VIDEOACT: The Use of Video as an Activist Tool of Self-Representation for Turkish practitioners in Germany is a project that has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No.101025524.
The duration of the project is from September 2021 to August 2023 and is being conducted at the Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF (Potsdam, Germany), under the supervision of Professor Jens Eder.
VIDEOACT examines the use of video as an activist tool by practitioners from Turkey, who have moved to Germany in the post-Gezi era (2013). It aims at contributing to the knowledge of how video can be used to portray social and political issues that have a direct effect on the livelihood of those creating the media. The project will also reveal the ways in which the new context of Germany has impacted the cinematic and artistic explorations of the practitioners.
VIDEOACT aims to draw a map of the various audio-visual practices employed by these new wave migrants from Turkey and analyze the formal, thematic and aesthetic elements they deploy.
The methodology of the project includes textual analysis of activists’ videos, discourse analyses and interviews. Moreover, practice-based research approach will also be developed with the audio material gathered from project participants to create a landscape pertaining to their interweaving stories, paired with imagery representing their experiences.
The outputs of the project will include journal articles, and conferences where the research results will be shared, as well as screenings, opening up dialogue on the issues raised in the videos. Another output will include a video essay incorporating the narratives of all participant practitioners, interweaved to tell the story of this new wave of migration, through the lens of their audio-visual practices.
On this web page, you can find information regarding the project, useful links to organizations, individuals and events related to the project, outputs of the projects and events organized in the context of the project.
TEAM MEMBERS
Project Advisor: Professor Jens Eder
Jens Eder studied philosophy and literature with a focus on media. He worked for several years in media practice, including in the field of screenwriting. After writing a book on narrative structures in popular film, he completed his doctorate in 2002 on characters in feature films and habilitated in 2011 with a thesis on emotions in audiovisual media. From 1999, he taught film, media and communication studies at the universities of Hamburg, Mainz and Mannheim. Since 2017 he has been working at the Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF in the interdisciplinary professorship for storytelling and aesthetics.
Project Researcher: Şirin Fulya Erensoy
Şirin is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Post-doctoral Fellow at Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF. She received her Phd in Cinema and Media Research from Bahçeşehir University in 2017. Her academic work has focused on gender in genre cinema, video activism as an alternative media practice, and censorship in documentary film practice in Turkey. Şirin was the host of Medyascope TV’s English news bulletin This Week in Turkey from 2019-2021 and worked as a lecturer in Film and Television at Istanbul Bilgi University. She also has practical work experience in documentary film production.