Digital Life Narration: A Movement Towards New Cultural Practices of Artistic Imagination and Power

In “Narrating Euro-African Life in Digital Space,” authors Sissy Helff and Julie Woletz map the wildly complex form of digital storytelling through computer science, cultural anthropology, narratology, transcultural and postcolonial studies, arriving at both a definition and presentation of “digital life narration”—a new form/production of cultural practice.

Helff and Woletz specifically define digital life narration as an amalgamation of “[storytelling] aspects of communication and social interaction, technical and media artifacts” that form a (re)conceptualization of cultural practices in digital forms. The authors are careful to note that these digital productions are not technically astute or refined, and that this form of storytelling is realized from “the bottom up” (134, 135). This bottom up approach locates and produces the story from personal archives and private media (photographs, films, texts, music) from the storyteller who also acts as narrator, which has a definitive impact on the resulting media’s credibility and authenticity.

When we place digital life narration in conversation with documentary films we are able to see how this new form of media builds off, expands, and in some ways is able to address some gaps of documentary filmmaking. (This is not to place one form of film/media over another, but instead to highlight the necessity of selecting the right media production.) We learn quite quickly in studying documentary filmmaking the idea of truth and subjectivity is a myth. In Documentary Media, Broderick Fox warns us against the fallacy of believing that documentaries offer subjectivity and truth, and instead pushes us to question who is behind the camera, and thus creating/producing meaning and knowledge (7, 8). Fox addresses the gap between filmmaker and subject in traditional ethnography, challenging the “long involved white, male academics traveling to other countries and describing the citizens’ ways of life through a process often couched in conceits of empirical and scientific methods,” and goes further to challenge domestic documentaries created under the same framing language of “the poor, the nonwhite, or any other marginalized group outside the dominant cultural of hegemony” (8, 9).

Digital life narration addresses these gaps by placing the subject as creator, making her both the observed and the participant. In these new productions of culture, we see power shift from the top, looking down, to the bottom, looking out, inward, and around. This participatory and interactive mode of filmmaking creates credibility and audience identification, as they are viewed and experienced as direct expressions of culture and individual lives (Helff & Woletz, 135).

The authors analyze two examples (Said Dualeh’s Aftaag Family and Nicky Delgado’s “Culture Vulture”), both produced as part of BBC’s “Capture Wales,” film digital storytelling series. In each of the mini-films, the audience is presented with a complex (personal) narration of identity voiced and created by the authors/artists. In each film, the artists reflect on their personal experiences as Euro-Africans, and share their personal experiences of culture and identity. What emerges is a shift from meaning created from a place of academic/institutional knowledge, to one created from personal, lived experiences.

Although the BBC’s site has archived both digital stories, the transcripts can still be located and read, as well as other films.

Said Dualeh’s Aftaag Family’s transcripts are located here.

Nicky Delgado’s “Culture Vulture” transcripts are located here.

With some researching, I was able to locate a short film of Nicky Delgado performing his poetry. Watching this short piece gives us a small window into the BBC’s film, and allows us to see how Delgado creates an amalgamation of culture, which he speaks about in his BBC interview. Below is another (longer) film, in which Delgado discusses his life story. While these films are not pure examples of digital life narration, they do give us a window into the artist.

Works Cited;

Fox, Broderick. Documentary Media: History, Theory, Practice. Boston, Allyn & Bacon.

Helff, Sissy & Julie Woletz. “Narrating Euro-African Life in Digital Space.” Story Circle: Digital Storytelling Around the World. Blackwell Publishing, 2009.