion are provided by myself and Astra Kim, one of the many new friends I had made at the con.
Check all this out after the jump.
Beyond Victoriana 