Skip to content
1981
Decolonizing Animation
  • ISSN: 2042-7875
  • E-ISSN: 2042-7883

Abstract

This article delves into the exploration of space, memory and identity through the lens of animation practices. Grounded in the notion that diverse individuals perceive and interact with spaces in distinct ways, the article scrutinizes the significance of space and place, intertwined with their social and cultural connotations, in the context of history, grand narratives and personal/shared memory. Focusing on the Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded ‘ReSpace’ project, conducted in Rwanda, Kosovo and the United Kingdom, the article highlights the utilization of animation as a catalyst for dialogue, critical thinking and agency among youth. Through art-based workshops and interdisciplinary methods encompassing animation, architecture and anthropology, the project aimed to unravel and reimagine specific sites, particularly in post-conflict regions, challenging prevailing assumptions about pre- and post-war societal realities and the legacies of colonialism. Here the article presents a retrospective analysis of animations co-created by the youth participants and revisits the interdisciplinary methodologies employed, shedding light on the unique articulations of histories and memory that conventional research methods fail to capture. It delves into the potential of animation practices in activating distinct sets of knowledge, echoing anthropologist Tim Ingold’s notion of ‘thinking through making’. Moreover, it contemplates the role of reimagined spatial concepts, as depicted through drawings and animations, in facilitating an epistemic decolonization when integrated into interdisciplinary practices.

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1386/ap3_00043_1
2024-09-04
2026-04-19

