Making Publics: Documentary as Do-It-with-Others Citizenship

Abstract

This chapter explores significant collaborative, interactive documentary practices that are emerging in the context of digital culture, and situates these emerging practices in relation to the counter-history within documentary in which subjects have taken on forms of agency and editorial control in the production process. By using contemporary examples I will suggest why the concept of DiY is problematic for documentary. Awareness that a DiY approach to documentary making is not universally available prompts a questioning of the valorisation of the concept of DiY in the context of complex media production. Through the lens of co-creativity I discuss collaborative documentaries as a strategic response to the ‘participation gap’ (Jenkins 2006, 23). But there is more than this at stake in these collaborative documentary practices. In my view, the concept of DiWO (Do-it-With-Others) is better equipped to capture the dynamics and importance of these projects. A co-creative, DiWO approach to documentary provides a progressive re-working of documentary’s historic role in the public sphere, as an open space (De Michiel and Zimmermann) for dialogue and a stage for the performance of citizenship.