Academic Perspectives: Who Creates the Conditions in Which We Can Speak for Ourselves?

Language: English and Czech with simultaneous interpretation.

Who a story belongs to is not only a question of who tells it. Just as important is who gets the opportunity to speak at all, and who creates the conditions that enable their voice to be heard. The academic panel will examine different layers of these conditions: social and institutional, material and production-related, the workings of digital platforms, and unequal access to resources and visibility. Under what conditions can we tell our own stories? And who determines where, to whom, and in what form those stories ultimately circulate? The presentations will be followed by a discussion.

Emma Marková will approach documentary as a social event and an intervention process. Through the project Vsetín mezi námi, she will show how a film can open up a space for young people to enter negotiations about the future of a city in which their voices are usually absent.

Seg Kirakossian will focus on self-representation in the context of digital platforms and post-cinematic documentary experience. Is the ability to exercise agency over one’s own story simply a matter of who holds the camera, or is it also shaped by the material conditions that determine the production, circulation, and interpretation of images?

Daria Akimenko will test ethical principles developed through participatory academic research against the realities of film production. Using the documentary Rage Rage Against the Dying of the Light, she will examine what remains of ongoing consent, co-authorship, and the right to withhold under the pressures of funding, timelines, and audience expectations.

Karina Gaibulina draws on audiovisual fieldwork from the piARTkz project in Kazakhstan to ask what happens when the possibility of “speaking for oneself” becomes a privilege in itself. Who has the resources, legitimacy, and access to the spaces in which their own experience can be heard? And what responsibility does a researcher or filmmaker bear when moving between the positions of insider and outsider?