Understanding through Experimentation: An Experimental Media Archaeological Approach to Early Twentieth-Century Home Movie Making

This presentation addresses the question in what ways visual media have contributed to the construction of a specific view on twentieth-century century (family) life by means of an experimental media archaeological approach to early home movie making. Based on hands-on experiments with an original Ciné-Kodak 16mm film camera from 1930, it will be shown how filming one’s family was never truly a neutral practice of capturing everyday life. Rather, making a home movie should be regarded a highly “co-constructive” practice that includes various social, sensorial, technological and user-related dimensions. The presentation reflects work in progress from the research project “Doing Experimental Media Archaeology” (DEMA) of the Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C2DH) of the University of Luxembourg: https://dema.uni.lu/.