Our series of video interviews relating to archives and human rights continues on the Hub, with Taylor Krauss, founder/director of Voices of Rwanda.
The project was created to record and preserve the testimonies and life stories of Rwandans, drawing significantly on the genocide but encompassing lives as a whole. To date over 500 hours of testimony have been recorded. Ultimately this video archive will be an educational resource for journalists, historians, academics, psychologists, artists and activists.
From an article last year in the Christian Science Monitor:
“This archive, Krauss hopes, will showcase the future of oral history projects. With a combination of open-source software, Krauss is upping the ante on historical archives. Every word that’s transcribed will be tagged and searchable; with Global Positioning System (GPS) technology, Voices of Rwanda can create individualized maps of survivors’ stories. “In one testimony, a person talks about being born in Kibuye, going down to Cyangugu, crossing the border into Zaire and staying at a camp there, then coming back and staying in Kigali,” Krauss says. “Every stop along the way that he mentions, including the churches he prayed at, are going to be plotted using GPS points. People will be able to look at a map, click on a church, and find five other people who spoke about that church in their testimonies.”
The interview was conducted by Teague Schneiter and edited by Michele DeLia.
-Grace Lile