Media Literacy in Europe: Visual literacy - how to think and act with images

EVENS FOUNDATION PRESENTS

MEDIA LITERACY IN EUROPE

VISUAL LITERACY: HOW TO THINK AND ACT WITH IMAGES

ABOUT THE EVENS FOUNDATION The Evens Foundation is a public benefit foundation based in Antwerp, Belgium and with offices in Paris and Warsaw.

Initiating projects and awarding biennial prizes in the fields of media, peace education and European citizenship, the Evens Foundation wants to encourage people and nations to live together harmoniously in a diverse Europe. The Foundation promotes respect for diversity, both individual and collective, and works to strengthen people’s physical, psychological and moral integrity.

THE IMAGE REVOLUTION: WHY VISUAL LITERACY IS CRUCIAL

THE IMAGE REVOLUTION: WHY VISUAL LITERACY IS CRUCIAL OUR LAST TWO PUBLICATIONS ON MEDIA LITERACY IN EUROPE, “12 GOOD PRACTICES THAT WILL INSPIRE YOU” AND “INSPIRING WAYS TO INVOLVE PARENTS”, WERE MET WITH GREAT ENTHUSIASM AND DISTRIBUTED WIDELY BOTH OFFLINE AND ONLINE. EVIDENTLY, THERE IS STRONG DEMAND FOR FINE WRITING ABOUT MEDIA LITERACY THAT COMBINES A THEORETICAL APPROACH WITH HANDS-ON EXAMPLES OF INSPIRING MEDIA EDUCATION ACTIVITIES, AND HOW THEY CAN BE IMPLEMENTED. WE AT THE EVENS FOUNDATION HAD NO DOUBT THAT WE NEEDED TO FOCUS ON MEDIA LITERACY FOR A THIRD TIME. THIS TIME, DECIDED TO EXPLORE THE FASCINATING WORLD OF VISUAL LITERACY.

The key question centers on how to deal with media messages in a critical and responsible way. Visual literacy, as a part of media literacy, means understanding the meaning of images and approaching them with a critical mind. It also includes a practical component – the ability to create images and share them with others.

Almost 30% of our cortex is devoted to visual processing, and around 90% of all the information that we take in from the world around us we take in visually. What’s more, in an increasingly digital world, we’re communicating more with images and less with words. Images are superseding words as our primary form of communication.

It’s estimated that we upload and share 1.8 billion photos every single day.

In this magazine, leading researchers, educators, museum professionals, filmmakers and artists show that being fluent in visual language can improve one’s creativity, critical thinking, educational achievement, empathy towards others and the ability to decipher technology. We outline a theoretical framework of what visual literacy is and why it is important, and reflect on the role the image plays in the contemporary world in scientific writings by theoreticians, educators and artists. Hendrik Folkerts, one of the curators of Documenta 14, proposes the exhibition as a space for critical inquiry or empowerment through resistance, while Torsten Andreasen (Copenhagen University) stresses that the crucial point is not how to make use of images in our thinking and our actions, but how to think and act in a world based on the circulation of images. Magda Szcześniak (Warsaw University) points out how images can empower campaigns of protest and emancipation, and, in a conversation between artist Sven Augustijnen and Krzysztof Pijarski (Łódź Film School), we are reminded that visual literacy is not only about education but also about participation in the common sphere, what we share as producers and participants in culture; we are engaged in a social or public debate on matters that are not limited to ‘artistic’ or aesthetic issues. The visual thus enables us to ask questions and formulate critical stances, to disagree and to oppose, and to participate in public debate.

Many of us use visual language, often without realizing it. Being fluent in the language of images gives us an advantage at school, at work, and at home. We need to learn how messages are coded and decoded, how they work to build the vision of homogenous or diverse realities, how the human process of seeing is constructed by different cultural and historical narratives and strategies. We need to understand the practice of creating fake or alternative visual representations and images of reality, how images are used for political purposes, how they are used to build or ruin democracies.

And we need to learn from artistic strategies how to become more image-aware and visually literate, and, last but not least, how The critical essays are complemented with to be image-literate and image-critical – how examples of projects designed and pursued by various people and organizations in to avoid being deceived by images.

a number of European countries: from impressive academic research projects and experimental educational formats to socially aware cultural and artistic initiatives, from big-institution activities to non- or anti-institutional activities, from the micro- to the macro-scale of visuality and image politics. We hope that they will stimulate discussion, offer effective methods and toolsets, encourage or inspire, and trigger new, exciting initiatives.

Joanna Krawczyk Evens Foundation

THANKS TO OUR INTERNATIONAL CONTRIBUTORS: The Evens Foundation warmly thanks all members of this group for their generous commitment to this publication: managing editor Dr Katarzyna Bojarska from View.

Foundation for Visual Culture (Poland); Dr Torsten Adreasen from Copenhagen University (Denmark); Dr Magda Szcześniak from Institute of Polish Culture, University of Warsaw (Poland); Hendrik Folkerts, curator of Documenta 14 (Germany); Sven Augustijnen (Belgium); Dr Krzysztof Pijarski from Łódź Film School (Poland) and a committed group of researchers: Dr Hab Iwona Kurz, Dr Agata Pietrasik, and Agnieszka Pajączkowska. We would like to also thank our Advisory Board: Christine Vidal from Le Bal (France), Prof Ernst van Alphen (Netherlands), Prof Marquard Smith (United Kingdom), Prof Andrzej Leśniak (Poland), Prof Hilde Van Gelder (Belgium), and Prof Edit Andras (Hungary).

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IN THIS ISSUE

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FOREWORD: THE IMAGE REVOLUTION: 03 WHY VISUAL LITERACY IS CRUCIAL

VISUAL LITERACY: 06 HOW TO THINK AND ACT WITH IMAGES

FROM SPECTACULAR IMAGES TO 08 THE DESTITUTION OF THE INTERFACE

VISUAL ACTIVISM: PROTEST AND 12 EMANCIPATION THROUGH IMAGES

TURNING THE GLASS 16

SEEING BETWEEN THE LINES 19 – THE ART OF THINKING WITH IMAGES

JOANNA KRAWCZYK

K ATARZYNA BOJARSK A

TORSTEN ANDREASEN

MAGDA SZCZEŚNIAK HENDRIK FOLKERTS

SVEN AUGUSTIJNEN IN CONVERSATION WITH KRZYSZTOF PIJARSKI

BILDERFAHRZEUGE 24

ERSILIA 27

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SEEING MORE THINGS 30

MINORITIES IN VISUAL CULTURES 34

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SZALONA GALERIA 36

PROJECT CAMP – CENTER FOR ART 40 ON MIGRATION POLITICS

IN MY OWN VIEW 44

PARTICIPATORY VIDEO LAB 48

ANDER NIEUWS 50

EVERYONE CAN BE A REMIXER 54

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CYBER-SCAN 60

THE AUTHORS 66 COLOPHON 67

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GAME EDUCATORS HANDBOOK

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VISUAL LITERACY: HOW TO THINK AND ACT WITH IMAGES Katarzyna Bojarska

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lmost a decade ago, American art historian and art critic James Elkins claimed: “What is needed is a university-wide conversation on what might comprise an adequate visual introduction to the most pressing themes of contemporary culture” (Elkins: 2008, 7).

The times have rapidly and drastically changed, and it seems that the span of this “conversation” needs to be expanded, and other subjects need to be included: artists, non-governmental organizations, cultural and art institution workers, critics, etc. The idea behind this discussion about “the most pressing themes of contemporary culture” is that it is first and foremost a conversation from within a complex visual field.

Therefore, it seems necessary to gain some distance and reflect upon our visual surrounding and our role in it: the use of images, interaction with images, ways of creating images and disseminating them; how and which images engage us, move us and provoke. In the age of omnipresent digitalization and the Internet, whose ultimate effects we only begin to fathom, we need to learn various strategies to critically “see” images (see beyond images and through them), to distrust and doubt them, to question their truth claims and their “neutrality”, as well as to be able to enjoy them, play with them and use them for the sake and benefit of our own convictions and concerns.

Visual literacy has often been defined as the ability to “read” images, to interpret and evaluate the meaning of visual messages, as well as to create and share them. In late capitalist culture we need to realize most of all that the realms of visuality and of visual practices or practices in the visual field are numerous; they can be very local, very minoritarian, class-, race-, or genderspecific, while visual literacy as such is coauthored and problematized by all kinds of subjects, including academics, activists, educators, politicians, kids, adults, seniors, artists, critics, curators, writers, everyone

VISUAL LITERACY HOW TO THINK AND ACT WITH IMAGES

who takes pictures, and who has pictures taken of him/her, who shares pictures, etc.

In that heterogeneous realm of products and practices, we should do as much as possible not to reduce the visual to the explainable, be it textual or simply rational, but rather look for alternative means of experiencing and transforming it.

dominant frameworks, opposing power and oppression through images, acting by images, organizing by images, protesting by images; it is also about being able to learn through images, and forming new modes of visual knowledge that would not be subordinate to the textual model of intellect formation.

Visual literacy has to do with the politics of knowledge production and the politics of, by, in and with images. French philosopher Jacques Rancière called the “distribution of the sensible” the organization of all the things that at a particular time and in a particular context can be seen and heard, are thinkable and sayable, can emerge as deeds or products. It is all that can come into being through the work of perception, thought or activity, and what a community of subjects can sensually apprehend. The way “the sensible” is distributed, Rancière convinces us, determines who is included in or excluded from the community.

And this is precisely how the philosopher defines politics – “as a form of experience”: “Politics revolves around what is seen and what can be said about it, around who has the ability to see and the talent to speak, around the properties of spaces and the possibilities of time” (Rancière: 2004, 1213). Thus, organizing political struggle would mean either to maintain a particular distribution or challenging it and aiming for its reconfiguration. A politics of images and the use of images in politics, a politics of visuality, then, amounts to who decides what is visible and in what framework, to appropriating these frameworks, coming up with our own tools and strategies, with problems and ways of addressing them.

And, as Rancière convincingly shows, “It is up to the various forms of politics to appropriate, for their own proper use, the modes of presentation or the means of establishing explanatory sequences produced by artistic practices rather than the other way around” (Rancière, 2004: 60). It seems crucial for the development of visual literacy to reach for images both in and outside of the visual arts, to ask how works of art actually work, what there is to learn from artists, and what there is still to teach them, how a work of art can become a form of protest, mourning or celebration, a means of political engagement and a trigger for change – what makes what Rancière calls effective “regimes of sensible intensity”, moments of rupture, and selfreflection, sites of opening up a space for new modes of art as well as forms of life, be it individual or communal.

The concept of visual literacy should be expanded in reaction to today’s messages, which come in so many forms, in so many media, and – it seems important to note – in both material and virtual realities. It is thus about understanding the visual, participating in it actively, creating visual messages, deconstructing dominant codes, finding ways of emancipation from the

Artists have long experienced the world and thought it with and through images. They have at times felt misunderstood or lost, and yet they have offered such elaborate and necessary forms of addressing “the most pressing themes” that we simply should not ignore them. It can be a matter of survival in the environment where most information is communicated visually, and a lot of manipulation takes place on the visual level. Artists simply have to be taken seriously and acknowledged. Must we see only that which we look at? Or should we rather always see more than is shown? If, in the overabundant visual culture, we are to develop apposite critical faculties and act – be it by acceptance or refusal – we should open up to these intensities offered by the encounter with a work of art (in a gallery space, in public space, on the Internet, etc).

Such critical faculties will not emerge without being exposed to proper visual practices in learning / education on every level. Can an education be based on images as much as on texts? Can we imagine being assigned visual materials as readings, outside of both art history and visual studies departments? How will the historians of today (when it will have become past) be writing about what is going on in global economics, politics, etc, if they are not able to interpret images, and use them, too? Can a civic education be based on images? What do images explain, and how? What do they make us do, what do they make us think and feel, and how do they do it – as well as: what we can do about it? Any education and learning process needs to acknowledge that images and visual messages often address the bodily, the subconscious, the intuitive, and trigger responses that do not fit in the narrow frames of what understanding and mastering is taken to mean in Western culture.

If images are so crucial in our lives, it is time we start thinking with them more than about them, and use them as means of intellectual, artistic, activist expression, consciously and creatively.

REFERENCES James Elkins, “The Concept of Visual Literacy, and Its Limitations”, in: Visual Literacy, ed. James Elkins, New York-London: Routledge, 2008.

Jacques Rancière, The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible, trans. Gabriel Rockhill, London: Continuum, 2004.

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FROM SPECTACULAR IMAGES TO THE DESTITUTION OF THE INTERFACE Torsten Andreasen

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FROM SPECTACULAR IMAGES TO THE DESTITUTION OF THE INTERFACE TORSTEN ANDREASEN

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ow to think and act with images may be one of the most important philosophical and, hence, political questions of our day. The crucial point is not how to make use of images in our thinking and our actions, but how to think and act in a world based on the circulation of images. The question, then, is less how to think and act with images than how to think and act when images themselves are doing an increasing amount of thinking and acting, when the affordances of digital interfaces and their modulating image surfaces come to determine every aspect of the human being.

the first stage of economic domination established by the primacy of having over being. The subsequent stage described

by Debord, of which the technologically mediated fetish character of the commodity provides the dominant paradigm, is thus the primacy of appearing over being – the imperative to visibly become what one essentially is. In the society of the spectacle being only gains existence in the form of an image.

In 1988, Debord himself described the development of the spectacle towards what he called the “integrated spectacle”, which not only surpassed the erstwhile division between the concentrated and the diffused spectacle – i.e. Soviet state capitalism and SPECTACULAR IMAGES In 1967, French Situationist Guy Debord Western market capitalism – but also proclaimed that we are living in a society of surpassed the separation between image the spectacle, i.e. a condition where the world and reality: has ceased to be directly graspable because For the final sense of the integrated it has been replaced by technologically spectacle is this – that it has integrated transmitted images that provide the only itself into reality to the same extent possible medium for social relations. The as it was describing it, and that it was spectacle is driven by capitalist modes of reconstructing it as it was describing it. production, and its constituent circulation As a result this reality no longer confronts of images is the expression of commodity the integrated spectacle as something fetishism amplified through mass media. alien. (Debord: 1990, 9) The cognitive powers and agency of its consumers are disabled, banned to the But, although it undoubtedly holds true wasteland of the incommunicable and, thus, the non-living, because only expressions in that the separation of image and reality has been replaced by a more profound harmony with the spectacle are allowed. integration of the spectacle into reality, Debord’s spectacle is produced by a Debord’s analysis has focused on the specific historical moment that follows problematic passivity of the spectator:

“The spectator is simply supposed to know nothing, and deserve nothing. Those who are always watching to see what happens next will never act: such must be the spectator’s condition.” (Debord: 1990, 22) The media no longer let their images fall upon passive consumers that dare add nothing, however, and the spectacle is no longer mere technical objectification of a vision or visibility of the world. The spectacle now autonomously operates as a mode of both thought and agency. The never-acting consumer waiting to see what happens next is still prevalent in the form of the binge watcher of the current video streaming services, of course, “binging” being the contemporary epitome of passive consumption, but the spectacular operation of the image has changed. It is now the goal of spectacular images to activate consumers, to incite participation and action, to drive just one more “click,” “like,” “selfie” or “story” out of the exhausted minds and bodies of “users”.

As Jodi Dean aptly put it: “Our participation does not subvert communicative capitalism.

It drives it.” (Dean: 2010, 37) It is thus necessary to consider the question of thought and agency beyond images and examine the point where action and image enter a zone of indistinction: the interface.

THE INTERFACE OF CONTROL It would probably not be wrong to define the extreme phase of capitalist development

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in which we live as a massive accumulation and proliferation of interfaces – interfaces that project images through which we think and act, without any access to the logical operations behind the flickering images on the surface. Interfaces are technological nodes in the interaction between humans and machines, between machines and machines, software and hardware and even between software and software.

The API (Application Programming Interface), for example, is the assemblage of technological specifications or protocols for one software application to interact with the functionality of another. As American media theorist Alexander Galloway has pointed out, “protocol is a technique for achieving voluntary regulation within a contingent environment” (Galloway: 2004, 7). It modulates the possible thoughts and actions that can be processed by the system.

Increasingly, whenever we contemplate or interact with images, we do so via digital interfaces – from screens and input devices to the obscure operations of code – that

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incite and allow specific behaviors. And they primarily demand continued interaction.

Whether the image be a shared video on Facebook, a selfie on Instagram or written words on the surface of a Kindle, continued participation is imperative, because only as long as the user reads the image can the image read the user. In the case of the Kindle, the interface reads the reading habits of the reader – where she pauses, whether the book is read till the end – and the data is fed back into the production of new books, just as user data from Netflix was used to determine the production of “House of Cards”. Similarly to these content providers, social media interfaces read user preferences, but they also read user-contributed images, where depicted symptoms of illness in small children may return and haunt them in adult life in the form of more expensive health insurance (Paglen: 2016).

it is far too easy to get caught up in the meme, in the satisfactory laughter at the narcissist baby, the haughty moron. In the spectacle of the interface, swift judgment is welcomed so that historical analysis of the conditions of the present is forever postponed. It is far too joyful to engage in what Jodi Dean called “affective networks” where the rapid movement through the hall of mirrors that is the Internet allows us to enjoy rather than understand, participate rather than act.

