Belgrade log – digital storytelling as a counter-history

Abstract

BG:LOG is an alternative map and the archive of Belgrade. It is reviving the forgotten spirit of the city through a depiction of memory about the fellowship between people, little known events, everyday practices, neighbors; all that significantly changed in the last five decades. Belgrade's map is the digital repository of records obtained at workshops with its citizens. The aim of it was to raise the visibility of public reminiscence and collective memory as well as to disrupt the official history of the local place, introducing into it the new transnational communities arrived with the old and new wave of refugees and migrants. Our enquiry is also born out of observations of the regeneration/gentrification, which clashes with previous political and social system existed in this urban environment. This condition provoked the question - does end of socialism mean the end of the community and for the answer we searched across four representative Belgrade boroughs.