Digital media revitalising colonial heritage: the George Floyd video translocalized in Denmark

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we analyse how the colonial spectrality of the George Floyd video translocalises from the United States to Denmark to form heritage assemblages of solidarity, removal and repression that re-vitalize the colonial past and anti-racist protests in contemporary contexts. Through our analysis, we unfold the affective capacities of the Floyd video and its memetic mutations that mobilize publics against asymmetries inherited from colonialism and invent new forms of activism. We show that while protester tactics following Floyd demonstrate a reflexive distribution of subjectivities and positionalities, minority voices and efforts to remove symbols of colonialism are condemned and suppressed in Denmark. Our main contribution is to include digital media into heritage assemblages as an affective device. A second contribution is presenting digital epidemiography as an affective methodology to remotely study transient and unpredictable global events, through an analysis of digital traces found on the internet. A third contribution is the knowledge of how post-Floyd heritage assemblages in Denmark position this Scandinavian country as a former colonizer in the decolonial turn.

KEYWORDS:

• Digital media
• colonial heritage
• translocal
• heritage modalities

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. https://www.npr.org/2017/04/26/524744989/when-la-erupted-in-anger-a-look-back-at-the-rodney-king-riots

2. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/14/nyregion/eric-garner-police-chokehold-staten-island.html

3. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/07/us/sandra-bland-video-brian-encinia.html

4. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/28/opinion/letters/george-floyd-police-minnesota.html

5. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pID8qf6kGaQ

6. https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/sep/14/the-kaepernick-effect-a-story-of-the-other-athletes-who-kneeled-in-protest

7. https://keywordsechoes.com/removal

8. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/23/us/confederate-monuments-george-floyd-protests.html,

9. https://inews.co.uk/news/world/greenland-vote-scrap-explorer-statue-black-lives-matter-551472

10. https://newseu.cgtn.com/news/2020-07-21/Greenland-divided-on-vote-to-remove-statue-of-founding-missionary-SjnalkYXvi/index.html

11. https://nyheder.tv2.dk/samfund/2020-11-28-haervaerk-eller-rematerialisering-700-kunstnere-stoetter-saenkning-af-buste-i

12. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/09/arts/design/frederik-v-bust-denmark.html

13. https://politiken.dk/debat/art7998236/Den-s%C3%A5kaldte-aktion-mod-gipsbusten-p%C3%A5-Kunstakademiet-er-helt-i-overensstemmelse-med-tids%C3%A5ndens-nyliberale-konkurrencestat

14. https://www.information.dk/kultur/leder/2020/11/busteaktionen-bekraefter-fordomme-politisk-kunst-overdoever-goer-umage

15. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/09/arts/design/frederik-v-bust-denmark.html

16. https://www2.statsbiblioteket.dk/mediestream/tv/record/pvica_radioTV%3Adu%3A5da76455-94c0-4d23-a39f-355a599390bf/query/Deadline%20DR2%20

17. https://kulturmonitor.dk/kulturpolitik/art8369187/Kunstnere-laver-souvenirs-med-%C3%B8delagt-buste-af-Frederik-V-for-at-s%C3%A6tte-skub-i-debat-%E2%80%93-museumsbutik-er-t%C3%A6t-p%C3%A5-at-melde-udsolgt

18. https://cphpost.dk/?p=114821

19. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53447919

20. https://www.euronews.com/2020/11/30/high-profile-murder-trial-with-racist-undertones-set-to-conclude-in-denmark

21. https://theconversation.com/a-murder-trial-in-denmark-leaves-a-nation-wondering-what-constitutes-a-hate-crime-151446

22. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-55143044

23. https://www.euronews.com/2020/11/30/high-profile-murder-trial-with-racist-undertones-set-to-conclude-in-denmark

24. https://news.illinois.edu/view/6367/362597

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Britta Timm Knudsen

Britta Timm Knudsen is professor of Culture, Medias and Experience Economy, at the School of Communication and Culture, University of Aarhus, Denmark. Her research focuses on difficult heritage, affect and event studies, tourism and social media. Her recent publications include co-editing a double special issue of the journal Heritage & Society entitled Decolonizing European Colonial Heritage in Urban Spaces (2020), co-editing the book Decolonizing Colonial Heritage. New Agendas, Actors and Practices In and Beyond Europe (2022) as well as Methodologies of Affective Experimentation (2022). Between 2018-2021 she was a PI of ECHOES (European Colonial Heritage Modalities of Entangled Cities), funded by EU - Horizon 2020 and currently she is PI of Playing with ghosts. Affective ambivalence in decolonial art practices (2021-2025), funded by Aarhus University Research Fund, AUFF.

Shama Patel

Shama Patel is a PhD candidate at the Department of Digitalization at Copenhagen Business School in Denmark. Through an empirical analysis of the viral spread of the George Floyd video, her PhD explores how digital media catalyzes seismic events that snowball multidimensional, and multitemporal scalar phenomena. Exercising the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari, she is developing novel theoretical lenses and research methods to empirically study scalar phenomena triggered by the affective power of digital media. Shama holds a M.Sc. in Computer Science from Northern Illinois University and has 20+ years of management consulting experience in digital transformation and organizational change.