[Pixel Positionality]
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pixel /ˈpɪks(ə)l,ˈpɪksɛl/

  1. A pixel is the smallest unit of a digital image or graphic that can be displayed and represented on a digital display device. ... Pixels are combined to form a complete image, video, text, or any visible thing on a computer display. A pixel is also known as a picture element (pix = picture, el = element).

positionality / puh-zish-uh-nal-i-tee

  1. Positionality is the social and political context that creates your identity in terms of race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability status. Positionality also describes how your identity influences, and potentially biases, your understanding of and outlook on the world.

Personal Definition of Pixel Positionality: technoscapes or digital contexts influencing or creating valuable spaces for the (re)orientation of meaning and identity; newly oriented perspective influencing external and internal outlooks.

Within the context of my wider work, the concept of pixel positionality is centred around confronting hegemonic societal practices (like archiving) and thus societal biases in the framing of Africa, African society, culture and people. Pixel positionality is an addressing of the representation/perception error in history of African cultural lens which is really the European lens of African History clothed as 'African History.'

A plethora of western Museums are custodians of African history in form of objects housed in ethnographic collections. These objects are not only taken out of physical context of origin but the context of the metadata which accompanies these objects is often incorrect. Therefore the current [mostly physical] institutional spaces (e.g museums and public archives) that exist exist to tell a story of us from an external/fictionalised/improvised perspective rather than allow us to tell our own story from the 'true' perspective and thus create or find 'true' meaning. "...reappropriating control over the “writing of one’s own story” is to struggle for both a decolonization of the psyche and a cultural liberation. In other words, the archive is not just something that can be used for social movements, it can be a practice of social movement in and of itself." , (Hall, 2005)

Pixel positionality allows for a correcting or the errors in cultural narrative construction through making use of a democratised or more neutral space of creation/reiteration: The Internet.

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