Writing about this experience, the work of Jo Spence is my anchor. Jo Spence was doing social media before the internet existed. A deeply political and analytical kind of social media.
… Confinement Day 5 :: History and PracticeFeels like the emotional aspect of Covid19 and self-isolation is hitting home now. I think I was running on adrenalin for ages, getting everything ready for self-isolation. Now the tiredness and numbness is rising. Writing the first blog on this yesterday was helpful. Thank you. I realised that fear and tension were lurking in my being and I had to breathe them out, channel them, address them, rest… or this wasn’t going to be sustainable.
… Confinement Day 4
I was going to start blogging a research diary anyway but there is a whole extra urgency to that now under Covid19 confinement. I’m working at home with my little one, and my Dad will be joining us once we have all completed quarantine. Working as a single parent (and carer) regularly feels a like mission impossible. Now in self-isolation, the level of difficulty has now zoomed up again onto a radically higher level.
… Confinement Day 3In parallel with the storytelling themes, I’m asking Who are the Storytellers? as a way of proactively problem-solving some intersectional issues in the research project. For example, key literature regarding my fieldwork with Decidim Barcelona has a very limited range of authors in terms of gender. In contrast, during my fieldwork, I could see many women authoring and creating Decidim Barcelona. And of course if we are going to look at gender, we also have to look at the full range of intersectionality (race, class, dis/ability, caring responsibilities, etc.). In order to recognise a more accurate range of authors and creators, I am working with a broader idea of authorship in my research, and developing the profile of the Storytellers alongside the Storytelling themes. And I’m also trying to connect with my own lived experience (especially my caring responsibilities) and articulate how all those intersectionalities come together in the research process.
To be continued…
I’m submerged in the analysis phase of my Collective Intelligence PhD and I’m enjoying the feeling of getting intimate with the concepts, turning them over in my mind’s eye and diving into the thoughts of the people who allowed my research to enter their world: the organising team of Decidim, the offline-online participatory democracy project of the City of Barcelona.
Work will start going public soon and I’m excited to develop storytelling tactics to give the material the best chance of travelling on it’s own two feet.
I’m working on three storytelling devices to carry all the more technical, formal and less accessible detail (outlined below). Meanwhile, I’m also exploring the question of Who are the Storytellers? as a way of addressing intersectionality in an integrated and pro-active way.
… Storytelling Research #1Powerful words from artist @Lowkey0nline
Link for Grenfell Silent Walk:
https://www.facebook.com/GrenfellSilentWalk/
Link for Grenfell Silent Walk Two Years On:
https://www.facebook.com/events/2408072305910220/
Link for Lowkey: https://twitter.com/lowkey0nline?lang=en
Image of “#15M Twitter Hashtag networks” by Labic, Brazil (2014) [+ info below]I started seeing these beautiful spiderlike visualisations of people organising. They intrigued me and I wanted to know more. Through the inspiration and support of people like @LoQueSigue_, I found out the visualisations were made through a programme called Gephi and I set out to learn how to do it myself.
Friction Films 