Funk Soup | Josephine Dorado

Thriving in the Macondo: Laying down roots as refugees

As part of a Fulbright-Museumsquartier artist residency in Spring 2016, I worked with women in the Macondo refugee community in Vienna, Austria, to create virtual reality media narratives of their journeys and developed a methodology by which the VR workshops can be replicated. The workshops involved creating immersive 360-degree photospheres stitched with audio stories of their journeys. Participants included women from Chechnya, Pakistan, Somalia, Afghanistan and Syria who were taking compulsory language classes at the Macondo. The workshop weaved language learning with immersive story creation in a deeply engaging 360-degree environment. Participants learned how to generate their own stories, construct and use Google Cardboard headsets and create photospheres, encouraging digital literacy and storytelling skills within a framework of cultural inclusion. 

To view the photospheres, go to the following links:
(for optimal viewing, view with a VR headset or Google Cardboard headset and trigger the audio by looking at the musical notes; if you don’t have a headset, you can also view the photospheres in a browser)