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- Convenors:
-
Mylene Hengen
(Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales)
Noemie Oxley (American University of Paris)
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- Discussant:
-
Carlo Severi
(Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris)
- Formats:
- Workshops
- Location:
- V306
- Sessions:
- Thursday 12 July, -, -, Friday 13 July, -
Time zone: Europe/Paris
Short Abstract:
This panel has for aim the exploration of filmic and artistic productions made by actors 'in the field' in times of uncertainty, in respect to violence, war, and revolt. It will examine the dialogical relation between crisis and visual production.
Long Abstract:
This panel has for aim the exploration of filmic and artistic productions made by actors 'in the field' in times of social and political turmoil and unrest, specifically in respect to violence, war, and revolt. By exploring the multiple forms of image-making in conditions of unrest, battle, or revolution, we will approach the blurry boundary between spontaneous recording of the field by those implicitly embedded in war and crisis (see, for example, videos produced by American soldiers of and on the battle field in Iraq), and the reflexive and political content of artworks produced by street or contemporary artists in countries in current conditions of unrest or uncertainty- Greece, Lybia, etc. (Protest art, graffiti, etc.). Between the documentation of a reality in the raw, the process of recording oneself 'being-there', 'being affected', and the conscious use of the visual means as a support to political agenda, it will be of interest to examine the use of the camera, film, visual art, photography and other forms of immediate or a posteriori recording/response by those involved in the field. In this way, by including multiple visual 'ethnographies', with varying agendas and potencies, we will place Other forms of representation of war and violence at the center of a discussion on the identification, processing, and negotiation of unrest, approaching the multiple and complex social and intellectual constructions made from one same "reality."
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 12 July, 2012, -Paper short abstract:
I discuss the expanding discourse on and practice of socially-engaged visual art in post-socialist Albania by tracing the strategies that the different players who operate within the field of art production employ toward this endeavor.
Paper long abstract:
During the first decade following socialism's collapse, Albanian visual artists produced work which referred to its prohibitions [e.g. sexuality and abstract styles] and negated its principles [e.g. realism and art with social impact], both to engage with Western modernity and to distance themselves from the discredited socialist state.
More recently, however, with Albania's integration into the global economy, the growing number of non-for-profit cultural organizations, and the presence of international agencies, art is being increasingly considered as a mode of social intervention, impact and critique. Today, members of the art community use their work to open up discursive spaces that challenge the rhetoric of national and international structures of power and address the uncertainties produced by the Albanian state, particularly its failed efforts to institute democratic governance or change Albania's marginal status in Europe.
In this paper, I explore the expanding discourse on and practice of socially-engaged visual art in Albania by tracing the strategies that the different players who operate within the field of art production employ toward this endeavor. I also discuss the ways in which the values and resources of the socialist past intersect with those of the neoliberal present in creating this discourse and practice, the extent to which they are locally determined or encouraged by international agencies, and the factors that thwart and mitigate visual art's intended impact in a post-socialist context.
Paper short abstract:
This communication aims to analyse the work of two groups of photographers from the so called "Global South" that builds their discourses (words and images) to participate politically in contemporary societies.
Paper long abstract:
This communication aims to analyse the work of two groups of photographers that produce images to participate politically in contemporary societies. The first one, a brazilian group from Rio's favelas, try to deal with a process of criminalization of poverty that exists in the Brazilian society, and that causes a series of interventions of the State, through the police, in their neighbourhood. The second one, a bangladeshi group based in a middle class neighbourhood in Dhaka, is concerned about the image the "western world" has about them. The image of poor and hungry victims of natural tragedies got even worst after the 9/11, when they also came to be seen also as potential muslim terrorists. How these photographers react through photos to these troublesome representations (whether an ethnicity, a religion or a social class) is the subject of this discussion. For this workshop I will reflect on an essay made by a photographer of each group in the field in moments of crises and diffused by alternative media. Through these examples I will analyse the importance of documenting the daily life to bring a image different from the register of spectacular events and how they register a complaint of the violence 'they' suffer. Preserving their peculiarities, I will reflect on how negative (re) presentations one makes about 'others' can produce a single unit around questions, such as identities, representations, selfness and otherness.
Paper short abstract:
Documentary filmmaking not only means producing artworks, but also taking action: this is particularly true in China, where the union of visual art and activism gave birth to forms of artivism. In this paper, through some selected documentary works and cases, we would try to show the effective gesture of filming in contemporary China, as a meaningful example of spontaneous act of agency, facing crisis with visual production.
Paper long abstract:
Documentary filmmaking not only means producing artworks, but also taking action: this is particularly true in China where the union of visual art and activism gave birth to forms of artivism. Since the end of the 1980's, a process of rapid mass urbanisation comes to shape individuals' and communities' life. Wrongful destructions and flouted rights contribute to create a sense of unrest which is issued in the form of revolts. In this context of corruption and censorship, injured persons are searching possibilites to make their voices heard more. Recording is thus becoming a way of experiencing life and a form of unfolding the otherwise folded violence. Participant actors are urged to document the suffered violence: their filmic gesture is one of the emerging forms of effective statement of being and revolt. Citizens turn into visual ethnographers, video witnesses and actors in a changing society, so that the boundary between directors and amateurs blurs when coping with crisis. However, to take action using video prompts the following question: do we have the right, as impromptu filmmakers, to produce political artworks recording such a violence? The difficulty to position oneself beween the need to help involved persons and the willingness to propose a self-reflexion about this current turmoil leads to multiple and creative constructions of this same reality.
