Writing Diaspora in the 21st Century: Medial Transitions in Postdigital Times

Writing Diaspora in the 21st Century: Medial Transitions in Postdigital Times

This conference was organized by Linda Maeding (UCM) and Julia Borst (U Bremen) in the context of the WoC research lab “Digital Diaspora” of U Bremen in collaboration with the ERC Starting Grant project AFROEUROPECYBERSPACE and the UCM Research Group “Normativity, Emotions, Discourse and Society”. Being dispersed around the globe, diasporic communities rely on media to communicate across and between distances as well as to create and cultivate communal identities. In the 21st century, the ease of access to the Internet, in general, has led to an incredible increase in the production of digital content and the Internet has become an integral part of our daily lives. Consequently, diasporic communities are also increasingly embracing digital media. Diasporic formations appearing in the digital space, the internet emerges as an important space for knowledge production where groups minorized by mainstream society can self-present themselves and, in this way, make themselves and their perspectives visible.

The conference also included an audiovisual lecture and conversation in the Goethe Institute Madrid with German blogger and artist Tunay Önder, one of the founders of the blog Migrantenstadl who works on postmigratory settings in Germany, as well as a poetry reading and conversation in Espacio Afro in Madrid with writer Yeison F. García López and photographer and video artist Heidi Ramírez who have collaborated in the transmedial poetry anthology “Derecho de admission” (2021)

In this second workshop organized by the WoC lab “Digital diaspora, we wanted to emphasize in particular the fact that diasporas do not only imply geographic mobility; they are also medially on the move. Diasporic subjects and groups not only write books or create works of art, but also blog and tweet and take a stand on sociopolitical issues online. They have their writing and art circulate on the internet or create and publish it online in the first place which is why we wanted to focus on the continuities between online and offline worlds and the entanglements of digital and non-digital diasporic representations, narratives and practices. The academic talks of this conference focused on different diasporic communities, among others the Jewish, the Syrian and the Russian diaspora, but put a particular emphasis on Afrodiasporic communities in several European countries such as Spain, France, Portugal, Italy and Germany.

The conference also included an audiovisual lecture and conversation in the Goethe Institute Madrid with German blogger and artist Tunay Önder, one of the founders of the blog Migrantenstadl who works on postmigratory settings in Germany, as well as a poetry reading and conversation in Espacio Afro in Madrid with writer Yeison F. García López and photographer and video artist Heidi Ramírez who have collaborated in the transmedial poetry anthology “Derecho de admission” (2021)

Thursday, 30 May 2024
Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Edificio A, Sala de Juntas

Friday, 31 May 2024
Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Edificio A, Aula A-318

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