Hybrid Histories: Technologies of Memory and the Cultural Dynamics of Home Movies, 1895-2005

Doctoral thesis (2018)

This dissertation analyses the cultural dynamics of home movies in the twentieth century. It investigates how various generations have recorded their family memories on film, video and digital media, and ... [more ▼]

This dissertation analyses the cultural dynamics of home movies in the twentieth century. It investigates how various generations have recorded their family memories on film, video and digital media, and, more specifically, how changes in these “technologies of memory” have shaped new forms of home movie making and screening. Covering the period from the invention of the film camera in the late nineteenth century, the introduction of 9.5mm, 16mm, 8mm small-gauges and Super 8 film technologies for amateurs, via home video to digital media technologies, this study addresses the complex interrelations between the materiality of film, video and digital media technologies, their social usages and cultural meanings from a long-term historical perspective. Focusing on specific periods of transition, it becomes clear that different media technologies, user practices and discourses not only succeed each other in time, but also increasingly interrelate, interact or even transform each other. Maintaining both a diachronic and a synchronic perspective on media transitions, this dissertation proposes an alternative form of media historiography that rethinks media histories beyond the frameworks of change and continuity by perceiving hybridity as a constant factor in media historical development. [less ▲]

Presentation of the Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History – C2DH Doctoral Training Unit

Scientific Conference (2017, November 27)

Historicizing the Home Movie Dispositif: Reflections from the Longue Durée

Scientific Conference (2017, June 30)

This paper reflects on the cultural dynamics of the home movie as a twentieth century family memory practice. Over the years, many generations have documented and materialized their family memories on ... [more ▼]

This paper reflects on the cultural dynamics of the home movie as a twentieth century family memory practice. Over the years, many generations have documented and materialized their family memories on film, video and digital media. While the making and screening of family films used to be a rather exclusive hobby practiced only by the elite, this has changed considerably in today’s ubiquitous sharing cultures. In my research, I have examined from a longue durée perspective how changes in platforms of memory production and dissemination – from the first amateur film apparatuses to today’s smartphones – have shaped new forms of home movie making and screening. Exploring more than a century of family memory practices, I have systematically investigated the dynamic relationship between new memory technologies, their narrative and aesthetic forms, and the changing meanings of home movies in their social and cultural contexts of use. To historicize these transformations of the home movie dispositif, I distinguished between four specific historical periods of transition, each heralded by the arrival of a new memory technology: 9.5mm, 16mm and 8mm ‘small-gauges’ in the 1920s and 1930s; Super 8 and Single 8 ‘cassette-film’ formats in the 1960s; home video technologies in the late 1970s and 1980s; and digital media technologies in the 1990s and 2000s. The paper provides both empirical and conceptual reflections on this long-term media historical research. I argue that in order to faithfully study media technologies and mediated practices in their permanent state of transition, we need to de-essentialize the notion of dispositif and rethink media histories beyond their traditional narratives of change and continuity. Scholars interested in long-term media historical development therefore may consider, I propose, a radical process-oriented approach in which hybridity no longer forms an exception, but rather a new way of thinking about media history in general. [less ▲]

Technostalgia of the Present: From Technologies of Memory to a Memory of Technologies

in NECSUS. European Journal of Media Studies (2015), 4(2), 103-121

This article reflects on today’s ‘technostalgic’ trend in media culture by examining the various ways in which Super 8 film as a media technology from the past is re-appropriated and remediated in ... [more ▼]

This article reflects on today’s ‘technostalgic’ trend in media culture by examining the various ways in which Super 8 film as a media technology from the past is re-appropriated and remediated in contemporary memory practices. By looking specifically at restorative and reflective forms of technostalgia manifest in the project Bye Bye Super 8 – In Loving Memory of Kodachrome (2011) and the digital smartphone app iSupr8 (2011), the author explores how in contemporary memory practices media technologies not only construct and mediate memories but have also become the objects of memory themselves. While analysing this double mnemonic process – accounting for both the memory construction by the media technology and the reminiscence of the media technology itself – it is argued that we currently witness a new kind of memory practice enforcing an attentive shift from technologies of memory to a memory of technologies. [less ▲]

'Hare Majesteit de Smalfilm' - De making of de vroege amateurfilm(er)

in Tijdschrift voor Mediageschiedenis (2014), 17(1), 7-26

This article reconstructs the world of the Dutch amateur film around 1930; a dynamic period during which the amateur film gradually developed from being just one branch of photography (cinematography) to ... [more ▼]

This article reconstructs the world of the Dutch amateur film around 1930; a dynamic period during which the amateur film gradually developed from being just one branch of photography (cinematography) to becoming an independent film discipline. On the basis of a series of articles about amateur film, published in the photography magazine 'Focus', we shed light on the changing creative processes and discourses of early amateur films and by extension the ‘making of’ early amateur filmmakers themselves. The series, which was written by a beginning amateur filmmaker on the threshold of the ‘Nederlandse Smalfilmliga’ [Dutch Amateur Film League] (1931) and the amateur film magazine 'Het Veerwerk' (1932), offers an interesting insider view of the world of amateur films as it is taking shape. Taking the themes that are covered in the series – ranging from simple films of children and holidays to editing – and the associated user dynamics, the article throws light on the amateur filmmakers’ quest for a distinct production culture and way of creating films. [less ▲]