DESTITUTING THE INTERFACE

The interface and its underlying protocols do not force specific thoughts and actions on its users; “the behavior is emergent, not imposed” (Galloway 2005: 24).

And this emergent control is inherent to the interface as such. There is no “good” interface. As the interface-driven images proliferate, “agency as such is rendered unobtainable” (Hui: 2015, 90). Although The interface incites participation the dominant media environment of his without thought or action. When we see day led Debord to focus on the passivity the social media images of Donald Trump, of the spectator, he was right in claiming

FROM SPECTACULAR IMAGES TO THE DESTITUTION OF THE INTERFACE TORSTEN ANDREASEN

The interface incites participation without thought or action. When we see the social media images of Donald Trump, it is far too easy to get caught up in the meme, in the satisfactory laughter at the narcissist baby, the haughty moron. In the spectacle of the interface, swift judgment is welcomed so that historical analysis of the conditions of the present is forever postponed. It is far too joyful to engage in what Jodi Dean called “affective networks” where the rapid movement through the hall of mirrors that is the Internet allows us to enjoy rather than understand, participate rather than act.

REFERENCES Ariella Azoulay, “Archive”, 2010; http:// www.politicalconcepts.org/issue1/ archive/ Jodi Dean, “Affective Networks” in MediaTropes, vol II, no 2, 2010 Guy Debord, Comments on the Society of the Spectacle. London & New York: Verso, 1990

that the spectacle, or in our case the interface, reconstructs reality in its very depiction of it. And this reconstruction does not constitute new modes of agency and thought but captures them within the protocols of the interface that predetermines the minutiae of being.

There have been many attempts to find a proper reconstitution of the interface that allows for new democratic freedoms. French art historian Georges Didi-Huberman clearly hopes to counter the predispositions of André Malraux’s strictly curated Musée imaginaire and its false universal humanity by promoting Aby Warburg’s chaotic Atlas Mnemosyne as “the undepletable resource – for a rereading of the world” (DidiHuberman: 2011, 20). Similarly, Israeli visual culture scholar Ariella Azoulay sees in new digital technologies the possibility for the archive to be “reconfigured and reconceptualized through a new grid” and thus to counter the “sovereign archives” of ruling power with new and more democratic “civil archives” (Azoulay: 2010).

These projects are truly laudable, but, as French philosopher Michel Foucault rightly pointed out, “[m]en have dreamed of liberating machines. But there are no machines of freedom, by definition” (Foucault: 2002, 356). In the age of the interface, it is thus important for the critical reader of the image not to search for the correct way to use or reconfigure the interface. Even critical participation in the interface only drives the contemporary operations of the spectacle. It is now the task of the reader neither to reconstitute the constitutions of power nor to rejoin the passive spectators described by Debord, but to attempt the destitution of the interface, i.e. to render its determining power inoperable. Thinking and acting with the omnipresent proliferation of images should concentrate on determining the conditions of the interface so that its determination can be rendered destitute and hence truly open for new thought and action.

Georges Didi-Huberman: L’oeil de l’histoire : Tome 3, Atlas ou le gai savoir inquiet. Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 2011 Michel Foucault: “Space, Knowledge, and Power” in: Essential Works of Michel Foucault, 1954-1984, London: Penguin, 2002 Alexander Galloway, Protocol – How Control Exists after Decentralization.

Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004 “Global networks and the effects on culture” in Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol 597, 2005 Yuk Hui, “Modulation after Control” in New Formations, 84/85, 2015 Trevor Paglen: “Invisible Images (Your Pictures Are Looking at You), The New Inquiry, December 8, 2016; https:// thenewinquiry.com/invisible-imagesyour-pictures-are-looking-at-you/

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VISUAL ACTIVISM: PROTEST AND EMANCIPATION THROUGH IMAGES Magda Szcześniak

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VISUAL ACTIVISM: PROTEST AND EMANCIPATION THROUGH IMAGES MAGDA SZCZEŚNIAK

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t would be difficult to deny that images are a defining part of contemporary reality, structuring our everyday existence and social relationships.

This is not to say that images are more important today than they have been in the past. In fact, as visual culture scholars point out regularly, images and predominantly visual media have always played a vital role in societies. However, history has witnessed moments of visual intensification, moments in which images and visual practices have become extraordinarily important as catalysts of conflict, vehicles of change, objects for imitation.

That is why all scholars and practitioners interested in thinking and acting with images today should consider the history of visual culture, understood as a complex sphere of images, media, and practices of looking.

The contemporary moment of intensification could be described as an ongoing digital revolution, a time characterized by a radical increase in the number of images created by each and every one of us. As Nicholas Mirzoeff observes in his exemplary introduction to contemporary visual culture, How to See the World: Every two minutes, Americans alone take more photographs than were made in the entire nineteenth century. […] There were some 3.5 trillion photographs in existence in 2011, so the global photography archive increased

by some 25 per-cent or so in 2014. […]

Like it or not, the emerging global society is visual. All these photographs and videos are our way of trying to see the world. We feel compelled to make images of it and share them with others as a key part of our effort to understand the changing world around us and our place within it. (Mirzoeff: 2015, 6)

images manifest their agency.

If images seem such an important part of contemporary lives all around the world, it is obvious that implementing change requires active use of visual media.

If images are not derivative of reality, but rather its crucial element, then to change lived realities, we need to change images and to create diverse, non-exclusive, It is precisely in such moments that we horizontal tools of visual communication. can grasp the ways in which images gain The promise of the emancipatory agency, which allows them to be at the forefront of social change and history- potential of the Internet – the medium responsible for the rapid proliferation of making. images mentioned above – has not been Images are usually perceived as fulfilled. The most popular channels of representations of social phenomena: tools communication, social media websites, to record reality or comment upon it. We such as the predominantly visual Facebook think of them as supplementary to reality, or Instagram, often limit our field of vision derivative of real-life events, issues and instead of expanding it; algorithmically processes. When considering the workings creating a bubble filled with views we and dynamics of social movements, we already accept, people we already know perceive images as extras, as objects and – most characteristically – products supporting the struggle for change, but we can be convinced to buy. Having said ones that remain by-products, helpful, that, I do not mean to erase the potential but gratuitous. However, a close analysis of contemporary digital images, once of effective social movements proves that described by Susan Buck-Morss as capable images are not mere representations, but of “circling the globe in de-centered patactive social actors. According to WJT terns, sliding almost without friction Mitchell, “visual images [are] ‘go-betweens’ past language barriers and national in social transactions, […] templates that frontiers” (Buck-Morss: 2004, 2). Aware of structure our encounters with other the limitations of the globalized, digital human beings” (Mitchell: 2005, 351). Images machine (although writing before the can shape desires, provoke to action, dawn of the algorithmic era of social provide means of group identification, offer media), Buck-Morss remained optimistic visibility to those excluded from the visual about the possibility of bringing out the field – to name only a few ways in which “democratic potential of image-production

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Aware of the limitations of the globalized, digital machine (although writing before the dawn of the algorithmic era of social media), Buck-Morss remained optimistic about the possibility of bringing out the “democratic potential of imageproduction and distribution”.

She asked: “What kind of community can we hope for from a global dissemination of images, and how can our work help to create it?”

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and distribution” (Buck-Morss, 2). She asked: “What kind of community can we hope for from a global dissemination of images, and how can our work help to create it?” (Buck-Morss, 28).

Recent years have provided us with several progressive answers to this question. To name a few communities that have been facilitated by intense use of social media and production of images, one could point to the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, or the Black Lives Matter movement. But perhaps one of the most interesting recent examples emerged in Poland. The so-called Black Protest, during which women dressed in black clothes demonstrated against the government’s plans to limit their reproductive rights (access to contraceptives and abortion), took place on 3 October 2016, the day the organizers called Black Monday. Already, the most basic gesture of aligning oneself with the movement – wearing black clothes on this particular day – can be interpreted as a visual intervention. By dressing in black, the protesters adopted a strong and uniform visual code (symbol of mourning) to demonstrate their views in the public sphere. Before marching out into the streets, the participants were encouraged to take a selfie and share it on social media, along with the hashtag #czarnyprotest (#blackprotest). The goal was to create a collective image and an image of the collective. Although some commentators were quick to accuse the selfie-taking participants of narcissist

and shallow behavior, it seems that the Black protest selfies were not substitutes for authentic involvement, but rather a way of forming and visualizing a latent community. Young, middle-aged and older women, dwellers of smaller and bigger towns, representatives of diverse social groups could recognize each other as supporters of the same cause. The protest materialized even before it entered public spaces. Thus, instead of labelling it mere “clicktivism”, one should interpret it as a potent and adequate form of protest. The image became a means of participation.

The uniform visual code has become not only a way of recognizing one another in public spaces, but also facilitated the creation of moving documents of the protest. Tens, hundreds, and sometimes even thousands of women, gathered in centrally located spaces in their home towns or villages, posed for photographs and videos, subsequently posted on social media and media outlet websites, and broadcast on TV. In the case of the demonstration in the capital city of Warsaw, which was expected to gather tens of thousands of participants, journalists and organizers documenting the event faced a well-known question: How to show a crowd effectively? How to convey the

VISUAL ACTIVISM: PROTEST AND EMANCIPATION THROUGH IMAGES MAGDA SZCZEŚNIAK

scale of a protest? The answers visualize themselves in the most iconic document from Black Monday: a photograph taken from a viewing tower located near the main point of gathering, showing a sea of open umbrellas, filling the entire frame of the image. The photograph manages to convey two, usually contradictory elements of demonstrations, capturing both the scale of the protest (usually documented by shots from above) and the commitment of the participants (usually visible in photographs shot “on ground”). This iconic photograph makes both elements visible: the large turnout and the determination and dedication of the protesters through the omnipresent prop (which at once became one of the movement’s symbols) – the umbrella. Thousands of women demonstrating in pouring rain – a strong image of resistance and resilience. But the “umbrella photograph” acts not only as a document of the struggle; its rapid circulation through local and international media, both online and offline, integrated the movement, spread its message, and became a vehicle of solidarity.

The swift flow of information in a globalized visual culture brought the news of the successful protest (the government suspended proceeding with the restrictive anti-choice legislation) to different parts of the world. However, it delivered not only news, but also visual tools for other protests: one of the images of the Black Protest – a white silhouette of a female profile on a black background – became

the logo of the International Women’s Strike organized on 8 March 2017 in the USA and worldwide. By making the design available and waiving the copyright, its author – young Polish graphic designer Ola Jasionowska – allowed for the creation of a common symbol of struggle for women all over the world.

The visual strategies of the Black Protest should thus be interpreted as complex ways of thinking and acting with images. A uniform visual identity allowed the dispersed and diverse supporters of the feminist movement to recognize each other and demonstrate their existence in public spaces. The adoption of a social media strategy – the hashtagged selfie – provided a means of participation before committing oneself to leaving the safe haven of the private sphere for the public demonstration. The iconic, viewingtower images of the Black Protest became emanations of its scale and of the dedication of its participants. The myriad images produced by the protesters – protest selfies, banners, posters – became tools for spreading the ideas of the movement both locally and globally.

The symbols produced by the movement – the umbrella indicating endurance, the widespread banner of a uterus showing her middle finger – acted as radical reminders of the existence of women and their power to participate in public debates. When their voices are shunned, they enter the public sphere with the help of images.

REFERENCES Susan Buck-Morss, “Visual Studies and Global Imagination”, Papers of Surrealism 2 (2004) Nicholas Mirzoeff, How to See the World, London: Penguin, 2015 WJT Mitchell, What Do Pictures Want?

The Lives and Loves of Images, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2005 Tiziana Terranova, “Red Stack Attack! Algorithms, Capital, and the Automation of Control”, http://www.euronomade.info/?p=2268

For a critique of algorithms see: Tiziana Terranova.

For a visual analysis of the three movements, see: WJT Mitchell, “Image, Space, and Revolution. The Arts of Occupation”, Critical Inquiry 39 (2012); Michael Taussig, “I’m So Angry, I Made a Sign”, Critical Inquiry 39 (2012); Nicholas Mirzoeff, The Appearance of Black Lives Matter, Miami: NAME, 2017. Historically, a relevant example would be the ACT UP movement (an advocacy group working with people with AIDS), which developed a compelling visual identification.

See: Douglas Crimp, Adam Rolston, AIDS Demo/ graphics (Seattle: Bay Press, 1990), a publication that the authors called “a do-it-yourself manual of how to make propaganda work in the fight against AIDS”.

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TURNING THE GLASS HENDRIK FOLKERTS

TURNING THE GLASS Hendrik Folkerts

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t the moment of writing this, documenta 14’s Neue Galerie in Kassel houses a great many vitrines, given the exhibition’s interest in many historical objects that form the fabric of European (art) history, from Johann Joachim Winckelmann’s first edition of Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums (History of the Art of Antiquity) and the documents that evidence the history of looted art in Germany to the decree that outlined the conditions of slavery in 17th century France, titled Code Noir. On the one hand, a vitrine shields an object that is precious and vulnerable, protecting it from harmful elements. Yet, more importantly, the glass that separates the public from the object functions as a display mechanism that presupposes a unilateral spectatorship; the spectator’s gaze renders the object into something that is subjected to, conditioned by the physical act of looking down or into the vitrine. If we want to propose the exhibition as a space for critical inquiry or empowerment through resistance, it is necessary to first identify it as a site of disempowerment, in order to acknowledge the extent to which curatorial labor and practices as well as the public’s role are still implied, perhaps even complicit in, the structures of power underpinning exhibition-making and history.

First, let us acknowledge the space we are in: a white room. Coining the phrase “the white cube”, artist and writer Brian O’Doherty was one of the first commentators on the ideological undercurrents of the space in which we have grown accustomed to see visual art, that equally lit, off-white, supposedly

neutral room. O’Doherty famously argues that, in postmodernism, the white cube is far from neutral and corresponds with the history of modernism, produced as an aesthetic technology that both generates and is generated by a specific Western canon along a linearized history of art, a seemingly disembodied context that produces content through the exchange of cultural, commercial and aesthetic values (O’Doherty: 1999, 14-15, 79-80).

Furthermore, the pristine whiteness of its walls assumes an authority and neutrality that can even be read along racial lines, its perpetuation as a continued validation of the values of a white, academic community (Connellan: 2006, 7). Writer and curator Elena Filipovic contends that the largescale, perennial exhibition format so omnipresent in our experience of contemporary art since the late 20th century, has produced a paradox: while it replicates the white cube of the museum and the gallery space as a display mechanism, the non-place of contemporary art so to speak, the biennial and largescale exhibition often claims a position of site-specificity or context-responsiveness – a paradox further induced by the antagonism that such exhibitions declare against the operations of neoliberalism, while the homogenous space in which it takes place denotes the homogenization as a prerequisite for the neoliberal condition (Filipovic: 2005, 67-8) .

If such legacies of presenting and seeing art persist, we must perpetually demonstrate and modify its apparatus. Indeed, to quote O’Doherty, “[i]f the white wall cannot be summarily dismissed, it can be understood. […] The wall is our assumptions (O’Doherty, 80).

Let us take a step back and consider the exhibition as a format. The presentation of art in a public setting is closely entangled with the history of power – of the church, the monarchy and the nation state – and, more specifically, with the history of the bourgeoisie, in which art became an important signifier of taste and cultivation as well as economic and social status. In his essay “The Exhibitionary Complex”, Anthony Bennett approaches the exhibition as an epistemological category in the dissemination of power in modern history, commenting on Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish (1975) to juxtapose the rise of the complex of public museums, exhibitions and world fairs in the 19th century with transitions in the punitive system in the same period. Whereas the notion of punishment shifted from public spectacle as both warning and implementation of power – the scaffold on the city square, so to speak – to incarceration in the prison complex and thus isolation in a state of complete surveillance, the exhibitionary complex develops from private – the monarch’s cabinet or curiosities – to public, with the Great Exhibition in London’s Crystal Palace (1851) as the author’s key example. In this parallel, Bennett argues that, rather than rendering the social body of the populace visible to the all-seeing eye of power through the disciplinary panopticon, the exhibitionary complex proposed knowledge and pedagogy as instruments to render power visible to its constituents in a celebration of the state’s cultural, architectural and industrial accomplishments – indeed, to imbue people with power, to literally empower them. In Bennett’s own words, the institu-

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TURNING THE GLASS HENDRIK FOLKERTS

If the exhibition could be used to empower its spectators with the self-control and selfsurveillance that required the nation state to function or if the white wall is not a blank canvas at all, they can also be applied to disempower those very histories and power structures by revealing them in an act of self-reflexivity.

tions of the exhibitionary complex “sought to allow the people, and en masse rather than individually, to know rather than to be known, to become the subjects rather than the objects of knowledge”, yet ideally in order to “become, in seeing themselves from the side of power, both the subjects and objects of knowledge, knowing power and what power knows, and knowing themselves as (ideally) known by power, interiorizing its gaze as a principle of selfsurveillance and, hence, self-regulation” (Bennett: 1988, 76).

