Portugal-Africa stories: designing a digital space of sharing

Abstract

One of the most distinctive traits of contemporary digital culture is the uninterrupted sharing of memories and experiences both lived and imagined. The ubiquitous presence of social networks, along with the fast development of software and applications that enable the recording and transmission of many different messages has changed the way in which we confront the images and narratives that make up our societies’ cultural memory. This article theoretically frames and describes the project Estórias: Portugal-África, which tries to be an answer to these processes by producing a digital archive about personal experiences that connect Portugal and Africa, experiences that can be rooted in family or community, in migrations and cultural crossings, in the colonial period or the post-colonial situations of cultural miscegenation. In this article I reflect on the transcultural dynamics made possible by the new media, the information networks and the practices of contemporary art mobilized for this project.