Metrics

Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Barthes, Roland (1982), Camera Lucida (trans. R. Howard), London: Vintage Classics.
    [Google Scholar]
  2. Berger, John (2005), Berger on Drawing, Aghabullogue: Occasional Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  3. Borries, Friedrich, Walz, Steffen and Bottger, Matthias (2007), Space Time Play: Computer Games, Architecture and Urbanism, Berlin: Birkhauser.
    [Google Scholar]
  4. Le Breton, David (2017), Sensing the World: An Anthropology of the Senses, London: Routledge.
    [Google Scholar]
  5. Le Breton, David (2020), Sensing the World, London: Taylor and Francis.
    [Google Scholar]
  6. Brody, Alyson (2021), Youth, Voice and Development: A Research Report by the British Council and Changing the Story, Leeds: University of Leeds.
    [Google Scholar]
  7. Buckley-Zistel, S. (2006), ‘Remembering to forget: Chosen amnesia as a strategy for local coexistence in post-genocide Rwanda’, Africa, 72:2, pp. 13150.
    [Google Scholar]
  8. Callus, Paula (2020), ‘Hertica home film synopsis’, Changing the Story, 3 June, https://www.changingthestory.leeds.ac.uk/changing-the-story-international-film-festival-2020/official-selection/the-hertica-home/. Accessed 2 January 2024.
    [Google Scholar]
  9. Certeau, Michel de (2011), The Practices of Everyday Life, Oakland, CA: University of California Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  10. Cooke, Paul and Soria-Dolan, Ines (2019), Post-Participatory’ Arts for the ‘Post-Development’ Era, London: Routledge.
    [Google Scholar]
  11. Downs, Simon, Marshall, Russell, Sawdon, Phil, Selby, Andrew and Tormey, Jane (eds) (2007), Drawing Now: Between the Lines of Contemporary Art, London: I. B. Tauris.
    [Google Scholar]
  12. Ellis, Ellen (2022), ‘ReSpace Introduce “the Hertica Home”’, Youtube, 28 May, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8S-BmiPTYc. Accessed 10 June 2024.
    [Google Scholar]
  13. Forceville, Charles (2022), Animating truth: Documentary and visual culture in the 21st Century, Leonardo, 55:1, pp. 9396.
    [Google Scholar]
  14. Gaudenzi, Sandra (2014), ‘Strategies of participation: The who, what and when of collaborative documentaries’, in K. Nash, C. Hight and C. Summerhayes (eds), New Documentary Ecologies: Emerging Platforms, Practices and Discourses, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 12948.
    [Google Scholar]
  15. Glenn, Evelyn N. (2015), ‘Settler colonialism as structure: A framework for comparative studies of U.S. race and gender formation’, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, 1:1, pp. 5272.
    [Google Scholar]
  16. Grosfoguel, Ramon (2007), ‘The epistemic decolonial turn’, Cultural Studies, 21:2–3, pp. 21123.
    [Google Scholar]
  17. Halbwachs, Maurice (1950), The Collective Memory, London: Harper Colophon Books.
    [Google Scholar]
  18. Halbwachs, Maurice (1992), On Collective Memory, Chicago, IL and London: University of Chicago Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  19. Hirsch, Marianne (1998), ‘Projected memory: Holocaust photographs in personal and public fantasy’, in M. Bal, J. Crewe and L. Spitzer (eds), Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present, Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England, pp. 323.
    [Google Scholar]
  20. Hirsch, Marianne (2008), ‘The generation of postmemory’, Poetics Today, 29:1, pp. 10328.
    [Google Scholar]
  21. Hirsch, Marianne (2013), ‘The postmemory generation’, in K. Beckman and L. Weissberg (eds), On Writing with Photography, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 20230.
    [Google Scholar]
  22. Ingold, Tim (2010), ‘The textility of making’, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 34, pp. 91102.
    [Google Scholar]
  23. Ingold, Tim (2013), Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture, London: Routledge.
    [Google Scholar]
  24. Jackson, Michael (2002), The Politics of Storytelling: Violence, Transgression and Intersubjectivity, Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  25. Judah, Tim (2008), Kosovo: What Everyone Needs to Know, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  26. Kantrowitz, Andrea, Fava, Michelle and Brew, Angela (2017), ‘Drawing together research and pedagogy’, Art Education, 70:3, pp. 5060.
    [Google Scholar]
  27. Kostovicov, Denisa (2005), Kosovo: The Politics of Identity and Space, London: Routledge.
    [Google Scholar]
  28. Longman, Timothy (2017), Memory and Justice in Post-Genocide Rwanda, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  29. Losi, Natale, Salvatici, Silvia and Passerini, Luisa (eds) (2001), PTR2 Archives of Memory: Supporting Traumatized Communities through Narration and Remembrance, Geneva: International Organization for Migration Press, https://publications.iom.int/system/files/pdf/psychosocialnotebook2.pdf. Accessed 11 December 2023.
    [Google Scholar]
  30. Malpas, Jeff (ed.) (2017), The Intelligence of Place: Topographies and Poetics, London: Bloomsbury.
    [Google Scholar]
  31. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (2002), Phenomenology of Perception (trans. C. Smith), London: Routledge.
    [Google Scholar]
  32. Mills, Sarah (2005), Gender and Colonial Space, Manchester: Manchester University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  33. Nardi, Sarah De, Hilary, Orange, Steven, High and Eerika, Koskinen-Koivisto (2019), The Routledge Handbook of Memory and Place, London: Routledge.
    [Google Scholar]
  34. Nash, K., Hight, C. and Summerhayes, C. (eds) (2014), New Documentary Ecologies: Emerging Platforms, Practices and Discourses, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
    [Google Scholar]
  35. Newton, K. M. (1997), ‘Homi K. Bhabha: “The other question: The stereotype and colonial discourse”’, in K. M. Newton (ed.), Twentieth-Century Literary Theory, London: Palgrave.
    [Google Scholar]
  36. Nora, Pierre (1989), ‘Between memory and history: Les Lieux de Mémoire’, Representations, Special Issue: ‘Memory and Counter-Memory’, 26, pp. 724.
    [Google Scholar]
  37. Pink, Sarah (2007), ‘Walking with video’, Visual Studies, 22:3, pp. 24052, https://doi.org/10.1080/14725860701657142.
    [Google Scholar]
  38. Pink, Sarah (2020), Doing Visual Ethnography, Los Angeles: Sage Publications.
    [Google Scholar]
  39. Purdeková, Andrea (2015), Making Ubumwe: Power, State and Camps in Rwanda’s Unity-Building Project, Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books.
    [Google Scholar]
  40. Purdeková, Andrea and Mwambari, David (2021), ‘Post-genocide identity politics and colonial durabilities in Rwanda’, Critical African Studies, 14:1, pp. 1937, https://doi.org/10.1080/21681392.2021.1938404.
    [Google Scholar]
  41. Rendell, Jane (2006), Art and Architecture, London: I. B. Taurus.
    [Google Scholar]
  42. Roe, Annabelle Honess (2013), Animated Documentary, London: Palgrave Macmillan.
    [Google Scholar]
  43. Rosenberg, Elissa (2012), ‘Walking in the city: Memory and place’, Journal of Architecture, 17:1, pp. 13149.
    [Google Scholar]
  44. Ruby, Jay (1991), ‘Speaking for, speaking about, speaking with, or speaking alongside: An anthropological and documentary dilemma’, Visual Anthropology Review, 7:2, pp. 5067.
    [Google Scholar]
  45. Ruby, Jay (1995), ‘The moral burden of authorship in ethnographic film’, Visual Anthropology Review, 11:2, pp. 7782.
    [Google Scholar]
  46. Schwandner-Sievers, Stephanie (2001), ‘The enactment of “tradition”: Albanian constructions of identity, violence and power in times of crisis’, in B. Schmidt and I. Schröder (eds), Anthropology of Violence and Conflict, London: Routledge, pp. 97120.
    [Google Scholar]
  47. Schwandner-Sievers, Stephanie and Klinkner, Melanie (2019), ‘Longing for lost normalcy: Social memory, transitional justice, and the “House Museum” to missing persons in Kosovo’, Nationalities Papers, 47:2, pp. 23247.
    [Google Scholar]
  48. Schwandner-Sievers, Stephanie, Gusia, Linda, Luci, Nita and Pollozhani, Lura (2019), ‘Fragments on heroes, artists and interventions: Challenging gender ideology and provoking active citizenship through the arts in Kosovo’, in P. Cooke and I. Soria-Dolan (eds), Post-Participatory’ Arts for the ‘Post-Development’ Era, London: Routledge, pp. 10523.
    [Google Scholar]
  49. Tagg, John (1988), The Burden of Representation: Essay on Photographies and Histories, Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  50. Vaughan, Kathleen (2005), ‘Pieced together: Collage as an artist’s method for interdisciplinary research’, International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 4:1, pp. 2752.
    [Google Scholar]
/content/journals/10.1386/ap3_00043_1
Loading
/content/journals/10.1386/ap3_00043_1
Loading

Data & Media loading...

This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a success
Invalid data
An error occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error
Please enter a valid_number test