Within the colonial mechanisms of the nation state, the exhibition also served as an instrument for the implementation of Eurocentric racial theories and the subjugation of the colonial subject. In the aforementioned essay, Bennett refers to how the national courts or displays at such world fairs as the Great Exhibition in London or the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia (1876) categorized along the lines of national, supranational or racial groupings – the

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notion of progress was enacted to correlate the stages of (industrial) production and the relation between nation and race; colonized groups and people of color were represented as occupying the lowest level of production and thus subordinate to the display of the European powers (Bennett, 94-5).

This cultural production of imperialism was extended to more widely accessible spectacles such as the carnival, the circus and the fair, and then consolidated in the phenomenon of the colonial exhibition and, of course, the ethnographic museum.

This type of exhibition did not limit itself to the display of production or artefacts, but included the actual display of human bodies as colonial subjects. As art historian Charmaine Nelson has observed, such displays clearly and deliberately separated the space of the privileged observer from that of the colonial “other”, as part of “the colonial apparatus which visually objectified the exhibited human subjects and racialized the bodies of the exhibition spectators” (Charmaine: 2010, 114).

If the exhibition as a typology was born out of a drive to demonstrate and impose the power of the imperialist nation state, and the museum’s white wall as a canvas on which the subsequent (Euro-Americancentered) canon of art history could unfold, the sense of empowerment is an affective one; employed to internalize and incorporate those power structures into both its subjects and spectators. Whereas content may have radically shifted, and many museum and gallery displays as well as largescale perennial exhibitions are motivated by a strong political engagement to critically approach notions such as colonization, the nation state and the production of capitalism, the apparatus of the exhibition remains largely intact. This generates a paradox and begs the question whether or not we can produce critical, even empowering exhibitions within the conceptual and physical architecture of the spaces we operate in. This necessitates, first, acknowledging a complicity in the act of exhibiting: one cannot produce criticality

without adopting the history of the exhibition and the power dynamic inherent to it. Yet, secondly, rather than shying away from this contradiction or completely ignoring it altogether, we need to embrace and even intensify it. If the exhibition could be used to empower its spectators with the self-control and self-surveillance that required the nation state to function or if the white wall is not a blank canvas at all, they can also be applied to disempower those very histories and power structures by revealing them in an act of self-reflexivity.

After all, it is precisely in the moment when the light hits the glass of the vitrine that we see ourselves and the object we look down upon. If the subjects that were once in the vitrine are to be fully released from it – to come out of the vitrine, as philosopher Paul B. Preciado aptly described it – we have to be willing to use its glass as a mirror and turn it so that the light reveals what is underneath.

REFERENCES Brian O’Doherty, Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space (expanded edition), Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999 Kathleen Connellan, “White Spaces,” in: ACRAWSA e-journal, vol. 2, no. 1, 2006 Elena Filipovic, “The Global White Cube,” in: Vanderlinden, Barbara and Elena Filipovic (eds.), The Manifesta Decade: Debates on Contemporary Art Exhibitions and Biennials in Post-Wall Europe, Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005 Anthony Bennett, “The Exhibitionary Complex,” in: New Formations, No. 4 (Spring 1988) Charmaine Nelson, “The ‘Hottentot Venus in Canada: Modernism, Censorship and the Racial Limits of Female Sexuality,” in: Willis, Deborah (ed.), Black Venus 2010, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2010

SEEING BETWEEN THE LINES THE ART OF THINKING WITH IMAGES Sven Augustijnen in conversation with Krzysztof Pijarski

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SA: My practice has developed over Krzysztof Pijarski: How would you many years, it was a process and a dynamic define visual literacy? relation with the political, social and Sven Augustijnen: To me, visual literacy affective aspects of my life and work; with seems almost like a contradiction in terms. the conventions of the world you live in Images are not read, they are experienced, and how you fit into them. I know that for digested and remembered differently many people my work seems troublesome, than text. And many of my works are very mostly because it goes against the fixed much about this complicated relationship conventions, as you said, and introduces between words and images, the visual doubt in what has seemed visually and the textual. They communicate and obvious. For example, when I introduce miscommunicate on different levels or information or news in my works, it is in different realms which co-exist and not for the sake of information only, but interact and yet cannot be reduced to one also to point towards how information is brought to life and transmitted, shared another. and then taken for granted. In Spectres KP: So, the question seems to be how we [Augustijnen’s film analyzing Belgian share what we see and what is or becomes colonial history and the fact that 100 years visible. Is it through language only? How after Leopold II’s death and 50 years after we transmit what we see and how we shape the independence of Congo, the colonial our ways of seeing? Isn’t an artist precisely past still haunts people and places], as a translator and a producer of visual the title itself suggests, we are dealing with phenomena which escape discourse. thoughts and reflections?

The meaning of my works comes from a SA: Structures of feeling and meaning in very subtle and complicated relationship the realm of the visual are not subjected to between the images (what one sees), texts rules of rationality or even consciousness, (what one reads), music (what one hears), which opens up a lot of possibilities both editing (how these are put together), and the historical, political and art history for the artist and his or her audience. context in which they emerge.

KP: And yet you often work closely with KP: You often say that you are haunted the documentary language and format, mostly by interfering with that genre as by Belgian history, by the past terror and something expected to be transparent, violence exercised elsewhere and at home, and to tell us real or true stories about and that these ghosts demand a response the world. Why in your practice are you and responsibility on your part too. I wonder, suspicious of this established convention why did you decide to make your “response” visual, what is there in visuality that makes it and way of seeing the world? the best way to react?

SA: The simplest answer would be for sure, that I can see things which I cannot translate into text, and I was trained to make images. But this is not just it, this is not the real answer to your question.

The way I see things and what I can “do” with them is mobilized by a specific visual sensitivity, let’s say. The

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deconstruction of the world as it is being looked at, the world as an image, is necessary for bringing to the fore elements which, though invisible, are there and are actively influencing our lives, choices, etc. This can of course be done by writing, but images – to me – operate faster and more to the point.

Film is all about the movement and the idea that you can move something: move the spectator but also move the subject; turn it around, look at it from many sides. The possibility to get intimate with the subject and at the same time to deconstruct it, is made possible by the filmic medium. Film allows me to get as close as possible and yet to distance myself at the same time. Filming is for me a way of thinking.

KP: Would you call your work difficult, demanding?

SA: No, not necessarily. It often operates with very popular visual language, like newspapers for example. It is not to say it is easy either, but you can access it through familiar figures and tropes. It takes an effort, but without it, it would not make any sense. Also, I work with common affects and the structures of interaction and communication.

KP: You surely do, and yet in order to read into your works one needs a very elaborate toolbox, if you like – visual competence or literacy which would allow one to relate to what you are actually talking about, for this commonality of experience and sensibilities, no? The storyboard – as your work with Paris Match was often called – brings to my mind what American photographer and theorist of photography, Allan Sekula, said about some of his works, calling them “disassembled movies”: that you can read a series of images so that they become a movie – a movie of your own making. I think this corresponds to your table pieces, and yet making that “movie”, or playing it, requires a lot of skill. Would you say in Belgium you acquire this kind of visual (reflective and critical) competence at school or at home?

SEEING BETWEEN THE LINES THE ART OF THINKING WITH IMAGES SVEN AUGUSTIJNEN IN CONVERSATION WITH KRZYSZTOF PIJARSKI

Art does not point a finger directly, it is indirect, it can be ambiguous, it affects and confuses, but often it echoes for a long time in the hearts and minds of people from opposed sides – in a way, it brings them together.

SA: It is a difficult question, because I think you can be taught things and yet remain attached to one frame of thinking, and thus illiterate. Some people, even some academics are unable to understand my work precisely because they do not have this visual literacy, and this has a lot to do with how one “educates” one’s body, how it is present in space, with architecture, society…

KP: I like the way you are in a sense throwing the question back at me. And you are absolutely right, that the visual is a kind of sphere where on the one hand you need some competence, while, on the other, even high culture, and especially academic culture is still not good at reading visual materials – think of many historians, for example. There is this conviction that the visual serves as illustration and not as an autonomous source of and for thinking. It is as if you have this thought and you illustrate it with something, while visuality is in fact another way of thinking, and acting in the world.

SA: Exactly! It is a big problem for the visual arts, where as an artist you are expected to “explain” your work with words. If you think about it, it is absurd and reductive. It can work, but many things are lost in this “translation”.

KP: It seems then that visual literacy is a

much larger issue, not only about education but also participation, the common, what you share as producer and participant in a culture. When you present your work, it is entering a social or public debate on things that are not limited to “artistic” and aesthetic issues. I totally agree with you that the visual allows and enables us to ask questions and formulate critical stances, to disagree and to oppose, and to participate in public debate.

SA: Contemporary art is very often marginalized, its voice silenced or simply excluded (as oblique, elitist, etc) and responsibility for this should not be put on the artists only, but a very complicated network of politics of exhibition, art criticism, art market, public and private funding, etc. It is also the question of the medium, medium which speaks in public.

Think of Andy Warhol and the television that he himself made! I was very much influenced by experimental public television of the 70s and 80s. Amazingly enough, there was a place for artistic experiment on public television, and I have observed how a medium becomes a tool of social and political change but at the same time offers an artistic value disregarding in a way the need to entertain.

who know how visuality functions and who know how to transform it. The museum generated a very interesting critical discourse, undermining its very foundations and history by means of critical artistic interventions. I think your works also aim in this direction.

SA: Yes, but the impact is of course different. Ludo de Witte’s The Assassination of Patrice Lumumba triggered a parliamentary commission, and within an ongoing public debate it has played quite a meaningful role, while my film has remained marginal in a way. At the same time, while looking at the reactions the film triggered in France, I realized that it is universal in the sense that it offers a structure to deal with similar collective pasts, dark histories, etc. Even though it is on a very specific and narrow subject matter, it managed to address the bigger picture.

KP: This universality comes also from the fact that your film looks at how history is constructed, or how what is past becomes what is historical, and this doubtless implicates all of us. And you also offer tools to undo this knot of power and knowledge, and to sink deep into the crisis of Europeanness, i.e. the structure of superiority and violence exercised towards people outside of Europe.

Would you call your practice activism?

Or what is it that makes your practice different from scholarly work and yet not less serious, or necessary?

KP: Exactly. Whenever I think of it, I am always amazed by the fact that John Berger’s Ways of Seeing was a TV series, and it has been very influential! Just think of it – he was introducing Marxism and feminism SA: I think we need as many different to thinking about visual culture on British ways as possible to question power, and public television. to dismantle dominant structures of Even though museums do not have a experience and expression. My art is not comparable impact, or audience, they still activism, but both are necessary and try to do the work to an extent, the work of should not be conflated. Art does not restructuring the debate and educating (in point a finger directly, it is indirect, it can the sense of civic education through art). I be ambiguous, it affects and confuses, but am thinking for example about – also in the often it echoes for a long time in the hearts context of your work – the Weltkulturen and minds of people from opposed sides – Museum in Frankfurt, Germany with in a way, it brings them together.

Clementine Deliss as its director. She put KP: I think that is a very beautiful thought a lot of effort into addressing the colonial violence that underlies any ethnographic to close with because it is about opening rather museum precisely by inviting artists as people than closing, asking rather than answering.

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PRACTICES

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BILDERFAHRZEUGE: ABY WARBURG’S LEGACY AND THE FUTURE OF ICONOLOGY

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BILDERFAHRZEUGE: ABY WARBURG’S LEGACY AND THE FUTURE OF ICONOLOGY

The research project “Bilderfahrzeuge: Aby Warburg’s Legacy and the Future of Iconology” seeks to provide appropriate mechanisms to discuss the transfer of image concepts and forms, by means of the concept of Bilderfahrzeuge, image vehicles.

In terms of media science, the vehicle itself, its particular and specific historical forms, provide a point of interest. At the same time, images are regarded as the main focus of the research. The project takes material images as a theme, as well as linguistic images, but also considers access to images, or treatment and use of them, in literature, the humanities and science.

The main goal of this project is to provide a fundamental contribution to cultural history; through a history of images and ideas practiced in an interdisciplinary and international setting, it consists of various subprojects that range from material-based art-historical research to cultural, historical and literary ones.

ACTIVITIES CURRENTLY UNDERWAY As part of the project, many conferences were organized, for example: Aby Warburg 150. Work. Legacy. Promise (UCL Institute of Education, June 2016); Das verirrte Kunstwerk. Funktion und Rezeption vom Wege abgekommener Bilderfahrzeuge (Warburg-Haus Hamburg, April 2016); Workshop: Contemporary Image Conflicts.

Violence and Iconoclasm from Charlie Hebdo to Daesh (Warburg Institute, London January 2016). The Bilderfahrzeuge Lecture Series at the Warburg Institute 2016-17

included: Finbarr Barry Flood (New York University), The Relic as Image: Prophetic Aura in an Age of Technological Reproducibility (14 June 2017), Zainab Bahrani (Columbia), Return of Images: Chance Encounters in the Afterlives of Antiquity (10 May 2017).

AIM To provide a fundamental contribution to cultural history, through a history of images and ideas practiced in an interdisciplinary and international setting TARGET GROUP Academics interested in art history, visual culture, students, researchers, art professionals MEDIA USED / METHODS The project takes material images as a theme as well as linguistic images, but also considers access to images, or treatment and use of them, in literature, the humanities and science.

The project is carried out by multinational and interdisciplinary groups, which establish a network of exchange of ideas and topics.

Aby Warburg’s Legacy and the Future of Iconology” sets out to explore the migration of images, objects, commodities and texts; in short: the migration of ideas in a broad historical and geographical context. It is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung), realized in cooperation with the Max Weber Stiftung, and situated in the Warburg Institute, London, as well as the Deutsche Forum für Kunstgeschichte (Paris), Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Kunsthistorisches Institut (Florence), and Warburg Haus (Hamburg). Each institution is represented by one of the five professors who also direct the research project: Andreas Beyer (Basel/Paris), who is also functioning as the research center’s spokesperson, Horst Bredekamp (Berlin), Uwe Fleckner (Hamburg), David Freedberg (London), and Gerhard Wolf (Florence).

Through its own expertise with images, art history has the opportunity to establish the autonomy of the image, which it can then offer as an independent and constitutive aspect to interdisciplinary cultural scholarship. At the same time, one of the research project’s special qualities consists of engaging with the specific DURATION character of images without positing an 2013-2017 image-language opposition. Instead, it seeks to explore language’s complementary arc of development and work with it. If, as has been said, art history in general is predestined to be an open partner in PROJECT DESCRIPTION The research project “Bilderfahrzeuge: expansive, interdisciplinary research,

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BILDERFAHRZEUGE: ABY WARBURG’S LEGACY AND THE FUTURE OF ICONOLOGY

the Bilderfahrzeuge research project in particular relies on a fertile field of dialogue in order to pursue its comprehensive cultural approach.

METHOD The research group includes art historians, medievalist historians, comparativists, and philosophers from Italy, France, Germany, the US, Mexico and the UK. The overall project is formed by various subprojects that range from material-based art-historical research (Eckart Marchand, Anna McSweeney, Pablo Schneider, Elena Tolstichin, Isabella Woldt) and culturalhistorical and literary subprojects (Linda Báez Rubí, Philipp Ekardt, Christopher Johnson, Johannes von Müller) to historiographical analyses in the broadest sense (Victor Claass, Maria Teresa Costa, Hans Christian Hönes). Yet, these diverse studies benefit from a close cooperation that leads to constant interchanges and works towards annulling a definite differentiation of topics and fields. Every institution outside London houses two scientific collaborators who are working on their individual projects: one collaborator each in Berlin, Florence, Hamburg and Paris, and one in London. Thus the various partners send in total four collaborators to the Warburg Institute. Guaranteeing continuous exchange with their home

Yet, Warburg already knew that such image-transfers are not exclusive to the present, and that images have (always already) travelled the circuits of our various pasts.

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institutions, these delegates work together with their London colleagues: three scientific collaborators, an archivist, the research center’s assistant, and the coordinator. Thus, the Warburg Institute stands at the center of the Bilderfahrzeuge project.

EXAMPLE OF A SUBPROJECT “Art and Image-Circulation, ca. 1800”, a project conducted by Dr Philipp Ekardt (Warburg Institute, London) is one of many endeavors realized within the broad frame of Bilderfahrzeuge.

Diagnoses of our current media-cultural state regularly converge on the point that we are experiencing a moment of intensified pictorial traffic and that our notions of what artworks are and how we account for them critically and textually require appropriate adjustments. Yet, Warburg already knew that such image-transfers are not exclusive to the present, and that images have (always already) travelled the circuits of our various pasts. The project examines one of the pasts of our current image-exchanges – a moment that proved formative for the notions of art, the aesthetic, literature, and their respective criticisms with which we have operated until today, namely the period around 1800 in German culture. While designed as a historical study, the project also speaks to our contemporary concerns in that it probes potential genealogies and the applicability

of critical debates that are being led at the moment, surrounding questions of media a/specificity, the object and medial bases of knowledge (e.g. in actor-network theory), or the interrelations of art and image.

