African-European Narratives is also a project of Digital Arts and Humanities. It privileges multimedia practices of narrative and image production in order to map the richness of this cultural, political and esthetical interplay. The result is a digital Atlas of textes, images and sounds gathered through a contributory web platform. Telling stories through an intermedia environment unlocks the aesthetical diversity of cultural expressions, allowing, at the same time, for their contamination. Sharing them across digital networks disregards national boundaries and connects communities.
African-European Narratives is a project about the links of European citizens with African countries and cultures, rooted in their personal and family stories as well as and in the History of the relations between Europe and Africa. Participants are therefore invited to share stories about these links: stories of African roots and African descent, of colonial post-memory, of diasporas and homecomings, but also stories about current experiences and about the rich Afro-European interplay of cultures and identities. The aim is to foster the knowledge and strengthening of our postcolonial present and deepen the historical and civic consciousness about colonialism, especially in younger generations.
Storytelling uncovers the cultural diversity of today’s societies.It multiplies the voices that can be heard, broadens our horizons, deepens our imagination and our memory and helps us making sense of who we are. That is why stories are powerful artefacts in the fight against dominant narratives and ideology. They allow us to rediscover the complexity of history, to relate personal experience to collective memory, to uncover silences, tensions or unexpected connections and to open up a transindividual space of experience.
African-European Narratives is also a project of Digital Arts and Humanities. It fosters our creative use of media and the net to test the possibilities of new forms of cultural activism and cultural analysis. The goal is to gather a Digital Atlas of Stories told in words, images and sounds that will be shared on a collaborative platform. Telling stories in an intermedia environment unlocks the diversity of cultural expressions while allowing, at the same time, for their contamination. Sharing them across the digital networks disregards national boundaries, connects communities, and brings new cultural geographies to the fore.
The collaborative production of a digital atlas of stories is a challenge at once creative and analytical. On the one hand, it invites each participant to find their voice and to rediscover their love for the learning value of stories, in opposition to the apparent truth of doxa and of ideology predominant on social media. On the other hand, it generates a mass of heteroclitic data, based on the interweaving of the real and the imaginary, whose digital mapping may lead to the discovery of new connections between memory and present experience, facts and affections, experiences and projections. Also, It may uncover new ways of visualising and thinking the whole while safeguarding the integrity and accessibility of every single story.
African-European Narratives is an invitation to re-imagine Europe and contribute to its postcolonial cartography. Its goal is to transcend the circles of national narratives, to dissolve their imaginary homogeneity, and disrupt the politics of identity and the other. It is an invitation to enter a shared narrative space, to navigate the complexity of the present, and to contribute to the emergence of its new configurations.
African-European Narratives is a project of the Europe for Citizens Programme that also meets the proclamation of the International Decade for People of African Descent (UN, 2014-2025).