Human Capital Multidisciplinary Research Center

1.4.8 Cultural Diversity, Historical and Cultural Heritage and Contemporary Cultural Practices in Visual Presentations: from Archival Documents to New Media

Elena Danilko
Project Leader

Project period

2020-2021

Context of Research Project within a Subject of Human Capital

According to Amartya Sen's concept of human potential, development is not only an increase in economic and material well–being, but also an expansion of a person's freedom of choice, determined by the complexity and diversity of human life. These complexity and diversity are closely related to the historical and cultural heritage and the construction of identities manifested in various forms, including visual ones. In this regard, the research project Cultural Diversity, Historical and Cultural Heritage and Contemporary Cultural Practices in Visual Presentations: from Archival Documents to New Media offers consideration of various models of representation and use of visual images, products (photos, films, videos and audio materials), new media as an integral part of the social development of ethno–cultural communities and the possibilities of realizing their human potential

Project Aim

Conducting an anthropological research of various forms of visual heritage (photos, films, videos and audio materials), ways of their representation and use of visual images in the construction of identities and actualization of cultural memory, including sacred and everyday practices, cultural and educational projects, virtual spaces and new media in the context of human capital development

Project Objectives:

1. Identifying and analyzing archival visual sources

2. Considering the forms of visual heritage actualization in the public sphere and in new media

3. Studying the ways of visual forms representation and images in the cultural space of the studied groups, their use in the formation of identities

4. Analyzing the features of visual perception differentiation based on cultural realities, sacred and everyday practices of the studied social groups

Key Findings

2020

Using the example of publications in one of the regular periodicals, a variant of the external representation of the Old Believers of Tuva in the Soviet period has been considered. Despite the unambiguous atheistic orientation of the time under consideration, the presence of the religious community in public discourse has not been uniform, which was primarily due to the historical context that determined the vector of Soviet atheistic propaganda as a whole, as well as the characteristics of the group itself, which occupied a specific place in the religious diversity of the country. The cultural characteristics of the group, refracted in the press through an ideological lens, endow the images of Old Believers with a spectrum of predominantly negative characteristics and determine the peripheral and marginal location of the community in society

2021

Organization and holding of the IX Moscow International Forum of Visual Anthropology ‘Mediating Camera

Publications

  1. Danilko E.  Tuvan Old Believers on the Pages of Soviet Periodicals (RU) // New studies of Tuva. 2021, No. 3, pp. 61-74

Conferences

IX Moscow International Forum of Visual Anthropology ‘Mediating Camera’. Moscow, April 28  — May 16, 2021