PROJECT INFORMATION INITIATOR: The Warburg Institute, London PARTNERS: German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung); Max Weber Stiftung, Warburg Institute, London; Deutsche Forum für Kunstgeschichte (Paris); HumboldtUniversität zu Berlin; Kunsthistorisches Institut (Florence); Warburg Haus (Hamburg). Each institution is represented by one of the five professors who also direct the research project: Andreas Beyer (Basel/ Paris), Horst Bredekamp (Berlin), Uwe Fleckner (Hamburg), David Freedberg (London), and Gerhard Wolf (Florence).

CONTACT: Johannes von Müller, The Warburg Institute, Woburn Square, London WC1 0AB, England: +44 (0) 207 862 87 75, vonmueller@bilderfahrzeuge.org LINKS: www.iconology.hypotheses.org/

ERSILIA: DIGITAL PLATFORM FOR THINKING THROUGH IMAGES ERSILIA IS A DIGITAL VISUAL LITERACY PLATFORM OFFERING A COMPREHENSIVE WAY OF QUESTIONING AND THINKING THE WORLD OF IMAGES. IT IS A TRANSDISCIPLINARY TOOL DESIGNED IN COLLABORATION WITH EDUCATORS, STUDENTS AND ARTISTS. AS A PLACE FOR DISCOVERY, EXPRESSION AND DIALOGUE, ERSILIA STRENGTHENS REFLEXIVE, CRITICAL AND CREATIVE SKILLS OF ITS USERS.

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THINKING WITH AND THROUGH IMAGES ERSILIA is a pedagogical tool and a collaborative platform that invents a new way of learning, teaching and sharing knowledge. It offers a curated selection of images, critical texts, external resources, games, as well as methodologies and concrete ideas for projects in the classroom and beyond.

Considering images as political territories, ERSILIA allows to develop a critical understanding of conditions in which images are produced, circulated and assimilated. It encourages its users to become active observers and players in the world submerged by images.

ACTIVITIES CURRENTLY UNDERWAY The first theme featured on ERSILIA is “Image and Territory”. Territory here is understood as a critical, subversive and inhabited space in perpetual movement - a suburb, a territory in war, a utopian city. How to read and understand it and in return to understand ourselves ?

La Fabrique du Regard is currently developing the second module “Body and image” in collaboration with teachers and students. New technical improvements to enhance the interactive and collaborative aspects of the platform are also underway, thanks to the large amount of feedback harvested from field experience.

Ersilia is currently available in French. LE BAL is considering the opportunities to translate and adapt it in other languages.

AIM ERSILIA helps young people find their way through the all-image environment and consider images as representations of reality in the light of contemporary social, political and cultural codes. It aims to: • Educate young people towards media and digital literacy; • Form active, connected and concerned observers, critical citizens conscious that image is a construct

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with its specific codes and usages; • Become an artistic laboratory to experiment with innovative and creative educational projects; • Create an active community of competent educational teams to tackle visual and digital literacy challenges TARGET GROUP Young people/students starting from 12 years old, teachers and educators METHOD ERSILIA’s method is based on a combination of the following principles: • experiential learning to privilege sensible discoveries; • horizontal and collaborative functioning shared by teachers, students and artists; • a transversal approach drawing on a variety of expertise and perspectives (semiology, aesthetics, history, politics, sociology, media studies) to question the complex world of images.

• an emancipatory and non-didactic approach to encourage both teachers and students to freely appropriate the material and choose their way of navigating. The underlying ambition is to allow the teachers and educators to become autonomous to lead their own projects with their class.

DURATION OF PROJECT 2015 – ongoing

PROJECT DESCRIPTION & CONTEXT In 2015, an estimated 880 billion pictures were taken in the world. Citizens are no longer passive recipients of media content, but also creators of content and media sources. Understanding the world also means learning how to read and analyze images in their context of production, diffusion and reception. The profound shifts in society and civic challenges must be considered from a citizen’s perspective on the image.

ERSILIA was developed by LE BAL and its educational platform, La Fabrique du Regard. Since 2008, La Fabrique du Regard has been conducting visual literacy programs in schools, reaching out to 2000 young people, mostly from underprivileged areas, every year.

ERSILIA is the result of three years of research and experimentations led by La Fabrique du Regard - a transfer into the digital realm of its fieldwork experience, know-how and methodology. Created in close collaboration with educators and students - its future users, ERSILIA was tested, improved and enriched by the educational team and students of a high school in Bagnolet.

ERSILIA refers to a city, described in Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, where the inhabitants stretch strings between their houses to represent human, civic and political bonds that connect them, forming a wide and open network. Similarly,

ERSILIA: DIGITAL PLATFORM FOR THINKING THROUGH IMAGES

Using ERSILIA, young people learn how to critically and actively deal with the constant stream of images, through searching, filtering, comparing, questioning, analyzing and evaluating. Creative games and exercises sharpen students’ eyes and help them explore image construction.

The creative potential of ERSILIA allows users to initiate their own interpretation of the content and adapt their path to different fields (math, history, literature, art, science…), levels, languages and socioERSILIA is organized in themes, each economic groups. exploring emblematic works of art photography, video, book, multimedia. Teachers can incite innovative methodoloThe images are analyzed from historical, gies, work within networks with teachers political, social and artistic perspectives. from different disciplines, professionals and It provides relevant and verified resources artists. As a collaborative and interactive tool, ERSILIA inspires active thinkers, promoting cultural diversity. boosts creativity and offers an interactive The method is based on a “ping-pong” place where ideas and visions are shared pattern, with its rebounding effect and freely. departing from different points of view.

ERSILIA invites to deconstruct the images Today, ERSILIA is available for teachers, through multiple questionings: why, in students and artists/professionals working what contexts are the images produced? in France and in French schools abroad. It How are they broadcast and received? How can be used in different disciplines and at different levels. do they change the way we see the world?

ERSILIA as a collaborative platform seeks to develop innovative and horizontal pedagogical schemes that foster the experience of knowledge via associations of forms and ideas. It establishes links between different types of images (art, press, cinema, advertisement…) from different historic moments and contexts (Internet, media, archives, public spaces…) in order to understand the challenges and transformations of society.

PROJECT INFORMATION INITIATOR: LE BAL is an independent research, exhibition and education venue in Paris dedicated to the document-image; the image in all its forms – photography, video, film and new media – as a means of representing reality. LE BAL/La Fabrique du Regard is a non-profit organization created by Raymond Depardon and Diane Dufour.

PARTNERS: ERSILIA was initiated in partnership with the Evens Foundation. It is supported by the French Ministry of Education, Ministry of Culture and Communication, FEDER-FSE-IEJ 2014-2020, L’Europe s’engage, Fondation Groupe EDF, Fonds du 11 janvier. ERSILIA is the laureate of La France s’engage, a presidential award for most inspiring social innovation projects.

CONTACT: Sophie Briquet: +33 1 45 23 86 27, briquet@le-bal.fr LINKS: www.ersilia.fr www.le-bal.fr

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SEEING MORE THINGS A VISUAL LITERACY PROJECT

SEEING MORE THINGS A VISUAL LITERACY PROJECT STRIVING BEYOND SIMPLE RECOMMENDATION OF CHILD-FRIENDLY PROGRAMMING, THE FLIMMO PROJECT DEVELOPS PRINT BROCHURES, ONLINE AND MOBILE RESOURCES AS WELL AS PEDAGOGICAL WORKSHOPS TO HELP PARENTS GUIDE THEIR CHILDREN SAFELY THROUGH USE OF TELEVISION.

“Seeing More Things” is a visual literacy programme organised by The Photographers’ Gallery, London, that took place from September 2013 to March 2016.

During a series of gallery visits and inclass work, 257 students from six London secondary schools worked with their teacher and a project artist to measure, develop and learn from their visual literacy skills; stretching their ability to read, understand, and make images. An assessment indicated that at least 70% of the students involved in the workshops showed a marked improvement in their ability to read, understand and communicate about visual imagery.

AIM To support and develop pupils’ visual literacy and to share resources developed over the project’s span.

TARGET GROUP Secondary school pupils.

MEDIA USED Visual media, mostly photography.

METHODS Photography-focused gallery visits and in-class workshops, mostly based on writing and drawing.

DURATION OF PROJECT The main goal of the project was to September 2013 – March 2016 support and develop pupils’ visual literacy and to share resources developed over the project’s three-year span. There was also an argument to be made that making visits PROJECT DESCRIPTION AND METHOD to galleries, which are dedicated sites for Participants in the project were secondary looking and thinking about art, can support pupils aged 12 to 18 years. Four groups of the development of visual literacy. pupils from a different school took part for one academic term each year. Teachers

in each school were paired with an artist to plan and deliver a series of sessions over one term. Over three years, artists/ photographers Helen Cammock, Liz Orton, Yemisi Blake, Anthony Luvera, Liane Harris and Claire Collison each worked with a teacher at a different London secondary school.

During a series of photography-focused gallery visits and in-class work, pupils worked with their teacher and project artist to measure, develop and extend their visual literacy skills. The project stemmed from a series of initiatives that The Photographers’ Gallery has developed through partnerships with teachers and schools. It also links with the Touchstone programme at the Gallery, inviting audiences to respond to an individual photograph on display, through writing and drawing.

Our agreed working definition of visual literacy was: Visual literacy is the ability to critically explore, articulate and make sense of the visual world with fluency.

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The project used the following “Four Ways In” methodology for looking at, discussing and making work: Begin with an emotional or gut reaction, followed by a series of questions covering four key areas: SUBJECT – What is the subject of this picture?

Is it depicting something?

COMPOSITION – How do the different visual elements of the picture come together?

What and where are the shapes, lines, colours, textures and tone within this picture?

FORM – What form does this picture take?

How is this photograph presented – as a print in a frame, in a newspaper, on a computer screen?

CONTEXT – When, where, how and why was the photo taken? How is it now being presented?

At the start of each set of 12-13 workshops, each pupil was asked to produce a Personal Meaning Map (PMM) in order to collect baseline data and enable an analysis of developments in visual literacy by the end of their workshop set. Pupils were shown a photograph and given a prompt sheet based on the keywords (using the “Four Ways In” subject headers), to help them make responses about the photograph on a piece of paper. They were then asked to write further responses at the end of the project (and middle if appropriate). Each PMM session is completed in a different colour.

These responses were then analysed to see if an improvement in their visual literacy, in reference to the single photograph, was evident by the end of the project. To show improvement, it was expected that at least three clear and different additions were made beyond the initial responses from the first week.

STAND-OUT PROJECT IDEA During the second year of the project, Claire Collison, one of the project artists, devised an activity that aimed to include pupils who prefer to talk rather than write their response to artwork during a gallery visit.

“Radio has the Best Pictures” – This activity invites students to become radio journalists. It is amazing how even reticent students will open up if asked to speak one to one, and into a microphone. Perhaps it is the roleplay, the prop, or the individual attention. Whatever the reason, it works.

HOW TO: This works best in a gallery. Once students have had an opportunity to look at the work on display, invite them individually to select an image they feel comfortable with describing. Ask them to imagine they are radio journalists. Their listener is at home, and it is their job to paint a picture in the mind’s eye. Record them on the dictaphone. Begin by asking them to say their own name. Get as close to the photo as

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SEEING MORE THINGS A VISUAL LITERACY PROJECT

Visual literacy is the ability to critically explore, articulate and make sense of the visual world with fluency.

possible. What is happening?

OUTCOMES/ LEARNING OBJECTIVES: To encourage students to develop confidence in saying what they see – in their own words.

To realise what quality and amount of information is needed to communicate, and to experience what happens when you deliver a commentary on a photograph: inevitably you begin to notice more and more detail. You start to imagine the story behind the photograph.

YOU WILL NEED: dictaphone, and a photography exhibition: if possible, find a quiet gallery containing a good range of images.

Documentary and social photography works extremely well for this exercise; a gallery of Henry Wessel prints at Tate Modern was used.

IMPLEMENTATION DIFFICULTIES / OBSTACLES OR CHALLENGES Most students were not aware that The Photographers’ Gallery had organised the programme; all answered that their teacher and the artist/photographer had planned it and only a few mentioned the Gallery. However, raising awareness of The Photographers’ Gallery was not a key aim of the programme.

Gallery visits were successful in improving visual literacy learning, but it was complicated for schools to schedule the required project number of six gallery

visits due to their impact on learning in other subjects and school procedures for organising educational visits. Visiting two exhibitions on one day worked well but visiting too many exhibitions on one day sometimes meant the pupils lost focus.

work made during “Seeing More Things”, and Hampstead will have a permanent display of their final portraits in their school. Activity ideas and examples of work created during activities are also available on the blog. Finally, the way students responded in galleries changed during the programme. On early visits, some students CONCLUSION The evaluation proved that, through were uncomfortable, but by the end of the analysis of pupils’ Personal Meaning Maps, programme they were at ease in the gallery 76% of them showed marked improvements environment and more engaged in looking, talking about and understanding the work across the three years of the project. on show.

Additional highlights of the project were: • Development of a resource of exciting PROJECT INFORMATION and engaging activities around visual INITIATOR: The Photographers’ Gallery literacy learning, now collated on the is the largest public gallery in London “Seeing More Things” blog dedicated to photography. A registered • Visits to a diverse range of galleries and charity established in 1971, it shows a exhibitions, which improved students’ range of photography – from the latest language and discussion skills and emerging talent, to historical archives promoted visual literacy learning and established artists. Its education • Students had the opportunity to work programmes include public talks, courses with a professional photographer and and workshops, as well as a dedicated meet other creative professionals in programme for young people, schools gallery settings and teachers. One of the Gallery’s wider • The Gallery ensured there were educational aims is to inspire people to professional development opportunities cultivate their visual literacy skills through for the project artists and teachers involved ‘slow looking’. in the programme, as well as opportunities LEAD ORGANISER OF “SEEING MORE THINGS”: for a wider audience through InSET Jai Tyler, Education & Project Organiser, teacher sessions on visual literacy and the The Photographers’ Gallery “Seeing More Things” blog.

STRATEGIC SUPPORT FROM: Janice McLaren, Head of Education & The school and gallery-based activities Projects, The Photographers’ Gallery were highly successful in promoting visual PARTNERS: literacy learning. There was a particularly Participating schools: Hampstead noticeable improvement in understanding School, Hendon School, Parliament Hill of composition, form and subject when School, Pimlico Academy, Queen’s Park discussing images. Practical activities were Community School and Westminster particularly good for relating visual literacy Academy learning to practical applications. Students FUNDER: John Lyon’s Charity ‘slowed down’, thinking more about INDEPENDENT EVALUATOR: framing and composition when taking Karen Pamplin Browne photographs, and spent longer looking at CONTACT: Janice McLaren: images. Students really enjoyed meeting the janice.mclaren@tpg.org.uk photographers and seeing photography as a LINKS: www.seeingmorethings.org.uk potential career. Language skills developed; www.thephotographersgallery.org.uk students talked with more complexity and using a richer vocabulary. A number of schools are holding final exhibitions of

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MINORITIES IN VISUAL CULTURE FOCUS ROMANIA POST-COMMUNISM HISTORIOGRAPHY STUDIES REFLECT THE NEED TO BETTER UNDERSTAND THE RELATIONS BETWEEN ROMANIANS AND THE DIFFERENT ETHNO-CULTURAL COMMUNITIES LIVING IN THE SAME GEOGRAPHICAL AREA. IN SOME CASES, HISTORIOGRAPHY WAS IDEOLOGICALLY USED IN FAVOR OF NATIONALISM AND XENOPHOBIA. THESE RELATIONS CAN BE FOLLOWED AND FOUND IN VISUAL CULTURE PRODUCED BOTH BY ETHNIC MINORITIES AND BY THE MAJORITY.

In 2015, the PostModernism Museum Romania’s Great Union in 1918 (“Marea initiated the five-year program of Unire”) throughout the country`s troubled Documenting, Archiving, Revaluing and historical road until nowadays.

Exhibiting (DARE) the art produced in Romania from 1944 to 1989.

The program consists of a series of multidisciplinary research initiatives analyzing the relationship of Romanian artists to different political ideologies and social climates within the historic periods of post-war and Communism (1944-1989).

The program includes a series of research exhibitions, debates, conferences and books, aiming to socially and culturally reevaluate the phenomenon of Communism, in the light of the 30-year anniversary of the 1989 Romanian Revolution in 2019.

The publications accompanying the projects are part of the “History Dustbin Collection” edited by Post-Modernism Publishing House.

The project researches the continuous historical balance between the national myth and the minorities’ contribution since

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AIM To research the continuous historical balance between the national myth and the minorities` contribution since Romania’s Great Union in 1918 (“Marea Unire”).

TARGET GROUP Citizens.

MEDIA USED Images, documents, panels, banners, meshes, textile canvases, together with original art works, memorabilia and visual culture elements.

METHODS Research, conferences, debates, publications and exhibitions.

