Methodologies for Co-creating Museum Films: Decolonization and the Danish Digital Turn
Navn på bevillingshaver
Josefine Baark
Institution
University of Warwick
Beløb
DKK 1,355,234
År
2021
Bevillingstype
Reintegration Fellowships
Hvad?
Films produced by museums are a sustainable way of elevating diverse voices, revealing research processes, and providing access to free global educational material. Understanding and improving these films is a critical step toward addressing global inequality. Recently, museums have undergone radical technological change, resulting in the rise of short films. This project asks how and why museums should use their filmmaking to contribute to conversations about decolonization. It suggests that the film making process can shape new research and generate a nuanced mouthpiece for multicultural viewpoints that can undo dominant narratives. This study sees me return from Hong Kong, Hungary and the UK, to seek out a framework for using art, filmmaking, and curating to think in new ways.
Hvorfor?
Recent scholarship has called for the decolonization of art history in recognition of the power of images to construct ideas. Art histories in present-day museums must be revisited in order 'to cite, expose, and critically respond to the structures and residues of the colonial project as they have shaped the discipline and its institutionalization,' (Pamela N. Corey) - a re-evaluation process that can effectively reside in the interdisciplinary spaces of museological filmmaking. Now, digital humanities and collaborative practice-as-research methods are the increasingly sophisticated tools by which the field can be challenged. The museum film is an exciting field of research that engages with sustainable means of addressing colonialism's political, social and economic legacy.
Hvordan?
The scope of the project is limited to the analysis of the last five years of films posted to online platforms and used in exhibitions by three Danish museums. The analysis centers on art museums because these collections represent a classical field of art historical research. The archive of films will be supplemented by interviews with museum staff and filmmakers, in addition to data on viewer engagement across social media platforms. The aim is to create the foundation for a productive network of scholars and film makers brought together through three workshops (2 national, 1 international), as well as strong resources for future work on museum-based film productions.