Future Oral History in Exhibition——A Case Study of the Project “See and Say”

• In Event: Keeping Stories Alive: Lessons Learned in Oral History Exhibition

Abstract

In November 2015, Cui Yongyuan Center for Oral History at Communication University in Beijing started a new project named "See and Say" which focuses on opening available oral history interviews to the public. The project "See and Say" is designed to let anyone who is interested in oral history and certain topics to go to the exhibition hall of the center and see the unabridged interviews. Then each viewer will be asked to say something in front of the camera about the interviews, such as comments on interview techniques, feelings for the interviewees and personal suggestions. Up to now, many oral history institutions have started their websites and made more and more oral history archives available online so that people around the world could see them easily. However, there always will be many legal and ethical issues to deal when putting something quite private online, and it's hard for the oral history interviewers and the researchers to get feedback from the viewers. More and more interviews belong to different oral history conducted by the interviewing team of the center are open to the public and the center has collected more and more feedback from the viewers. And then, the editors will combine some clips from the interviews and the viewers’ statements together to put them online. On the one hand, this project is aiming at make oral history archives more accessible; on the other hand, oral history practitioners get a chance to make better interviews by listening to the viewers’ opinions. This project is a new attempt to display oral history to the public and still at the trial stage, but some of the combined videos are already available and will be seen in the presentation.

Authors

• Yi Sun, Communication University of China

• Yigong Zhao, Cui Yongyuan Center for Oral History of Communication University of China