Visual Culture and Hybrid Practices in Digital Public History: Contextualizing the "Frames of Reconstruction" online exhibition
Abstrakt
The article draws upon the practical experience of the authors with researching, developing, and curating the digital historical content for the online exhibition Frames of Reconstruction. In its first part, it reflects upon three main theoretical issues related to the realm of contemporary public history. Firstly, it investigates the open borders between the disciplines of academic and public history to position them in a dialogical relationship.
Secondly, it pays attention to the importance and roles of visuals and the possibilities which the study of visual sources brings into public history projects. The iconosphere is discussed not only from a theoretical point of view, but also serves as the methodological grounding of the article. Lastly, the theoretical section opens up some basal theoretical and methodological questions brought to the area of public history by the extensive process of digitization. In relation to the online exhibition Frames of Reconstruction it mostly responds to the conceptualization of digital public history as offered by Serge Noiret (2018) and Andreas Fickers (2022) through his concept of digital hermeneutics. The analytical part then revolves around the critical examination of the authors' own practical experience in the field of digital public history. Particularly, the collapse of the roles of researcher and curator is discussed along with the request for sustainability, transnationality, and democratic educational potential which can be seen as specific in the case of the medium of online exhibition.