Light of the Fireflies: Participatory Virtual Walks and Digital Remembrance

Who Owns Memory? Democratic Participation in Digital Public History is pleased to welcome Branka Pavlović and Nikola Polić for a joint online lecture and discussion exploring participatory approaches to digital remembrance.

How can digital tools create new ways of encountering difficult histories?

How can young people become active participants in remembrance rather than simply audiences? What happens when historical knowledge, memory, place and digital technology come together? And what possibilities — as well as challenges — emerge when remembrance becomes a collaborative process?

Drawing on Light of the Fireflies, Branka Pavlović and Nikola Polić will discuss the development of participatory virtual walks connecting Berlin and Belgrade, created through collaboration between young people, historians, artists and educators.

The session will explore how memory, historical research and place can be translated into digital formats, while reflecting on the practical and ethical questions that arise when different participants become involved in creating and communicating difficult histories.

The conversation will also bring Light of the Fireflies into dialogue with Who Owns Memory?, with particular attention to co-creation, participation, digital public history, outreach, and the role of young people as co-creators of memory.

The speakers will also introduce their current EVZ-funded microproject, Light of the Fireflies.Lab, which explores possibilities for expanding participation and outreach beyond the original project, across national borders and beyond the funding period. The project places particular emphasis on co-creation and on the sustainability of participatory remembrance practices.

Speakers

Branka Pavlović is a film and video editor and video artist. She holds a degree in Film and Television Editing from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade and an MA in Art in Context (Kunst im Kontext) from the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK Berlin). She works as a film editor, video artist and educator on documentary films, theatre productions and participatory projects exploring cultures of remembrance, video performance and contemporary dance. Since 2009, she has been a co-selector of the Free Zone Film Festival in Belgrade and has directed its youth programme, Free Zone Jr., since 2007. She is the creator of Light of the Fireflies, an ongoing digital remembrance project launched in 2021. 

Nikola Polić is a director and video artist. He studied Film and Television Directing at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade. His work engages with minorities and socially marginalised groups, and his films have been screened and awarded at festivals in Serbia and internationally. In 2021, together with a group of artists, he established Kino radionica, conceived as a supportive and creative space for young artists.

A joint exchange between two EVZ-funded projects

The event is organised as a collaborative exchange between Light of the Fireflies / Light of the Fireflies.Lab and Who Owns Memory? Democratic Participation in Digital Public History.

Both projects explore how difficult histories can be communicated through participatory approaches and how communities, young people, researchers, educators and cultural practitioners can take an active role in shaping contemporary cultures of remembrance.

Date: Wednesday, 7 October 2026
Time: 19:00 EEST / 18:00 CEST
Format: Online