eCommemoration Convention 2021

How is digitalisation redefining history? New generations, new technologies, old and new questions call on us to renew our understanding of the past and reckon with unpleasant truths. These opportunities inspire digital creativity and historical curiosity beyond national, generational, and disciplinary divides. Drawing on six decades of experience in European history education, we encourage this approach.

The eCommemoration Convention on 13 & 14 October 2021 opened a space for historians, memory workers, digital creators and innovative minds to come together for creative exchange and hands-on digital experience.

Programme

The Future of Historiography?

For a long time, writing history was the prerogative of the rich and powerful. Historian Heidi Tworek and investigative journalist Pieter van Huis discuss how Social Media and Big Data are changing our understanding of the past: Who is writing history today and how can we, as diverse and global societies, gain an inclusive understanding of the past?

Moderator: Thorsten Logge

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Die Zukunft der Geschichtsschreibung? (2021) Quelle: YouTube/Körber-Stiftung

Virtual Testimony

Jack Gutmann (Artist), Karen Jungblut (USC Shoah Foundation) and Vít Šisler (Charles University/Charles Games) discuss how interactive technology and serious games open new perspectives on the past.

History is more than numbers and figures. To eyewitnesses, history is life experience. Hearing their stories makes history come alive. Digital technologies go beyond mere recordings of testimony. They open spaces for virtual interaction.

Serious games such as “Attentat 1942” and “Svoboda 1945: Liberation” (Charles Games 2017 and 2021) allow players to interact with fictionalised eyewitnesses to explore the conflicted history that surrounds World War II. USC Shoah Foundation’s “Dimensions in Testimony” programme aims at preserving future possibilities of interaction with Holocaust survivors. In the autobiographical adventure game “Path Out” (Causa Creations 2017) players adopt the character of a young Syrian artist, who escaped the civil war in 2014.

How can new tools make the complexity of historical testimony accessible? Which insights can virtual eyewitnesses offer when dealing with contested pasts? And how can they maintain their relevance for generations still to come?

Moderator: Marcus Richter

This event was recorded during the eCommemoration Convention 2021 and was realised in cooperation with the Foundation for Digital Games Culture, Berlin.

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eCommemoration Convention 2021: Virtual Testimony Quelle: YouTube/Körber-Stiftung

Let’s play! Svoboda 1945 – Liberation

Get a first-hand look at the newest development from the award-winning team of Charles Games, makers of the critically acclaimed “Attentat 1942”. Launched in August 2021, “Svoboda 1945 – Liberation” looks into the contested pasts of the Czech-German borderlands in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. Join lead designer Vít Šisler in solving this “historical narrative mystery”.

Gameplay: Christian Huberts (Foundation for Digital Games Culture)

Moderator: Marcus Richter

This event was recorded during the eCommemoration Convention 2021 and was realised in cooperation with the Foundation for Digital Games Culture, Berlin.

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eCommemoration Convention 2021: Let’s play! Svoboda 1945 – Liberation Quelle: YouTube/Körber-Stiftung

From pedestals to pixels?
How technological innovation can open the discussion of history

The Black Lives Matter movement has pinpointed the urgency of dealing with current effects of racial injustice. It also highlighted the systematic disregard of Black history within American and European societies. This disparity becomes apparent in the still prevalent portrayal of the history of race relations from a white or colonial point of view. It also reveals the long-standing marginalisation of Black history in public spaces – in museums, monuments or collective places of memory. Extended reality tools disrupt that narrative and change mindsets, inspiring a more inclusive perspective on the past. How can new approaches to depicting the past enable us to break up hardened interpretations? Can looking beyond fixed pedestals and traditional institutions show new ways of achieving public awareness for marginalised histories?

Glenn Cantave (Activist and Social Entrepreneur, US), Olivette Otele (Historian, UK)

Moderator: David Olusoga OBE (Historian and Broadcaster, UK)

The recording of this event was available until January 2022.