resemblage (rɪˈzɛmbleɪʤ), n.

A portmanteau that mingles resemblance, assemblage, and age.

To resemble is to liken, to sense similarity. Resemblance does not imply sameness, or the flattening of difference, variation, and the dissimilar. Resemblance emerges when we assemble what is found, what could be shared, amid the abundance of bodies and things, for a moment in time.

Aging is a universalizing process—all beings are subject to living in time—and a profoundly singular experience. Gender, race, ethnicity, class, ability, geography, citizenship, migration: these facets of identity create complex intersections with age, assemblages of selfhood that generate, alter, and reorganize our identity over the life course.

Responding to the need for stories of aging that reflect profound difference, while sensing in distinct aging experiences the possibility of shared collective action, The Resemblage Project is a digital intergenerational storytelling initiative based in Scarborough, located in the eastern part of the city of Toronto, Canada. The Resemblage Project is an emergent, community-facing digital multimedia initiative, dedicated to inviting, assembling, and imaginatively re-presenting Scarborough’s stories of aging.