The Monster and Lover♥Girl: Mapping Complex Relations in Preschool Children’s Digital Video Productions

Abstract

In this article, I propose that research which focuses on young children’s experiences with the interactivity of new media not only furthers findings about young children’s digital lives but also enriches the conclusion that children’s engagement with artmaking—in general and in traditional ways—is richly complex, affective, and deeply interactive. To do this, I share a project in which young children and I collaborated in both research and voluntary artmaking using digital video. Through visual, textual, and spatial images, I map interrelationships between children’s multiple roles and voices inside and outside of the video pieces. These articulations of complex and relational subjectivity confront discourses about children and children’s art that focus on discreet identity markers (e.g., class, gender, or ethnicity) or that discuss young people’s use of media anecdotally but do not include young children’s direct experiences. I contend that such separation limits a fully complex illustration of young children’s artmaking experiences and I argue that an amalgamated view has significant pedagogical potential for young children and art educators.