DURATION OF PROJECT 2016-2017

PROJECT DESCRIPTION Language, religion, culture and heritage have been strong factors in shaping the profound characteristics of both ethnic minorities and the national majority. The minorities have largely contributed to the richness and diversity of the cultural heritage. Ethnic minorities can be filtered by different categories: transnational European minorities, national neighbor minorities and emigration minorities.

With the formation of national European states, the concepts of ethnic national majorities, minorities and multiculturalism have staged different visual approaches, from radical nationalist to tolerant recognition, following different trends of Romanization, inclusion, integration, positive discrimination, autonomy, discrimination and anti-semitic behaviors.

The ethnic minorities have been defined in

MINORITIES IN VISUAL CULTURE FOCUS ROMANIA

relation and in some cases in opposition to the majority of citizens of a young nation, Romania, fighting for centuries for its independence and state recognition.

The research and exhibition “Minorities in visual culture, focus Romania” is developed through thematic fields and subthemes, some of them ideological views transformed into clichés: “Exotic – major marginal element”, “Minorities represented in major arts”, “Inclusion through cosmopolitanism and revolution”, “Discrimination and polarization”.

Each thematic field is represented within the exhibition space through panels, banners, meshes, textile canvases, along with original art works, memorabilia and visual culture elements.

The exhibition consists of textile panels containing infographics on history, sociology and anthropology. The panels are joined by a large palette of artistic and cultural manifestations, which include visual arts, periodical or limited-edition magazines, photographic archives, postcards, indexes of signs and symbols, created and published on Romanian territory, that complete the visual landscapes of different periods.

The exhibition takes different focuses depending on the cultural context of the location of exhibiting. An accompanying book, available in English, contains more information on the research.

The conference highlights the contribution of national minorities to the development of Romanian culture during the last 100 years and emphasizes the fact that ethnic minorities make up an integrated and decisive part of Romanian culture and art.

The project follows the relationships between the powerful concepts of nationalism and multiculturalism in the process of shaping cultural and visual identity in Romania, from 1918 onwards.

Although 16 minorities are covered, visitors to the exhibition perceived it as being about Roma when they saw the title (minority).

In Romania, Roma make up the second largest minority (3%). The minorities do not see themselves as a group, but in 1930 all METHOD: The research study and exhibition minorities together counted for 28% of the “Minorities in visual culture, focus Romania” entire population. explores the rich dialogue between visual representation on the one hand and political Nowadays in Romania, each minority, and social context on the other. represented by an association, has its own agenda. These agendas barely overlap: the This project uses the following tools: Holocaust for example is central to the research, conferences, debates, publications agenda of the Jewish association, but not claimed as a key focal point by Roma or gays. and exhibitions.

As methodology, we use a curatorial approach adapted to the 21st century, as we look at art not only as aesthetic and artistic flow but also to the anthropological, sociological and historical-ideological importance. The focus is not on the artistic styles and schools, but on the relationship of art with power and ideology.

CONCLUSION

Post-communist historiography lacks thorough studies concerning relations between Romanians and the different ethno-cultural communities living in the same geographical area. In some cases, historiography was ideologically used in favor of nationalism and xenophobia. These relations can be studied in visual culture The two filters, nationalism and multi- produced by both ethnic minorities and the culturalism, are applied within the project majority. from the wide point of view of visual culture.

As a concept, nationalism can have chauvinist connotations when used by one ACTIVITIES CURRENTLY UNDERWAY EXHIBITIONS: first shown in Brussels ideology or another. But the term actually (August-October 2016), then in Bucharest contains a strong cultural constancy, made Municipality Museum, Dr Nicolae Minovici out of the richness and diversity of all ethnic groups, as contributors to the culture of the Museum (October-November 2016) CONFERENCES: “Nationalism and multi- country as a whole. culturalism in visual culture” at Bucharest Municipality Museum – Sutu Palace (January 2017) PROJECT INFORMATION PUBLICATIONS: “Minorities in Visual Culture – INITIATOR: PostModernism Museum Focus Romania” (designed object, 2 editions Association, Oana Nasui, president already), “Nationalism and multiculturalism PARTNERS: Modernism.ro in visual culture”, PostModernism Museum CONTACT: Cosmin Nasui, Publishing House 2017. senior curator & researcher : +40723358945 , Educational guided tours during all the cosmin.nasui@postmodernism.ro above events.

LINKS: www.postmodernism.ro www.facebook.com/ PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION DIFFICULTIES / PostModernismMuseum/ www.facebook.com/ OBSTACLES OR CHALLENGES The content of the study raises sensitive MinoritiesVisualCulture/ issues: the political approach of the minorities, changing through 100 years, depending on the majority with political power.

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SZALONA GALERIA GALLERY, CINEMA AND LIBRARY ON TOUR SZALONA GALERIA (CRAZY GALLERY) WAS A MOBILE CENTER FOR CONTEMPORARY CULTURE THAT TOURED SMALL TOWNS AND VILLAGES IN POLAND IN THE SUMMER OF 2016. A CONTEMPORARY ART EXHIBITION PRESENTING MORE THAN 40 ARTISTS WAS THE MAIN PART OF THE PROJECT, BUT IT ALSO INCLUDED A MOBILE CINEMA AND A CURATED LIBRARY. THE PROJECT WAS PRODUCED BY A GROUP OF ARTISTS WITHOUT SUPPORT FROM ANY INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORK, AND FUNDED SOLELY BY A CROWDFUNDING CAMPAIGN. AFTER THE LAUNCH OF THE CAMPAIGN, ORGANIZERS WERE APPROACHED BY SOME CULTURAL INSTITUTIONS INTERESTED IN A PRESENTATION OF THE PROJECT AFTER ITS COMPLETION. THAT RESULTED IN AN EXHIBITION AT THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART IN WARSAW, AMONG OTHERS.

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SZALONA GALERIA GALLERY, CINEMA AND LIBRARY ON TOUR

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The main goal of Szalona Galeria was to provide access to contemporary critical culture to an audience for whom such access is very limited or who are excluded from participation in culture. This initiative was politically motivated, and aimed at fighting marginalization in relation to the visual arts. The question posed by organizers was also one about the agency of the artist and his/her ability to bring about social and political change

AIM Popularization of critical culture in small towns and villages in peripheral areas of Poland.

TARGET GROUP Inhabitants of towns and villages in peripheral areas of Poland.

MEDIA USED Mobile center/mobile structure, contemporary art, social media.

METHODS Exhibitions, face-to-face contact, mobility, guided tours, film screenings.

DURATION OF PROJECT July-August 2016.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION Szalona Galeria was a mobile cultural center launched by designer Jakub de Barbaro and two artists, Agnieszka Polska and Janek Simon, that toured small towns and villages in Poland in July and August, 2016.

It consisted of a bookstore, an open-air cinema, and a traveling contemporary art exhibition. The gallery visited various regions of the country, stopping for several days in eight towns and villages such as Lipce Reymontowskie, Bojadła, Chełmek, and Reszel.

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The name Szalona Galeria harks back to the work of Marian Minich, director of Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź from 1935 to 1965. Minich initiated a unique program of bringing reproductions of paintings to villages all over Poland, where the works on tour were often hung on fences and farm buildings.

METHOD: When designing the Szalona Galeria, artists followed the principle of mobility so that their project could reach as many places as possible. Due to the mobile structure, the exhibition was quick to install and dismantle. The exhibition itself consisted of works that did not follow a traditionally understood model of critical art; rather, they were works depicting alternative or Szalona Galeria was conceived as a critical thinking and new fields of action. response to the fact that a large part of the population of Poland today lacks access to ARTISTS PARTICIPATING IN THE SZALONA GALERIA contemporary culture. The shortcomings EXHIBITION: Wojciech Bąkowski, Bracia of cultural education, failure to ap- (Maciej Chorąży i Agnieszka Klepacka), preciate the role of artists in society, and Karolina Brzuzan, Sebastian Buczek, Rafał the centralization of institutions have Bujnowski, Oskar Dawicki, Marta Deskur, made it difficult for villages and small Andrzej Dudek-Dürer, Daria Giwer, towns to participate in contemporary Aneta Grzeszykowska, Paweł Jarodzki, culture. Szalona Galeria was created in Łukasz Jastrubczak, Tomasz Kowalski, order to bring visual artists, filmmakers Katarzyna Kozyra, Igor Krenz, Agnieszka and theorists in touch with people living Kurant, Robert Kuśmirowski, Natalia LL, outside the big cities.

Marcin Maciejowski, Honorata Martin, Przemek Matecki, Gizela Mickiewicz, Outstanding Polish artists representing Paulina Ołowska, Katarzyna Przezwańska, a range of attitudes and aesthetics were Joanna Rajkowska, Robert Rumas, invited to take part. The works displayed Daniel Rumiancew, Adam Rzepecki, share the belief that “reality can be Jadwiga Sawicka, Wilhelm Sasnal, Magda transformed”. In a departure from the dis- Starska, Andrzej Szpindler, Aleksandra course prevailing on the Polish art scene in Wasilkowska and Julita Wójcik. recent years, the exhibition does not revolve around Critical Art but seeks to define a EXEMPLARY EVENT WITHIN THE PROJECT new and different way in which politics Artists arrived in Bojadła on the evening can be made manifest through art. Instead of 24 July 2016 and were hosted by of carrying out a critique of the current Fundacja Pałac Bojadła. The owners of the system, the show’s narrative relies on works foundation had bought a ruined German that hint at the existence of alternative palace several years ago with the aim of systems. restoring it and turning it into a cultural

SZALONA GALERIA GALLERY, CINEMA AND LIBRARY ON TOUR

center. While still mainly a ruin, several rooms had been restored and it was possible to use it as a base for activities in the area.

Next morning, artists started to unpack and build the scaffolding structure that was the main part of our mobile gallery.

It would usually take a full day of work to build the structure, unload the truck and install the exhibition. The next morning it was officially open. They put some posters around the village to announce it.

AFTERTHOUGHTS The project organizers were surprised at the hospitality and warmth they received.

Contemporary art turned out to be accessible and rewarding for audiences that hadn’t had contact with it before. Doubtless, this kind of activity should be continued.

On the other hand, such an organizational model turned out to be unsustainable. It was ok to do this project once this way, but to do it again the organizers would need a For the next three days, the gallery was much bigger budget and a solid institutional open and the work was organized in and organizational framework. shifts: two people were present at Szalona Galeria, ready to guide people through PROJECT INFORMATION the exhibition, while two other Szalona INITIATORS: members had free time. At some point, Szalona Galeria (an informal group, artists realized that in Bojadła children not a legal entity), Agnieszka Polska, were their main audience so they decided Jakub de Barbaro, Janek Simon to screen cartoons in the evening in our PARTNERS: cinema. A group of boys hung around the Local Culture, Sport and Recreation center for most of the days and at the end Centre in Lipce Reymontowskie, Pałac they decided to start their own artistic Bojadła Foundation, Ślęża Culture, collective: a graffiti group, BJA Graficiarze. Sport and Recreation Centre in Sobótka, After three days, the artists packed up (this Municipal Culture, Sport and Recreation usually took an evening and a good part Centre in Chełmk, Municipal Culture of the next day) and moved on towards Centre in Józefów, Jan Józef Lipski Sobótka.

Common University in Teremiski, Castle in Reszl, Public Library in Białogard, Local PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION DIFFICULTIES / Culture Centre in Smołdzin, Red Shack in Czołpin, Museum of Modern Art in OBSTACLES OR CHALLENGES The project lacked institutional support, so Warsaw the main difficulties were organizational in CONTACT: nature. It was a lot of work for three people Janek Simon: jansi2012@gmail.com, (two artists and a graphic designer): to Jakub de Barbaro: debarbaro@gmail.com curate the exhibition, invite over 40 artists, LINKS: www.facebook.com/szalonagaleria do all the communication with them, get www.instagram.com/szalonagaleria or produce works for the show, design and build the mobile structure as well as its infrastructure, create the crowdfunding campaign content, the website, etc. For people not doing such work on regular basis, this meant a lot of stress and effort.

Once they hit the road, there were few problems, but still a lot of work and effort – rewarded by great energy received in return from the audience.

This initiative was politically motivated, and aimed at fighting marginalization in relation to the visual arts. The question posed by organizers was also one about the agency of the artist and his/her ability to bring about social and political change

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CAMP – CENTER FOR ART ON MIGRATION POLITICS, DENMARK

CAMP CENTER FOR ART ON MIGRATION POLITICS, DENMARK CAMP – CENTER FOR ART ON MIGRATION POLITICS IS A NONPROFIT EXHIBITION VENUE FOR ART RELATING TO QUESTIONS OF DISPLACEMENT, MIGRATION, IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM. IT PUTS ON EXHIBITIONS ON DISPLACEMENT AND MIGRATION WITH RENOWNED INTERNATIONAL ARTISTS AS WELL AS LESS ESTABLISHED PRACTITIONERS, PRIORITIZING ARTISTS WITH REFUGEE OR MIGRANT EXPERIENCE. CAMP TAKES ITS POINT OF DEPARTURE IN THE FACT THAT MORE PEOPLE THAN EVER ARE BEING DISPLACED FROM THEIR HOMES BECAUSE OF CLIMATE CHANGE, WAR, CONFLICT, PERSECUTION AND POVERTY. THE CENTER WORKS TO INCREASE INSIGHT INTO THE LIFE SITUATIONS OF DISPLACED AND MIGRANT PEOPLE, AND TO DISCUSS THESE IN RELATION TO THE OVERALL FACTORS THAT CAUSE DISPLACEMENT AND MIGRATION.

AIM To stimulate greater understanding between displaced people and the communities that receive them TARGET GROUP General public MEDIA USED Exhibitions, discussions METHODS Visual art, documentary forms DURATION OF PROJECT Ongoing

PROJECT DESCRIPTION The main goal of this project is, through art, to enable greater understanding among displaced people and the communities that receive them, and to stimulate new visions for more inclusive and equitable migration, refugee and asylum policies.

center in 2015. It is located in Trampoline House, an independent community center in Copenhagen’s northwest district that provides refugees and asylum seekers in Denmark with a place of support, community and purpose.

CAMP’s name refers to the nation-state’s perhaps most extreme responses to human migration: the refugee camp, the asylum center, and the detention center. CAMP is the first center of its kind in Scandinavia and is directed as a self-governing institution

by Danish curators Frederikke Hansen and Tone Olaf Nielsen, who founded the

METHOD CAMP is intended to be a platform for artists whose work represents displaced and migrating people’s experiences and sheds light on the struggles that refugees, asylum-seekers, undocumented migrants, and trafficked and enslaved people fight every day.

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CAMP – CENTER FOR ART ON MIGRATION POLITICS, DENMARK

The main goal of this project is, through art, to enable greater understanding among displaced people and the communities that receive them, and to stimulate new visions for more inclusive and equitable migration, refugee and asylum policies.

CAMP is intended to be a space where audiences, both with and without refugee or migrant backgrounds, are able, through art, to identify with the living conditions of displaced peoples and find inspiration for an alternative refugee, asylum and migration political agenda.

showed projects by nine international contemporary artists and collectives, who examined the politics of detaining refugees and migrants in exceptional spaces. In different ways, their artworks asked what kind of space the camp is, which functions it performs, what political-juridical structures have made camps possible, and what living in a camp does to the body and EXAMPLES OF EXHIBITIONS The latest exhibition was titled “We shout soul of camp residents. and shout, but no one listens: Art from conflict zones” (3 March to 17 June 2017). It Some works in the exhibition portrayed brought together 10 artists and thinkers from everyday life and the management of around the globe to explore the leading cause displaced individuals in Palestinian of displacement: war. Taking its starting refugee camps, Danish asylum centers, point in contemporary and recent conflicts and Australian detention centers. Other that have been ignored by the international works went behind the facade of the camp community, the exhibition presented to examine its logic as a site where the installation, photography, painting, nation-state divides its population into readymade, collage and performance works two and where it places its “undesirables”. that examine war from the perspective of Still other works contextualized camp those trapped in or fleeing zones of conflict. life and described the flight routes that The exhibition was accompanied by a dis- many refugees and migrants had followed cussion event, which debated what has prior to their detention in a refugee camp, caused indifference to certain of the world’s asylum center or detention center. Half of conflicts and what role visual representation the contributing artists and collectives are refugees themselves and have spent time plays in this. in an asylum or detention center.

The participants of the exhibition included Khaled Barakeh (Syria, based in Berlin), The curators of the exhibition were Gohar Dashti (Iran, based in Teheran), Frederikke Hansen and Tone Olaf Nielsen.

