Paper short abstract:

How to use video in the process of planning a community museum in the Mexican Sierra is the topic of our presentation. Since 2006 we have facilitated, interpreted, and documented the process as members of the Finnish NGO Crash.

Paper long abstract:

Three Wixarika (huichol) and Naaieri (cora) communities in Mexico have decided to found a community museum in the Sierra with the help of the Finnish NGO Crash and other Finnish and Mexican partners. The museum will be a vital part of their indigenous school system. As members of Crash we have facilitated and documented all the phases of the project since 2006. In the process we have applied an experimental and participatory method we call Generational Filming. Using this method of video/fine arts research we aim to record and show changing communal knowledge. We gather, conceptualise and convey knowledge in co-operation with the members of a community. As we record and view knowledge, discuss and debate, our understandings of the community and knowledge itself changes. The discussions are filmed, and then added to the next edition as a new generation of the video to be shown to other audiences. In our presentation we will show a reflexive methodology of working in video, which shows how the discussion between the partners is mediated.