Events

October 2009

Visiting Doctoral Student from University of Barcelona

CTMP welcomes Paola Cinquina from the University of Barcelona who is being hosted by the Centre between September-January 2010. The title and abstract of her doctoral thesis are provided below.

Narrativas entorno a la Identidad en un Programa de Vídeo Participativo ('Narration and Identity in Participatory Video: A Case Study of Zalab TV')

Understanding education as ‘construction and re-construction of personal and social stories’ (Clandinin, D.J. and Connelly F.M., 1995), the way we construct, organize and tell stories is a critical dimension inherent in the educational process. Moreover, when identity is conceptualised as a narrative that we create about ourselves (Bruner, 1984), the relation between how we learn to create narratives and the ways in which we create ourselves and shape our identities becomes apparent. My research focus centres on the medium and methodology of participartory video, which has the potential to enhance educational processes, while encouraging learners to be “ontological self-confidents” (Vázquez) and critical thinkers. The fragility, instability and indeterminacy of identity construction has been taken up by post-colonial theorists working with notions of rupture and impasse synonomous with the negotiation of transcultural identities (H. Bhaba, 1994), offering critical insight into the conditions and habitats of the ‘nomadic subject’ (Braidotti, 1994) - a contemporary condition relevant not only to post-colonial subjects, but to all the people living in what Bauman depicts as liquid modernity (2001).

In the first phase of my research I mapped educational activities, projects and organizations combining video and education, initially in Barcelona and subsequently in a wider European space (Holland, Germany) with special regard to Italy. I then focused the research on a case study of an Italian-Spanish association, Zalab TV (http://www.zalab.tv/en), that realizes projects anchored in the theory and methodology of participatory video. It produces short participatory documentaries and feature films on daily life in different communities from the Northern and Southern Mediterranean. Zalab was selected as a fieldsite for the following reasons: the organisation is dedicated to working in culturally diverse environments (especially in the Mediterranean area); the video projects generated underscore the importance of both practice and theoretical/experiential reflection; the work of Zalab can be evaluated in terms of ‘good practice’, as defined and formulated by EU educational directives. My analysis of Zalab projects is fundamentally linked to my personal experience of learning videomaking. In this way a reflection of my personal, learning processes are created, simultaneously rendering visible to myself and to others, the deep links, mostly unconscious, that our subjectivities express in relation to how and what we choose to research and how an interpretation of the surrounding world is developed (Geertz, 1973).

Department of Cultural Pedagogies, (dep. Pedagogia Culturales, fac. Bellas Artes, Universidad de Barcelona)
Faculty of Fine Arts
University of Barcelona (email: pcinquina@ub.edu)

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