Nermine Hammam (Egypt, based in Cairo), Amel Ibrahimović (Bosnia-Herzegovina, PROJECT INFORMATION based in Copenhagen and Kolding), Alfredo INITIATOR: Jaar (Chile, based in New York) and Sandra Center for Art on Migration Politics, Johnston (Northern Ireland, based in Belfast Directors Frederikke Hansen and and Newcastle). The exhibition was curated Tone Olaf Nielsen

by Frederikke Hansen and Tone Olaf CONTACT: Nielsen. info@campcph.org LINKS: CAMP’s first exhibition was titled “Camp www.campcph.org Life: Artistic reflections on the politics www.facebook.com/campcph of refugee and migrant detention’ (17 www.twitter.com/campcph April to 14 June 2015). The exhibition www.instagram.com/campcph

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IN MY OWN VIEW DURING NOVEMBER AND DECEMBER 2015, WITH THE SUPPORT OF THE GREEK FILM CENTER AND GREEK EDUCATIONAL RADIO TELEVISION, KARPOS PUT ON A NATIONWIDE SHORT-FILM SCREENING, COMMENTING, VOTING AND WRITING ACTIVITY FOR GREEK SCHOOL GROUPS (11-17 YEARS) BASED ON YOUTH VIDEO PRODUCTIONS, A FLOURISHING AREA OF EXPRESSION TODAY. THE PROJECT AIMS TO DEVELOP THOUGHTFUL YOUNG VIEWERS, TO OPEN A DISCUSSION ABOUT THEIR OWN MEDIA PRODUCTIONS AND TO OFFER A CRITICAL TOOL FOR TEACHERS TO PROMOTE ARGUMENTATION ABOUT AND CRITICISM OF MEDIA. ”IN MY OWN VIEW” IS A MEDIA EDUCATION PROJECT THAT FOSTERS DIALOGUE, NEGOTIATION AND A CRITICAL VIEW ON MEDIA PRODUCTIONS BY EXPOSING VIEWERS TO A SERIES OF INCENTIVES AND CLEVER QUESTIONS.

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IN MY OWN VIEW

AIM To develop critical thinking, to enable young people to have a discussion on their own, to develop media productions as well as to offer a critical tool for teachers to promote argumentation about and criticism of media in general.

To make school pupils realize that writing a review is not simply to put forward their own opinion about a media text, but that it is also to answer questions that anyone in the audience could ask and that each one of us might give his/her own answers to.

TARGET GROUP Greek school groups, 11-17 years old MEDIA USED Short videos made by young people and the web platform, which allows for simultaneous online recording of voting.

The writing competition is text-based.

METHODS Film screening, commenting, voting and writing activities based on youth video productions. “In my own view” is based on a methodology that functions even in a non-web-based digital environment.

participate, as long as a group screening can by small groups of students (3-4 students). be organized.

They vote on three questions, which overcome typical nominations of “first, The project initiates a discussion about second, third” etc, so as to develop critical youth video productions and offers a critical thinking: tool for teachers to promote argumentation about and criticism of media in general. 1. Which would be your favorite film to Each set of screenings includes a standard show to your friends? collection of films so that all viewers watch 2. Which would be the film most suitable the same films, as if at a film festival. The for adults’ taste? first edition included 5-min. Greek students 3. Which would be the weirdest film? The productions presenting aspects of everyday one you need to ask something about? youth culture. These films were nominated in the VideoMuseums Competition The voting process is based on an online 2014. Collectively produced, the films platform that functions as a guidance area discuss issues such as fear of high school, for the teacher and a place where all voting bullying, digital media use and video- results are collected. The statistics are games addiction, female vs male teens, dynamically affected by all groups’ votes in immigration due to crisis, peer culture, real time. Groups may find out and discuss cyberbullying, moving and displacement, both theirs and other schools’ choices. and the contradictory goals of parent and teens.

A third phase of the project is a Review Writing Competition: individual students The screening is a classroom activity may choose one of the videos to write involving collaborative decision-making a review about. The platform provides

DURATION OF PROJECT November and December 2015 – the project took place during pre-planned sessions of two teaching hours, followed by the teachers’ submissions to participate in the “In my own view” process.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION The participants are groups of school students (aged 11-17 years), coordinated by their teacher(s) in collaboration with the Karpos team. Any number of people can

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they became aware of the preferences of other students, who often came from remote schools.

The written reviews were mainly designed as a personal project during the written expression course. Karpos assisted the teachers and offered opportunities for new ways of learning, as the project proved to have the necessary flexibility without losing its integrity.

Collectively produced, the films discuss issues such as fear of high school, bullying, digital media use and video-games addiction, female vs male teens, immigration due to crisis, peer culture, cyberbullying, moving and displacement, and the contradictory goals of parent and teens.

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detailed guidelines about how to approach a film. Its content, structural elements and artistic features are discussed.

Finally, a varied professional jury awards distinctions and a ceremony is organized where nationwide results are presented and discussed once again, and film review extracts are read.

METHOD Short films of similar length addressing the questions of identity were selected. A platform and a voting form were prepared as well as guidelines. Teachers were supported with introductory texts, video material and guidelines on how to realize the screening, voting and writing process.

Watching other students’ films on issues of identity, reflecting a variety of geographical and social origins, enhanced students’ cultural differentiation and understanding.

The films invite the viewers to understand common and different aspects of their own everyday life and compare it with that of other students. Through the platform,

Through simple questions, students considered films’ qualities and characteristics, gaining awareness of the different layers in a media text, moving away from stereotypic judgements (“best film”, “best script”, or “I like”, “I don’t like”). The young viewers are also placed in different roles (peer, new generation, etc). They are thus encouraged to replace routine judgements with interpretation.

Screening and voting were designed as collective processes while the written reviews were mainly a personal project.

The questions proposed may form a pattern for new questions related to other media “texts”. Online voting feedback could be further used for more detailed discussions of statistics, taste, criticism and culture.

Teachers integrated “In my own view” in language classes as an alternative way to discuss youth and social issues, narrative, videomaking and teamwork.

IMPLEMENTATION DIFFICULTIES / OBSTACLES OR CHALLENGES In general, there were no specific problems.

The span of time (two months for the screening process) gave enough time to

IN MY OWN VIEW

teachers to familiarize themselves and plan according to their curriculum. However, this required systematic secretarial/ pedagogical/technical support.

offered an interesting variation. However, this triggered a discussion among the jury and the teachers about nominations and equal judgements.

an expanded version that applies not only to youth productions but also to young directors’ professional short films, and is looking for partnerships.

The organizers had to cater for both more web-familiar classes and less technically orientated teachers. But the key sections of the project allow for enough flexibility in combining both analogue and digital implementation, based on the specific circumstances of each school. Size of group, available time-slot and different levels of digital awareness could be accommodated.

The technical competency of the schools and teachers affected the process but not the essence of the project.

On a deeper level, the written competition guidelines may raise a question about guidance for young writers, and about how to assist structuring and learning while also allowing creative writing.

Finally it is worth considering how different would the process be if all groups voted on the same day? Which aspects could be stressed and which would be suppressed?

ORGANIZATION THAT RUNS PROJECT

The overall choice of films may affect the results. Films should have a common thread (e.g. broader theme, scope of youthmade videos, etc). A set of films can easily address 11-15 or 13-17-year-olds. Some films, however, might not suit 11 and 17-year-olds at the same time. For example, younger audiences appreciated the concerns of older youth, but mature teenagers enjoyed films by younger ones only if they were humorous or very truthful.

All videos were short and similar in duration, which enabled narrative/ cinematic comparative perceptions. In practical terms, this also allowed teachers to easily divide the screening time into two parts. In future implementations, one may consider reducing slightly the overall number of films, since the final technical arrangements for group screenings sometimes took longer than expected.

Although the Film Review Competition was designed as a personal project, whether in class or as homework, especially in classes of 11-12-year-olds, some teachers selected group writing in pairs, which

EVALUATION AND FUTURE PLANS As several teachers noted, the children were enthusiastic about watching videos made by peers, and in the discussion that followed understood the differences between films.

Even in two special prison schools the reception was unique.

In total, 69 schools participated in the project, 29 of which were located in Athens while the rest represented other cities of Greece, including remote islands. At least two teachers were involved in each school, addressing 25-50 students. About 2,800 students took part in total. The Written Film Review competition attracted 110 students from 26 schools. The texts were of a high quality. As a result, two selections of texts were published (in print and online): one including the nominated reviews and another that presented a selection of quotes/phrases from reviews that were not nominated but were exceptional and deserved recognition.

INITIATOR: Karpos, Centre of Education & Intercultural Communication, nonprofit company; Menis Theodoridis, Maria Leonida RESEARCH GROUP Maria Leonida, Film Director, General Administrator of Karpos Menis Theodoridis, Film Director, Co-founder of Karpos Nina Trifonopoulou, Communication and Public Relations Theodora Malliarou, Coordination of Schools PARTNERS: Educational TV, Ministry of Education and Greek Film Centre CONTACT: Maria Leonida, Menis Theodoridis: info@karposontheweb.org, maria@karposontheweb.org LINKS: www.karposontheweb.org/myopinion/?lang=en www.myopinion.karposontheweb.org/ www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5PFN5CBq_ Q&index=14&list=PLQ1tS8V1KIZFr5gN6fS izSGokM59OL2ud www.facebook.com/pg/karposontheweb/

Karpos is currently fundraising so as to repeat and expand the project. Following a successful implementation during 2016 and two nominations from European organizations (the Evens Foundation and the Medea Awards), Karpos has planned

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PARTICIPATORY VIDEO LAB PROJECT TO EXPLORE OTHERNESS PROJECT OTHERNESS IS A CREATIVE AND CULTURAL SPACE WHICH AIMS TO DEVELOP CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF MASS MEDIA COMMUNICATION INTO BOTTOMUP VIDEO STORYTELLING ABOUT IDENTITY AND MIGRATION: WHAT’S THE MEANING OF ‘FOREIGNER’, WHO’S A ‘STRANGER’, WHAT ARE THE QUALITIES OF OTHERNESS? TWO GROUPS OF TEENAGERS REDEFINE THE MEANINGS OF OTHERNESS ALONG WITH RESIDENTS OF PIAZZA VITTORIO EMANUELE II IN ROME. THIS IS PARTICULARLY RELEVANT AS 80% OF THE POPULATION OF THIS SUBURB CONSIST OF PEOPLE FROM OUTSIDE EUROPE, AND FOR MANY YEARS INTERCULTURAL AND INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE HAS BEEN LACKING. THE PROJECT WAS AWARDED THE EVENS FOUNDATION PRIZE FOR MEDIA EDUCATION 2017.

AIM To create a hotbed of critical thinking on cinema and young culture in Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II, Rome.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

TARGET GROUP Teenagers (13-19) living in Esquilino suburb in Rome

In the project, participants acquire new tools for analyzing mass media communication – TV, cinema and websites. They learn an artistic and artisanal job, produce video content on social issues, learn how to present them, raise awareness about the issue of otherness, exploring its richness, acquire skills to counter dangerous political messages, watch images in a critical way. In sum, they turn away from being a passive content consumer or naive YouTuber, and become an active citizen and help local communities to participate in public life. The challenge is to help ZaLab’s participatory video (PV) workshops participants open up European opportunities for Activities encompass: • Dedicated games and team working; intercultural exchange through a new learning different video interview international distribution program. ZaLab techniques; practicing like a professional will put PV participants in contact with youngsters involved in analogous PV crew with professional equipment • Lessons led by reviewers and experts in workshops, in order to create interesting communication with focuses on cinema, channels of communication.

MEDIA USED Audiovisual, used with a participatory perspective.

METHODS Participatory video workshop, including field activities (neighborhood mapping and exploration), screening and analysis of films on the issues of otherness, analysis and deconstruction of discourse practices by politicians and newscasts with directors and critics, writing of subjects and other correlated activities.

DURATION OF PROJECT 10 months

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The project is run in two different periods of the year, involving two groups of 12 teenagers, each for three months.

TV and Internet: How is migration represented in the mass media? What is the common imaginary? What is the main focus of the communication?

• Neighborhood mapping and exploration, internal debates on social issues • Screenings of films on the issues of otherness; deconstruction of discourse practices by politicians and newscasts with directors, critics and independent cinema managers • Writing; shooting; editing; subtitling • Communication and organization of screening of self-produced videos and selected films • Final party, with concert

PARTICIPATORY VIDEO LAB PROJECT TO EXPLORE OTHERNESS

This complex and informal evaluation methodology seeks to dismantle hierarchies and promote self-confidence in one’s own ideas, attempting, at the same time, to enable participants to be as free as possible in changing their mind and accepting criticism in a constructive way.

METHOD The workshops are based on participatory video, implying the direct involvement of participants in the storytelling design and production as well as in the video production, editing and follow-up circulation.

Essential to PV, according to ZaLab’s vision, is systematic monitoring of how the process is flowing and analysis of potential group problems. In these processes, the group itself is sometimes able to recognize and solve issues that arise.

At the end of the period, internal screenings of the produced videos and public

screenings open up possibilities for internal participation of local residents as part of a and external evaluation. shared analysis of and storytelling about the identity of the suburb, in order to develop This complex and informal evaluation their participation in the cultural life of the methodology seeks to dismantle hierarchies city via intergenerational exchanges. and promote confidence in one’s own ideas, attempting, at the same time, to PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION DIFFICULTIES / enable participants to be as free as possible OBSTACLES OR CHALLENGES in changing their mind and accepting Every environment in which the PV criticism in a constructive way. laboratory is proposed has its own features; the Esquilino area shows marked Participatory video, as ZaLab sees it, forms peculiarities in terms of the variety of part of active pedagogy. Thus we strongly its human capital and its historical and encourage self-evaluation and developing cultural layering. This feature represents a self-critical attitude in the educational both a critical condition and a challenge. process itself.

Furthermore, in such a context, it is quite demanding to ensure continuity in inclusive and participatory projects, EXEMPLARY DESCRIPTION due to possible defection on the part of OF PART OF PROJECT One of the most peculiar features of the the participants themselves or to budget project consists in the PV laboratorial restrictions. approach. The choice of enabling young people to express themselves and recount INFORMATION ABOUT THE ORGANIZATION their stories through the camera en- INITIATOR: courages them to find their own perspective Associazione Culturale ZaLab, on their own background and on their Sara Zavarise and Michele Aiello current life while revising their own PARTNERS: experiences in a new way. Thus, the camera Associazione Culturale Apollo 11, turns itself into a means of self-expression Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio and storytelling, and ultimately helps the di Padova e Rovigo participant to experience an inclusive, CONTACT: engaging and experience-based educational Emanuela Minasola: and narrative process. produzione@zalab.org LINKS: www.zalab.org ACTIVITIES CURRENTLY UNDERWAY At the moment, ZaLab is working on the www.instagram.com/zalabdocs creation of teenage groups involved in www.facebook.com/zaLab the workshop and encouraging the active www.vimeo.com/zalab

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ANDER NIEUWS MAKING NEW CONNECTIONS WITH NEWS ITEMS MUSEUMS ARE DIGITIZING THEIR COLLECTIONS ON A LARGE SCALE. AS A RESULT, MUSEUM COLLECTIONS GROW INTO COLLECTIONS OF DATA THAT CAN BE SUBJECTED TO NEW TYPES OF QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS AND RELATED INTERFACES. IN THE ANDER NIEUWS (OTHER NEWS) PROJECT, THE NETHERLANDS INSTITUTE FOR SOUND AND VISION AND MEDIA ARTIST GEERT MUL RESEARCHED NEW WAYS OF “REUSING” DIGITAL NEWS FOOTAGE. IN THIS PROJECT, THE DIGITAL COLLECTION (NEWS BROADCASTS) IS USED TO GENERATE NEW KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCES FOR MUSEUM VISITORS. DATA ANALYSIS, INTERFACING/INTERACTION AND VISUALIZATION ARE THE BASIC PARTS OF THIS METHODOLOGY AND ARE THE FOCUS OF THIS RESEARCH.

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ANDER NIEUWS – MAKING NEW CONNECTIONS WITH NEWS ITEMS

AIM Research how large collections of digital audiovisual material can be presented in a way that contributes to the experience of museum visitors TARGET GROUP Museum visitors MEDIA USED Over 12,000 news items from NOS 20.00 Journaal (8 o’clock news) from 2011, 2012 and 2013. Later on, news items from 2010, 2014 and 2015 will be added.

METHODS Data analysis, interfacing/interaction and visualization DURATION OF PROJECT 2013-2015

PROJECT DESCRIPTION In collaboration with media artist Geert Mul, the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision researched how large collections of digital audiovisual material could be presented in a way that contributes to the experience of museum visitors. In Ander Nieuws, a database of recent Dutch television news broadcasts was made accessible

to the public in an immersive way. This dataset was indexed and semantic relations were created, using technology from the University of Twente and the University of Amsterdam.

In late 2014, based on the research, the prototype of an interactive installation was realized. It allows the visitor to establish correlations between subjects of the NOS 20.00 Journaal (Dutch public broadcasting 8 o’clock news) from 2011, 2012 and 2013.

The visitor, as an “information engineer”, enters into a constructive and creative relationship with the news database.

Depending on the intentions and actions of the visitor, Ander Nieuws can be a form of entertainment, an art piece or a research tool.

In April 2014, Sound and Vision began to develop a new, temporary exhibition in the Sound and Vision Experience. The development of this exhibition and the Ander Nieuws project led to the exhibition Voorbij het Nieuws (Beyond the News), in which the developed prototype was on display. In the exhibition, the classic exhibition form and a digital interactive exhibition form complemented each other. Voorbij het Nieuws, which opened in November 2014, showed connections between news themes, key players, editors and (social) media, enabling visitors to go “beyond the news”.

