Stories from Rwanda: Academic, Creative, Applied

你如何看待卢旺达？在震惊世界的种族灭绝事件发生后，你如何想象这个东非小国？是谁塑造了这些形象？谁是影响你想象力的摄影师、故事家、记者、编辑和电影制作人？我的研究考察了卢旺达是如何为国际观众“策划”的--讲述种族灭绝及其后果的视觉和口头故事，以及它们在全球传播的方式。1994年，在短短100天内，卢旺达就有80万到100万人被杀害。其中许多杀戮发生在人们的家中或附近的公共场所。种族灭绝后，幸存者经常回到他们以前生活的地方，回到他们失去数百名朋友和家人的地方。这些杀戮和种族灭绝后重建生活的进程，都植根于对特定地方的深入了解。然而，在种族灭绝及其后果期间，许多卢旺达人流离失所。关于卢旺达的第一批国际故事是由外国人讲述的，他们大多是第一次来到这个国家。在卢旺达，对当时的地点的熟悉程度与作者身份问题密切相关。提供种族灭绝证词的幸存者回忆起杀戮地点，人们藏身的地方，以及离开这个国家的路线。相比之下，有影响力的来访记者和小说家的报道则详述了风景的奇怪和迷失方向。为了理解种族灭绝的经历，我们需要听取那些经历了这一事件并仍在努力应对其后果的当地人的意见。但要了解国际社会对卢旺达的看法，我们还必须关注外界的说法。这项研究从研究和挑战这些动态的两个写作项目开始。我的专著《卢旺达：地方的证言》考察了证言领域是如何形成的，而且随着我们从1994年开始不断前进，它正在发生变化。我翻译的Yolande Mukagana的证词La mort ne veut pas de moi将第一次为说英语的观众带来卢旺达的关键声音。然后，我在我现有的网络基础上发展这些地点和作者的主题，当时我制作了BBC纪录片《卢旺达的记忆》，并策划了由AHRC资助的展览《照片中的卢旺达》(2014)。根据我的卢旺达同事的观察，卢旺达人几乎无法控制国际上流传的关于他们的叙事，我将绘制关于卢旺达的故事如何始终由来自全球北方的外来者调解的方式，并通过旨在突出卢旺达声音的干预措施来挑战这些动态。2018年，我将召集一个由摄影师兼活动家马塞洛·布罗德斯基(阿根廷)和作家兼编辑比利·卡霍拉(肯尼亚)主持的研讨会，将卢旺达摄影师和作家与卢旺达的非政府组织聚集在一起。讲习班旨在表明，非政府组织可以从与当地艺术家的合作中受益，而不是通过空运外国记者进行交流活动，并为参与者提供宝贵的培训和网络。基加利和伦敦的幻灯片将分享结果，选定的作品将发表在一期期刊特刊上。伴随研讨会的是三个进一步的干预：针对照片编辑的政策简报，概述在当地而不是国际上委托摄影的商业和伦理理由；与社会心理学家基恩·韦斯特博士共同撰写的定量研究，展示为什么这对使所描绘的人人性化很重要；和一个视觉丰富的网站，将我自己在过去五年参与活动中产生的研究和图像汇集在一起。这笔奖学金将使我成为冲突后文化领域的新兴领导者，为完成两份关键出版物提供时间，并通过结合学术研究和文化行动主义的项目提供资金，以开拓新的前进道路。

How do you see Rwanda? In the aftermath of the genocide that shook the world, how do you picture this small East African country? And who has shaped these images? Who are the photographers, storytellers, reporters, editors and filmmakers who have influenced your imagination? My research examines how Rwanda has been 'curated' for international audiences - the visual and verbal stories told about genocide and its aftermath and the ways in which they have been disseminated globally.In 1994 between 800,000 and a million people were killed in Rwanda in just one hundred days. Many of these killings took place in people's homes or nearby public spaces. After genocide survivors often returned to where they lived before, to the sites where they lost hundreds of friends and family members. These killings and the process of rebuilding life after genocide, are grounded in an intimate knowledge of a particular place. However, during genocide and its aftermath many Rwandans were displaced. And the first international stories about Rwanda were told by foreigners mostly travelling to the country for the first time. Familiarity with place then, in Rwanda, is intimately tied to the question of authorship. Survivors giving testimony about genocide recollect sites of killings, the places where people hid, routes out of the country. Accounts by influential visiting journalists and novelists by contrast dwell on the strangeness of the landscape and disorientation. To understand experiences of genocide we need to listen to local people who lived through the events and are still grappling with their consequences. But to understand how Rwanda has been perceived internationally we must also pay attention to the narratives of outsiders. This fellowship begins with two writing projects that study and contest these dynamics. My monograph Rwanda: The Testimony of Place, examines how the field of testimony has been shaped and is changing the further we move from 1994. My translation of Yolande Mukagasana's testimony La mort ne veut pas de moi will bring a key Rwandan voice to English-speaking audiences for the first time. I then develop these themes of place and authorship building on my existing networks established while making the BBC documentary Living with Memory in Rwanda and curating the AHRC-funded exhibition Rwanda in Photographs (2014). Exploring my Rwandan colleagues' observation that Rwandans have little control over narratives circulating about them internationally, I will map ways in which stories about Rwanda are consistently mediated by outsiders from the Global North, and challenge these dynamics through interventions designed to foreground Rwandan voices. In 2018 I will convene a workshop facilitated by photographer-activist Marcelo Brodsky (Argentina) and writer-editor Billy Kahora (Kenya), bringing together Rwandan photographers and writers with NGOs based in Rwanda. The workshop aims to demonstrate that NGOs can benefit from working with local artists as opposed to flying in foreign journalists for their communication campaigns, and offers valuable training and networking for participants. Slideshows in Kigali and London will share the results and selected work will be published in a journal special issue.Accompanying the workshop are three further interventions: A policy briefing for photo editors outlining the business and ethical case for commissioning photography locally rather than internationally; A quantitative study co-authored with social psychologist Dr Keon West showing why this is important for humanising the people depicted; And a visually-rich website drawing together my own research and images generated over the past five years of engagement activities.This fellowship will establish me as an emerging leader in post-conflict cultures, providing time to complete two key publications and funding to forge new ways forward through projects that combine both academic research and cultural activism.