African-European Narratives Storytelling: Call for Submissions
African-European Narratives is a storytelling project that addresses the interplay of African and European cultures, widely present in contemporary European societies, rooted in the personal and family stories of many Europeans. Stories of a post-colonial present, of African origin and descent, of colonial memory and post-memory, of wars and conflict, of migration, diaspora and return. The purpose of this project is to address the complexity of this cultural interplay through the richness and diversity of these experiences. Telling stories uncovers the intercultural fabric of contemporary societies and multiplies the voices that can be heard. It also deepens our memory and triggers our imagination, helping us to make sense of who we are. This is why stories are such powerful tools against dominant narratives.
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 aesthetic interplay. The result is a digital Atlas of texts, 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 an invitation to re-imagine Europe and to contribute to its post-colonial cartography. One that transcends the circle of national narratives, disrupts their own imaginary homogeneity and disturbs the politics of identity and otherness. It is also an invitation to engage with new media practices, to experiment with new forms of activism and to test the possibilities of a new cultural analytics. An invitation to collectively produce and reappropriate archives, to navigate diversity and visualize new configurations, to empower individual voices as well as trans-individual and transnational processes.
African-European Narratives is a “Europe for Citizens” project that also joins the proclamation of the International Decade of People of African Descent 2015-2024 (UN).