An important insight that emerged during the development of Ander Nieuws is that the methodology to be designed should not be generic but specific, so that new knowledge can be unlocked from the news items database

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METHOD

In collaboration with Cool Politics (an organization for increasing political and social involvement among youth) and NOS News, a thematic lesson series was developed for the exhibition about how news works and its impact on the way you see yourself and your environment. Part of the lesson series was a master class, which took place in the exhibition Voorbij het Nieuws.

Ander Nieuws consists of both qualitative and quantitative research (mixed methodology). These two methods come together through “hard” information technology: database, computer, algorithmbased data analysis; and “soft” disciplines: history, visualization, interaction, storytelling. An important insight that emerged during the development of Ander Nieuws is that the methodology to be designed should not be generic but specific, so that new knowledge can be unlocked from the news items database. Despite its non-generic nature, the idea was to develop and describe a model that can also be applied in other projects – a model that describes how a cultural database can be opened substantively and critically and be publicly accessible.

Ander Nieuws was supported by a “sounding board” to provide feedback at various times and share their expertise with us. The consortium consisted of Sound and EXEMPLARY DESCRIPTION Vision (secretary), Centraal Museum, Huis OF PART OF PROJECT voor Beeldcultuur, Museum Boijmans Van The Ander Nieuws installation makes the Beuningen, Museum of the Image and the correlation between topics in the news Nederlands Fotomuseum. insightful for visitors. To achieve this, a semantic analysis (relationships between In 2015 Ander Nieuws was awarded a FIAT/ different concepts measured in “time”) was IFTA Award for Most Innovative Use of developed. This process takes several steps: Archive. first, the news database, containing over 12,000 news items (8 o’clock news, 2011Collaborations with other organizations 2013), was processed by speech recognition are currently being explored to see if Ander software developed by the University of Nieuws can be showcased at other locations. Twente, which indicates by the second

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ANDER NIEUWS – MAKING NEW CONNECTIONS WITH NEWS ITEMS

where a word is said in an audio transcript.

Language analysis technology then makes it possible to index relevant terms in the speech recognition output.

These two techniques are interconnected in the API developed by Sound and Vision.

The API makes it possible to see how often a search term appears in the dataset and then looks at which words appear around the search term. If a term occurs regularly around the search term, it is indexed as a relationship. The API thus enables semantic relations in the database to be made visible.

Based on the API, Geert Mul has designed an interaction model, an interface and visualizations that allow the visitor to connect between topics from the news items in an intuitive and attractive way. Via the Github of Sound and Vision, the created API is made available under a GNU GPL license, and documentation is provided so that the API can be reused by others.

IMPLEMENTATION DIFFICULTIES / OBSTACLES OR CHALLENGES The starting point of the project was to include all news broadcasts since 1956 in the installation. This, however, turned out to be impractical. Eventually it was agreed with NOS that NOS 20.00 Journaal from the period 2010-2015 would be used. The process of retrieving the news items from the archive and indexing them also turned

out to be time-consuming. Eventually, the installation contained more than 12,000 news items from the years 2011, 2012 and 2013. This dataset is gradually being expanded during further development.

By incorporating Ander Nieuws in the Voorbij het Nieuws exhibition, the production of the project was increased. As a result, there was little time to test with end users. Therefore, it was specifically tested with experts, and more emphasis was put on additional research carried out by the Crossmedia research group of the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences for their project “Designing ExperienceScapes”. This project investigates in various museums in which way and to what extent the enhancement of a (crossmedial) experience has an impact on audience experience in the museum context.

The research of the Crossmedia research group will be the basis for improvement of user experience in further development.

During the exhibition, it was found that it was initially difficult for the visitor to see what the installation would bring to him or her. Only when the accompanying text and, perhaps, the instructional video is viewed, can the visitor fully understand the operation of the installation. There is still room for improvement to make this clearer for the visitor.

CONCLUSION The research has shown us that there is still a lot to be done in exploring innovative forms of presentation in which large collections of digitized heritage are made available to visitors. The methods and techniques can be applied to other datasets or topics. They have proven to be an interesting new way of reusing archival material and engaging with new audiences.

PROJECT INFORMATION INITIATOR: Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision and media artist Geert Mul, project lead: Brigitte Jansen (S&V) PARTNERS: Centraal Museum, Huis voor Beeldcultuur, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Museum of the Image, and the Nederlands Fotomuseum. The project is made possible by financial support from Fonds 21 and Creative Industries Fund NL. CONTACT: Brigitte Jansen: bjansen@beeldengeluid.nl LINKS: www.beeldengeluid.nl/voorbijhetnieuws www.vimeo.com/116540955 www.youtube.com/ watch?v=Xg7sT0OeVaM www.geertmul.nl/projects/ander-nieuws/

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EVERYONE CAN BE A REMIXER

EVERYONE CAN BE A REMIXER IS A VIDEO TUTORIAL THAT DEALS WITH AUDIOVISUAL REMIX IN THE INTERNET ERA. THE IDEA BEHIND THIS IS THAT ALL CULTURAL CONTENT – DERIVED AND DERIVABLE – STEMS FROM THE AUDIO-VISUAL ECOSYSTEMS OF AN ETERNAL NETWORK OF CONNECTIONS THAT PUTS US IN THE SITUATION OF PROSUMERS, CONSUMERS AND PRODUCERS OF CONTENT. IT IS ABOUT THE NARRATIVE WAYS AND THE LEARNING PROCESSES THAT ARISE FROM THE CONTEXTS IN WHICH WE LIVE. EVERYONE CAN BE A REMIXER IS, MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE, AN INVITATION TO TAKE PART.

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EVERYONE CAN BE A REMIXER

The main goal of this project is to summarize the research on remix – taking samples from pre-existing materials to combine them into new forms according to personal taste – as a tool for social transformation, which Spanish organization ZEMOS98 has been carrying out for the last decade.

AIM Creation of a video tutorial that deals with audiovisual remix in the Internet era TARGET GROUP General public, Internet users MEDIA USED Video METHODS Manipulating imagery, creating new visual material DURATION OF PROJECT 12 months

PROJECT DESCRIPTION AND METHOD Remix, in a broad sense, has been part of the work ZEMOS98 has been producing for the last decade. Starting from the idea that every cultural production uses pieces and ideas from previous cultural contents, they developed the idea that remix is a cultural ecosystem in which we all live. Within it, one can find pieces using remix as a tool to use

Remix has contributed to the development of the following kinds of projects that As such, remix answers to three different ZEMOS98 has initiated: definitions: • The 17th ZEMOS98 festival used remix as content for the program and a tool 1. Remix as an ecosystem. The concept to manage its productions. It produced of remix often referenced in popular calls of remix videos within the festival, culture comes from the model of music but also used remix as a methodological remixes produced around the late 1960s framework during the 14th and 15th and early 1970s in New York City, an festivals: Copylove. activity with roots in Jamaica’s music.

Using it as a metaphor, it can be said that remix is a cultural ecosystem in which • Doc Next, a network coordinated by the European Cultural Foundation and every creator has the power to reuse, formed by the Association of Creative rethink or criticize the content produced Initiatives “ę” (Poland), the British Film by previous artists or creators.

Institute (UK), Mode Istanbul (Turkey) and ZEMOS98 (Spain). Remix was at the 2. Remix as a tool to manipulate film. core of the network, acquiring special ZEMOS98 has always considered remix as relevance during the production of a tool for producing critical content with Remapping Europe, a multidisciplinary the construction of the media landscape. project on the representation of migrants Why do we think the way we think? in media: with a publication, two live How do we imagine otherness? How cinema shows, workshops in four are clichés, stereotypes, etc constructed? countries and a festival.

These are questions that the new digital era has made much easier to answer.

• Several video productions of the last few years used remix in many ways: 3. Remix as a methodology. Today, remix has as a way of inspiration, as a tool for been extended to other areas of culture, critical perspectives, as a joyful issue to including the visual arts; it plays a role in mass experiment with, etc. It is in this line communication, especially in the Internet. that the video essay Everyone Can Be a Remix has been used as a framework Remixer is framed, but fictional content methodology to produce different processes has also been devoted to this matter, such of workshops and projects. ZEMOS98 has as the short film ‘Hombres’. developed the Audiovisual Source Code, an audiovisual lecture methodology to explore • ZEMOS98 has developed learning how imageries are built. images from content produced by others.

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processes related to remix as a tool for 1. Multidisciplinary approach. Remix is an attempt to tear down the thick walls of critical thinking, most of them being the cultural industries and sectors so digital workshops to learn how to use as to promote working together, and to the digital environment to produce introduce lessons from many different subversive content. fields of knowledge. It is quite important to think in a transversal way on the Everyone Can Be a Remixer was produced possibilities of remix, from literature to during 2013 as a way of summarizing the cinema, and from architecture to math; lessons learnt relating to remix as a critical everything is remix and the borders of theory and a tool to deconstruct the media disciplines are getting blurred thanks landscape. It was made as a commissioned to it. work for the Spanish public TV program Metropolis and was broad-cast in December 2013. It got an audience of around 20,000, 2. Formats. When we think about remix, we probably think about what has been and was later published on the digital created in music over the last few decades. platforms of the channel.

But the truth is that, by expanding this metaphor, we have reached the point of Everyone Can Be a Remixer gathered the an extremely rich ecosystem in which work of different artists under a general every creative production is unveiled as reflection on remix. Nina Paley, Felipe G. a living heritage of something previously Gil, Vicki Bennett, Coldcut, Los Voluble, created. Remix in the digital era allows Malaventura, Pilvi Takala and Pop Culture transmedia contents to flourish.

Pirate were some of the artists shown in this video essay. It is a plea in favor of free culture, collective intelligence and remix as 3. Author. The history of arts and culture has been built around the idea that the ways of building better societies. author is a genius who can create a piece of art from scratch. The cultural system ABOUT REMIXING of remix opposes this idea, and instead The research on remix has taken many promotes one in which the author lives different formats during the time ZEMOS98 in a political and social context that has been working on it. Every encounter outlines his or her way of thinking and with remix presented its own technical references. This context is completely or theoretical difficulties, but most were crucial in the process of creating the related to the way remix challenges the work, and the traditional way of telling traditional mode in which cultures are stories has blurred it, to extol the figure built. Remix, developed in depth, proposes of the author. a shift in the following areas:

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4. Cultural ecosystem. To tear down the figure of the author, one needs to open the code of the cultural works to explain their references and how they are built as a continuation of what societies have been creating through history. To free the code means to make visible that there is a cultural system that makes culture and arts coherent and trackable.

5. Digital storytelling. Researching the traces that culture has been building through different cultural contents is much easier now that we have the Internet. But the Internet cannot be described just as a gigantic archive in which we can find how cultural contents are built in crossreferences. It has helped to create narratives of its own, ones that do not make sense outside of the digital world. Remix is a main character in these digital storytelling narratives that spread through the different social networks and spaces of the Internet.

6. Access to cheap technologies. In the past few decades, production resources have got cheaper and cheaper – to the point that many people can have a production center at home without great expense.

7. Archive. Remix as a tool needs archives from which to take the different pieces.

Traditionally, archives have been built to keep and save documents and other resources through time. The Internet opens up an archive that is a common resource for everyone.

EVERYONE CAN BE A REMIXER

ZEMOS98 is especially interested in remix works focused on building ways of critical thinking. Their remix is not just joyful visual production, but a way of building a critical citizenry that can analyze media landscapes. This is very important today, as we live in an age of the proliferation of fake news.

In the end, remix is about rewriting history as a discipline that rules the way we tell each other where we come from. History is a field of knowledge that traditionally has considered itself the only fair way of telling ourselves about the past, tradition and memories; but it is full of ideological slants. Remix is a way of redeeming history to recover those who were forgotten.

PROJECT INFORMATION INITIATOR: ZEMOS98 PARTNERS: European Cultural Foundation, Colaborabora, British Film Institute, Mode: Istanbul, Kurziv, P2p Foundation CONTACT: Felipe G. Gil, Lucas Tello: info@zemos98.org LINKS: www.zemos98.org www.instagram.com/ZEMOS98 www.facebook.com/ZEMOS98 www.twitter.com/ZEMOS98 www.vimeo.com/zemos98

Remix is about rewriting history as a discipline that rules the way we tell each other where we come from. [...] Remix is a way of redeeming history to recover those who were forgotten.

Perhaps most importantly, remix is a way of producing a theoretical framework for joyful reflection on the way we narrate ourselves in the societies we live in. We consider it important to build theories that cannot refuse the technological tools the digital world has provided us with, while criticizing those narratives and tools that are dangerous for us.

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THE GAME EDUCATOR’S HANDBOOK DIGITAL GAMES PLAY AN IMPORTANT ROLE IN CONTEMPORARY CULTURE AND SOCIETY. PEOPLE OF ALL AGES PLAY GAMES ALL THE TIME AND EVERYWHERE. GAMES AND GAMIFICATION HAVE BECOME MORE POPULAR IN EDUCATION, PHYSICAL TRAINING AND THE ARTS. DESPITE THIS, WHEN GAMES ARE DISCUSSED IN HOMES, SCHOOLS OR THE MEDIA, THE DEBATE IS OFTEN SIMPLIFIED, THE ARGUMENTATION IS BLACK AND WHITE AND BIASED. GAMES ARE MOSTLY SEEN AS EITHER PURELY BENEFICIAL OR PURELY BAD, DEPENDING ON WHOM YOU ASK. THE PUBLIC DEBATE HAS SHOWN THAT THE SUBJECT IS OFTEN DISCUSSED WITHOUT ADEQUATE INFORMATION OR COMPREHENSION. THAT IS WHY THE FINNISH NETWORK OF GAME EDUCATORS (THE NETWORK) DECIDED TO COLLABORATE ON A FREE AND COMPREHENSIVE BOOK TO IMPROVE THE GAME LITERACY OF EDUCATORS AND THE GENERAL PUBLIC.

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THE GAME EDUCATOR’S HANDBOOK

The Network consists of hundreds of educators and other professionals, who use, develop or discuss digital games as part of their work. At the moment, the Network is planning local events for the Nordic Games Week in November 2017 (www. nordicgameweek.eu).

AIM The aim of the “Game Educator’s Handbook” is to provide expert information, based on research and experience, about what gaming and related phenomena are about.

TARGET GROUP The book is intended as an aid for all types of game educators. The target group consists of parents, schools, libraries, youth organizations, and anyone with connections to children, adolescents or adults that play digital games.

MEDIA USED The Finnish version of the book is available in print, pdf and epub formats.

The English version is available in pdf and epub formats.

METHODS The book was developed during a collaborative writing camp and online collaboration.

DURATION OF PROJECT The original book was written in four months in 2013. The revised international edition was published in 2015.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION The book was written through cooperation between gamers, game designers, game educators, researchers and people working with problem gaming, thereby striving for a neutral, objective and helpful result.

Seventeen professionals participated in writing the chapters of the book and several others commented on the drafts.

The book covers issues such as game literacy, age ratings and parenting, designing games, game industry, cultural phenomena related to games, games as teaching aids, and games as just a normal part of everyday life.

organizations, the rapid growth of eSports and gaming minorities such as the elderly.

Writing the first book was a miniscule undertaking when comparing the effort to the results. The book is well known in Finland and has been instrumental in The book is a mix of best practices, legislation, creating a positive gaming culture and recommendations and academic essays from creating more neutral public discussion game researchers. It also includes a literary about games. review of the most current research available, while trying to maintain readability for the PROJECT INFORMATION general public.

INITIATOR: Finnish Network of Game Educators A limited print of 5,000 copies was funded CONTACT: by the Ministry of Education and Culture Tommi Tossavainen, and by the members of the Network. It National Audiovisual Institute, was disseminated at events and by mail to +358 45 310 1412, libraries, schools and individual educators. tom-mi.tossavainen@kavi.fi The pdf and epub versions have over 50,000 LINKS: downloads and the text of the book has www.pelikasvatus.fi been released with a CC BY 4.0 license. www.pelikasvatus.fi/handbook www.facebook.com/groups/pelitoimijat

PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION DIFFICULTIES / OBSTACLES OR CHALLENGES

As a collaborative writing effort, the main body of the book came together surprisingly effortlessly. As the style of each writer varied, a lot of work was required by the editors to unify the text. The mix of academic and non-academic text was also a hindrance to some writers, since spending time on a book that is not going to be peerreviewed can be frowned upon by some employers.

In spite of the fact that none of the writers received compensation, and the book was going to be free, everyone participated willingly because they understood the importance of publishing a comprehensive and accessible handbook about games and game education.

CONCLUSION Digital games and technology are developing so rapidly that there is already a need for a new book to better cover topics such as virtual reality, augmented reality, mobile gaming, gender representation, toxic behavior, streaming, gamer

Despite this, when games are discussed in homes, schools or the media, the debate is often simplified, the argumentation is black and white and biased.

Games are mostly seen as either purely beneficiary or purely bad, depending on whom you ask. The public debate has shown that the subject is often discussed without adequate information or comprehension.

