12-2023

Postmigrant Narratives and Participation Culture in Webdocumentaries by Thomas Weber, University of Hamburg 

12th January 2022 held in the context of the virtual lecture series, hosted by the University of Bayreuth as a part of the research project Digital Documentary Practices - Topical paradigm shifts and the potential of emerging practices to participate in public discourses

https://did.avinus.org/virtuelle-ringvorlesung-1/ 

Do participatory documentary film projects on the topic of migration contribute to giving migrants a voice and if so, in what way? What is the character and potential for (self-) empowerment of the actors in the different participatory structures? This presentation deals with documentary filmic approaches in different media, which, in the context of a DOING HISTORY, create narratives that construct (post-)migrant identities through negotiation processes. The constructed frames of reference and the functioning of the developed self-designs as well as the handling of well-known narratives will be questioned and the potential offered by participatory documentary film projects of various media will be analyzed. In particular, the handling of well-known narratives will be questioned and the potential offered by participatory documentary film projects of various media will be observed. One focus will be to clarify what participation can mean in each case. Perhaps, the often all too vaguely used notion of ‘participation’ has become all too quickly an umbrella term in which media interactivity and contribution, social and political participation and cultural perception and recognition have got mixed up. Not at least due to all this, it is also a question of how the various notions of participation – and the strategies of voice-giving realized in web-documentaries – can each contribute to the development of a postmigrant perspective. This, then, brings us to the vital issue to what extent participatory documentary film projects can themselves become a medium for negotiating postmigrant identity, and what scope of thought and action they open up with regard to the self-empowerment of the actors.