Hera-ansökan om pirat-TV
Jag har ägnat en del av påskledigheten att skriva (eller åtminstone fundera kring) en ansökan till Hera – Humanities in the European Research Area – och utlysningen kring “Uses of the Past“. Tillsammans med bland andra professor Eggo Müller vid Utrechts universitet håller vi nu på med en kortansökan som tar sin utgångspunkt i återanvändning av televisuellt kulturarv. Arbetstiteln är Pirated Television Heritage: Online Video, Counter-narratives and European Identity, och tanken är fokusera på hur äldre tv-material piratkopieras ur sin arkivariska ursprungskontext och ges nya mening – ofta i mer sinister bemärkelse som i anti-islamistiska eller ultranationalistiska videos på exempelvis YouTube. Hursom, en variant av vårt abstract ser för närvarande ut som följer:
Based on the 20 European television archives and audiovisual collections participating in EUscreen this research project addresses the re-use of television heritage online in contexts where European history and values are challenged, negotiated and even deliberatly misinterpreted. So far, research into online heritage culture has highlighted official and pro-social forms of re-use such as contributions to European identity, cultural memory and awareness of conflicts. However, the re-use of digitized heritage also flourishes in contexts where television heritage is blatantly mis-used and de-contextualized to create ideological or cultural counter-narratives that deconstruct institutional narratives about European history and values. The project hence focuses the dark side of video based participatory cultures as these flourish on open platform as YouTube or semi-public and ideologically charge subsites. Such re-use is often hard to detect; the cultural and political power of counter-narratives re-using television heritage online thus needs to be investigated in empirical detail. The project refers to re-used footage of associated partner’s collections as ‘pirated television heritage’—not to point at copyright issues involved, but to discuss the cultural dynamics of recycled audiovisual heritage as re- or mis-uses of the past. The project employs and further develops cutting edge tools and methods of Digital Humanities and Citizen Science to trace, analyse and evaluate pirated television heritage. It aims at contributing to a better understanding of how participatory cultures negotiate European history and values. The project will also use innovative virtual forms to present the outcomes to a broader audience.