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CYBER-SCAN TOOLKIT TO STRENGTHEN SCHOOL POLICY ON CYBERBULLYING AS KIVA AND OTHER MODELS HAVE SHOWN, YOU CAN ONLY BATTLE BULLYING WITH A WHOLE-SCHOOL APPROACH. IT’S NOT ABOUT (OVER)REACTING TO THE ONE INCIDENT YOU HAVE BEEN DREADING. IT’S ABOUT FOSTERING WELLBEING FROM START TO FINISH IN EVERY ASPECT OF SCHOOL LIFE. IT’S THE SAME FOR CYBERBULLYING. CYBER-SCAN IS A TOOL FOR SCHOOL TEAMS, (HEAD)TEACHERS AND THEIR COLLEAGUES TO TALK AND WORK TOGETHER TO SET UP A WHOLE-SCHOOL POLICY AGAINST CYBERBULLYING AND PRIORITIZE WHICH ACTIONS TO TAKE.

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CYBER-SCAN: TOOLKIT TO STRENGTHEN SCHOOL POLICY ON CYBERBULLYING

As digital communication and social media turned the Internet into a new playground, bullying also made the crossover.

Cyberbullying often goes hand in hand with offline bullying. So even if it happens mainly outside school hours, it will most likely also take place in school.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Cyberbullying has been a growing phenomenon over the last twenty years.

These days a relatively steady figure of around 10% of Flemish children and youngsters have been cyberbullied or have cyberbullied someone in the last six months.

If we focus on children around the age of The main goal of this project is to raise twelve, that figure can rise to over 20%. awareness among (head)teachers that they need a schoolwide policy to tackle Almost 60% of cyberbullying takes place on cyberbullying and provide them with a social media, but around 40% (also) happens framework and tool to formulate and through SMS, almost 20% in online games implement this in their team. and around 10% on forums, blogs, other websites and phone calls.

AIM Tackling cyberbullying in schools through a self-formulated whole-school approach.

TARGET GROUP Schools, head teachers, teachers.

MEDIA USED Game board poster, manual, overview, 35 building block cards, prioritization score cards, brainstorm question forms – all downloadable for free in pdf form from www.tegencyberpesten.be.

METHODS Structured dialogue fostering gamebased brainstorm method.

DURATION OF PROJECT Development during 2016; dissemination, training trainers and elaboration ongoing.

Cyber-Scan is a game-based discussion method for school teams. (Head)teachers and school counsellors can use it to discuss the strong and weak points of their current school policy, and provide goals, actions and priorities to develop a policy that better suits the needs of the moment. All materials can be found online and downloaded from www.tegencyberpesten.be, together with all kinds of information and tools on cyberbullying. In this way school teams can tackle it how and when they like.

Mediawijs and De Aanstokerij also provided training for trainers to Jong & Van Zin and Trying to ban social media as a school Mediaraven, so that they, too, can support doesn’t help at all. Besides, you don’t ban and counsel schools. hallways in schools just because a lot of offline bullying takes place there. Ignoring Because there often is a connection the problem or just banning the bully when between cyberbullying and secondary you run into the problem doesn’t help either. sexting, Mediawijs is working with Sensoa It is a theme very much entwined with and Child Focus to elaborate on Cyber-Scan school life, which can have an enormous with building blocks on secondary sexting effect on a student’s or a teacher’s wellbeing, and other online sexual actions. and through this also on school results.

Mediawijs is also eagerly following the In 2015, Mediawijs, the Flemish Knowledge translation process of Cyber-Sense, a skillsCenter for Media Literacy, put out a based lesson plan by Ariel Trust, which is call to possible partners to help tackle being transposed to Flanders by Jong & Van cyberbullying.

MIOS UAntwerpen Zin and the Evens Foundation. suggested developing a tool to help schools establish a whole-school approach in METHOD their school policy. With extra funding by In the setting of a working meeting or the Flemish Ministry of Education and training with a school team, you can use Training and the methodological help of De the Cyber-Scan game as a way to discuss all Aanstokerij, together we developed Cyber- relevant aspects so as to help you formulate Scan. Tumult and Link in de Kabel provided a whole-school policy against cyberbullying. feedback.

This method draws inspiration from the

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KiVa whole-school approach, where you get as many stakeholders as possible (teachers, parents, students, etc) involved in fostering wellbeing at school.

At the end of the game you formulate concrete goals and actions, using the SMART acronym: SPECIFIC: Can everyone understand it immediately, without different interpretations?

MEASURABLE: How can you know when the goal is reached?

ASSIGNABLE: Who is going to do it?

REALISTIC: Is it achievable?

TIME-RELATED: In what timeframe will it be realized?

The course of the game will be influenced by what kind of (cyber)bullying policy your school has already developed. A lot of building blocks may already be present, such as a confidential counsellor or a definition of what the school sees as bullying. These can easily be transposed to cyberbullying. If the school has not developed such a policy yet, building blocks will present themselves that will be relevant to developing one with a particular emphasis on cyberbullying.

To start with Cyber-Scan, provide an atmosphere for the participants that gives them the feeling that they can talk freely.

Work with a team of about 5 key actors (head teachers, care coordinators, prevention coordinators, student counsellors…). The participants should have a special interest in or connection to (cyber)bullying.

FASE 1:

As soon as an example of cyberbullying pops up in the media, people start to panic.

They think the problem is far larger than it is, attribute it to the wrong demographics, and see effects or correlations for causes.

FASE 2: Schools and (head)teachers also tend to APP-KLAAR 50 MINUTEN ward off tackling this theme until there is Analyse van de geselecteerde bouwstenen. a crisis. They then often act too harshly or downplay the matter. And they often only tackle the incident, but not the context.

FASE 3: They think of it as something that happens M-ACTIE-MALISATIE 30 MINUTEN outside of school and that they don’t have Definitie van actiepunten. a responsibility for. That is why Cyber-Scan stresses the importance of a whole-school approach, where you look at fostering wellbeing in every aspect of school life.

It takes some effort to keep on stressing this and trying to persuade policymakers, CYBER-SCAN HAS 3 PHASES: parents, teachers and so on to see it in PHASE 1: 40 MINUTES Take stock during a playful group discussion this light. By providing a concrete tool, we of all the building blocks of the current manage to lower this threshold. school policy that tackle cyberbullying, and place these among the building blocks that Most of the time, people who specialize in the 4 aspects of a strong policy (prevention, working creatively with young people and detection, intervention, aftercare) should digital media don’t have a lot of expertise cover. For every building block, discuss in handling delicate subjects and situations whether this is already present in the like bullying. On the other hand, people current policy or not, and if it scores as a who are specialized in the prevention and strong point or as a working point. Prioritize remediation of bullying often lack an interest and expertise in digital media. It took the working points. quite a lot of effort to really work through transposing what is already provided for PHASE 2: 50 MINUTES With (fictional) apps you analyze every offline bullying, to concentrating on online priority from phase 1 and look at what can bullying, and not just sticking to “bullying with some cyber words attached”. Through strengthen this block in your school. their partnerships in this project and the PHASE 3: 30 MINUTES Formulate concrete goals based on the analysis of phase 2. Look at which people should be involved inside and outside of the school. Bring this all together in an action plan.

BATTLERIJ 40 MINUTEN

Evaluatie van het huidig anticyberpestbeleid.

Provide at least 2 hours for the whole package or split it into 3 phases that you can perform over time. Take enough time for every phase. Splitting them over several days gives the participants time to let some Your main actions and goals can be added things sink in and to confer with colleagues to the Cyber-Scan poster, which can be who are not participating (yet). hung on the wall of the teacher’s room.

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IMPLEMENTATION DIFFICULTIES / OBSTACLES OR CHALLENGES

Een ‘app’klare toolkit om het anticyberpestbeleid van je school vorm te geven.

CYBER-SCAN: TOOLKIT TO STRENGTHEN SCHOOL POLICY ON CYBERBULLYING

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tegen cyber-pesten”, that we can hand out together with the gameboard poster.

Mediawijs organized train-the-trainer sessions for organizations (De Aanstokerij, Jong & Van Zin, Mediaraven) that want to provide consultancy and training to schools.

In a next phase, they will be looking into how to structure and activate this more.

They will also, with Jong & Van Zin and the Evens Foundation, look into the translation of Cyber-Sense, an educational resource on cyberbullying for primary schools.

PROJECT INFORMATION

specific role of Mediawijs in connecting the partners and adding expertise, they were able to take this tool beyond that.

Mediawijs was fortunate to be able to circumvent some classic problems. A lot of essential research on cyberbullying had already been done by MIOS UAntwerpen in their four-year research project, Friendly Attack. As Mediawijs, they also have a yearly budget to call on partners to help them with specific targets, and the Flemish Department of Education and Training provided them with extra funding for this project. With these budgets Mediawijs was able to foster a more intense partnership than would otherwise have been possible.

Mediawijs’ ongoing challenge lies in the actual and proactive reach of the tools that have been developed. The tool was launched with a press release and featured in the media during the Week Against Bullying. It is or will be integrated in most informative websites for teachers, and is free to download and use. Mediawijs provided a specific website, www.tegencyberpesten. be, with all information and tools on cyberbullying, and brought all this together in a brochure, “Mediawegwijzer Neen

INITIATOR: Mediawijs, the Flemish Media Literacy Knowledge Centre at IMEC vzw.

Mediawijs is funded by the Flemish Minister of Media to stimulate and coordinate Digital and Media Literacy in the Flemish Community in Belgium.

PARTNERS: MIOS UAntwerpen, research group specialized in online relational risks and communication, Prof. Heidi Vandebosch, heidi.vandebosch@uantwerpen.be De Aanstokerij, non-profit specialized in developing informative active and board games, Silke Wouters, silke@aanstokerij.be Gie Deboutte, bullying prevention expert, gie.deboutte@ucll.be Tumult, non-profit specialized in youth, conflict prevention and youth work for refugees, Katrien Vissers, katrien@tumult.be Link in de Kabel, non-profit specialized in digital and media literacy with vulnerable youth, David Loyen, david.loyen@lidk.be Jong & Van Zin, non-profit specialized in personal and relational education for classes, Vincent Engelbos, Vincent.

Engelbos@jongenvanzin.be CONTACT: Andy Demeulenaere, Coordinator: andy. demeulenaere@mediawijs.be.

LINKS: www.mediawijs.be www.tegencyberpesten.be Twitter: @MediaWijsBe

As digital communication and social media turned the Internet into a new playground, bullying also made the crossover. Cyberbullying often goes hand in hand with offline bullying.

So even if it happens mainly outside school hours, it will most likely also take place in school.

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THE AUTHORS TORSTEN ANDREASEN is a post-doc. at the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies at the University of Copenhagen as a part of the collective research project Affects, Interfaces, Events. His work currently focuses on the epistemological and political consequences of complex digital objects beyond human perception and cognition that have no existence outside of the computational interface. His Ph.D. was devoted to the imaginaries invested in the potential of digital cultural heritage archives for accumulating and rendering accessible all existing knowledge and thereby providing the basis for a desirable political order.

He has published broadly on archives, the digital, cultural theory and cultural heritage.

SVEN AUGUSTIJNEN. His films, publications and installations on political, historical and social themes constantly challenge the genre of the documentary, reflecting a wider interest in historiography and a predilection for the nature of storytelling. He had individual exhibitions at the Kunsthalle Bern; Wiels, Centre for Contemporary Art, Brussels; de Appel, arts centre, Amsterdam; Malmö Konsthall; Vox, Centre pour l’Image contemporaine, Montréal; CCS Bard, Annandale-on-Hudson. Augustijnen is represented by Jan Mot, Brussels/Mexico City and is a founding member of Auguste Orts, Brussels. He is the receipient of Evens Arts Prize 2011. http://www.augusteorts.be/ about/3/sven-augustijnen KATARZYNA BOJARSKA, Ph.D. – Assistant Professor in the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences, in the Department of Late Modernity Literature and Culture and vice-president of View. Foundation for Visual Culture.

Recipient of a Fulbright Junior Research Grant at Cornell University (2009-2010).

Author of numerous academic and critical articles and translations, interested in the relations of art, literature, history and psychoanalysis. Translated among others Michael Rothberg’s Multidirectional Memory. Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization (Warsaw 2016), Susan

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Buck-Morss’ Hegel, Haiti and Universal History (Warsaw 2014). Author of a book Wydarzenia po Wydarzeniu: Białoszewski – Richter – Spiegelman [Events after the Event: Białoszewski – Richter – Spiegelman] (Warsaw 2012). She is a co-founder and editorial team member of the academic journal View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture (www.pismowidok.org).

HENDRIK FOLKERTS studied Art History at the University of Amsterdam, specializing in contemporary art and theory, feminist practices and contemporary curatorial practices. He is one of the curators of documenta 14. Before he was Curator of Performance, Film & Discursive Programmes at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam (2010-2015), and coordinator of the Curatorial Programme at De Appel arts centre in Amsterdam (2009-2011). He frequently publishes in journals and on platforms such as Artforum, The Exhibitionist, and Metropolis M. He (co)edited Shadowfiles: Curatorial Education (Amsterdam: de Appel arts centre, 2013, ed. with Ann Demeester) and Facing Forward: Art & Theory from a Future Perspective (Amsterdam: AUP, 2015, ed. with Christoph Lindner and Margriet Schavemaker).

JOANNA KRAWCZYK is a cultural specialist with Master’s degrees in English Studies (University of Warsaw) and Cultural Studies (Jagiellonian University). She holds over a decade’s experience in the field of management and PR in cultural and civic sectors, cooperating with major Polish and European NGOs focused on media, culture and civic involvement. For five years now she has been the Head of the Warsaw branch of Evens Foundation, initiating and supporting local and international social and cultural projects aiming at development of media education, peace education and European citizenship in Europe. As responsible for the Evens Foundation’s Media Program, she manages projects that support high-quality journalism and media literacy in Europe.

The best-known of its activities in this field is the awarding of the biennial Evens Prize

for Media Education. Other projects are magazine publishing, grants for media literacy work and development of train-thetrainer programs all over Europe. Joanna is also director of the Media Meets Literacy conference, Sarajevo, September 2017 (www.mediameetslitercay.eu).

KRZYSZTOF PIJARSKI, Ph.D. Art historian, artist working mainly with photography, translator. Assistant Professor at the Filmschool in Łódź. Recipient of a Fulbright Junior Research Grant at Johns Hopkins University (2009-2010), and grants from the Polish Minister of Culture and National Heritage and the Shpilman Institute of Photography. His main fields of interest are contemporary art, theory and history of photography and the affective and political power of images. As an artist, he focuses on the fate of images and objects in the (post) modern world, creating visual archeologies of museums, archives, landscapes, urban spaces & other “machines of representation.”

Editor of The Archive as Project (2011) and author of The (Post)Modern Fate of Images: Allan Sekula / Thomas Struth (2013) and Archeology of Modenrism. Michael Fried, Photography and Modern Experience of Art (upcoming 2017). Translator of Allan Sekula’s selected essays. Participant of PLAT(T)FORM 2012 at the Fotomuseum Winterthur. His project Lives of the Unholy was presented at C/O Berlin. http://pijarski.art.pl MAGDA SZCZEŚNIAK, Ph.D. – Assistant Professor in the Institute of Polish Culture, University of Warsaw. Author of the first book on the visual culture of the Polish post-socialist transition, entitled Normy widzialności. Tożsamość w czasach transformacji [Norms of Visibility. Identity in Times of Transition] (Warsaw: Fundacja Bęc Zmiana, 2016) and numerous journal articles. Recipient of the Fulbright Junior Advanced Research Grant and National Science Center Preludium grant. She is a co-founder and editorial team member of the academic journal View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture (www. pismowidok.org).

WHY PARENTAL MEDIA MEDIATION IS IMPORTANT SARA PEREIRA

COLOPHON

Managing Editors: Katarzyna Bojarska, Joanna Krawczyk Researchers: Iwona Kurz, Agnieszka Pajączkowska, Agata Pietrasik, Magda Szcześniak Advisory Board: Christine Vidal, prof. Ernst van Alphen, prof. Marquard Smith, prof. Andrzej Leśniak, prof. Hilde Van Gelder, prof. Edit Andras Copy Editors: David Quin (SwiftWrite), Eva Van Passel Layout: Jo Adriaens (Magnifik.be)

INITIATOR AND PUBLISHER

Evens Foundation, Stoopstraat 1 / 5, 2000 Antwerp, Belgium

PARTNER View. Foundation for Visual Culture, Jagiellońska 54/99, 03-463 Warsaw, Poland

CREATIVE COMMONS

The Media Literacy in Europe Magazine by Evens Foundation is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported Licence.

DISCLAIMER

The views and opinions expressed in this magazine are those of the authors and the participants in the projects. They do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Evens Foundation. Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologizes for any errors or omissions in the above list and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this magazine.

All images in this publication were provided by subjects in charge of respective projects who are also responsible for the copyrights, except for: page 10: Intimate Transactions, Prix Art Electronica Exhibition, 2005, image: David Mcleod; page 14: Polish Women on Strike, designer: Ola Jasionowska; page 16: coutesy of Fabian Fröhlich; pages 19-21: courtesy of Sven Augustijnen.

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