Contested Narratives in Museum Videos: Communicating a Curatorial Concept on YouTube

Abstract

In the run up to the Imperial War Museum's exhibition “Northern Ireland: Living with the Troubles,” the museum released five videos on YouTube relating to the conflict in Northern Ireland and the exhibition. Based on a collaboration between the producer of the films, Sheen and researcher, Baark, this article delves into the questions, approaches, and challenges that arose in production. Given the subject matter, the article focuses on how “contested narratives,” the curatorial lodestar proposed by the curator of the exhibition, impacted the video production. Within this project, decolonial frameworks were foundational to our analysis of how the films complimented the exhibition, engaged with the history of Northern Ireland, drew on multivocality, and reached online audiences. While the article describes the project and its processes, it also seeks to propose filmmaking in museums as an important tool for creating decolonial opportunities and afterlives of exhibitions.