Paper short abstract:
This paper wishes to discuss the connections between gender relations, war violence and its media exposure by focusing the attention on the case of women soldiers in Tzahal (the Israeli Defence Force).
Paper long abstract:
Since the Abu Ghraib scandal broke out, world's public opinion has become more conscious of the evolution in the use and diffusion of war pictures (Internet, screen savers, personal web pages etc.) as well as the existence of a documented female violence inside the armies. By focusing the attention on the case of women soldiers in Tzahal (the Israeli Defence Force), this paper wishes to discuss the connections between gender relations, war violence and its media exposure.
I will examine pictures that were published on a social network during the last years, showing an Israeli woman soldier posing beside bound and blindfolded Palestinian prisoners. The gender role inversion and the adoption of parodic seduction characterise these pictures. By explaining the production of these pictures as "war trophies", my presentation studies the gendered dynamics integral to the members of a national army as actors in the field. Between bodily performance and stigmatization of the 'other', I will show how through the photographic 'mise en scène' and its media exposure women try to negotiate their role in the army and vis-à-vis the enemy. Pictures as war trophies not only reveal soldiers' abuses and their trivialization during conflicts but also disclose power relations between women soldiers, the military system and the enemies. While female violence is denied, trivialized and depoliticized in the public arena, the concept of agency is essential for the explanation of the circular dynamic of violence.
Paper short abstract:
Artistic appropriation of Israel / Palestine conflicts by collecting and appropriating sound recordings. In the wake of the protracted mediatisation of war, these co-authored artistic accounts are comparable with political campaigns. Art works by Kerbaj and Dreyfus are analysed.
Paper long abstract:
Artists have recently participated in the framing of political events by collecting and appropriating documentary materials in the field in manners which converse with ethnography. But the reflexive-observatory position reserved for social researchers is often transgressed by artists, who engage with participatory authorship and projective forms of auto-ethnography. Independent artists who converse with different institution than the academic ones, do not have to justify positivist notions of the 'real'. In the wake of the recent mediatisation of politics and war, such co-authored artistic accounts become comparable with political campaigns and influence real political projects with qualitative artistic intervention.
My paper analyses cases of artistic appropriation of conflicts in Israel / Palestine, where affective experience is prioritised. It asks the question whether conflict can be researched in-and-through art? In the cases analysed artistic appropriation of 'real' events produces affective works where listeners are invited to be implicated in the scene, particularly through sound. The cases presented will be "Starry Night - a minimalistic improvisation by Mazen Kerbaj/Trumpet, the Israeli Government/Bombs" - a 'musical ambush' which challenges the sonic authority of the IDF during its bombing of Beirut in 2006, and Smadar Dreyfus' "Mother's Day", where the artist recorded voices of students and their mothers calling each other from the two sides of the Israel-Syria ceasefire lines. This work uses these recordings to produce a sound installation which explores separation and borders through the affect of the voice.
Paper short abstract:
Le présent exposé se propose de mettre en lumière une forme de représentation et de documentation médiale de la traversée de la méditerranée par des migrants africains et questionne l'intention ainsi que la fonction de l'auto-documentation du vécu sur les embarcations en direction de l'Europe.
Paper long abstract:
Le présent exposé se propose de mettre en lumière une forme de représentation et de documentation médiale de la traversée de la méditerranée par des migrants africains et questionne l'intention ainsi que la fonction de l'auto-documentation du vécu sur les embarcations de fortune en direction de l'Europe.
Cette forme de migration connait une très forte médiatisation par les organes de presse occidentaux touchés par le phénomène des migrations dites irrégulières. Cependant, l'auto-documentation de ce combat entre la vie et la mort en haute mer à l'aide de téléphones portables ou de cameras numériques constitue en soi une forme de médiatisation qui révèle un aspect nouveau de la signification des instruments médiatiques, ainsi que des modes inédits de représentation de vécus extrêmes qu'ils permettent.
En me basant sur le matériel collectionné pendant mes recherches ethnographiques en Italie, surtout à Crotone et à Rome au printemps 2011, à l'occasion des arrivées massives d'immigrés en provenance d'Afrique du Nord, mon exposé tentera d'analyser et de conceptualiser l'acte de documentation et de médiatisation sur le réseau social Facebook d'images saisissantes de la traversée à risques de la méditerranée par des réfugiés Erythréens. S'agit t-il d'une stratégie alternative de narration, d'autobiographie ou d'un nouveau mode de témoignage? Peut-on parler d'une forme de négociation de l'iconographie et de la signification des migrations dont les acteurs sont souvent stigmatisés?
Paper short abstract:
The Palestinian is surrounded by an apparatus of identification that assigns them a place in time and space. "To be continued…", by Sharif Waked suspends this apparatus, where the Palestinian no longer "fits." My paper explores what contemporary art offers ethnography faced with the uncertain.
Paper long abstract:
The Palestinian is surrounded by identity. From the checkpoints across the Occupied Territories and the refugee camps throughout the region, to the blue IDs of Palestinian citizens of Israel, the Palestinian is encircled by an apparatus of identification that assigns them a place in both time and space. The consequences have been a hypersensitivity and disquiet toward identity, an unease that also threatens to become a neurosis. What can the Palestinian do? The video art installation, "To be continued…", by Sharif Waked is a disruption of this apparatus of identification. Waked's "To be continued…" replicates the martyrdom video genre, the final testimony of the suicide bomber. Yet, here the would be suicide bomber reads from 1001 Arabian Nights, a story in which Shahrazad avoids her own execution by each night starting but not continuing a new tale, leaving the King sufficiently intrigued to spare her life for another night. The juxtaposition of the inevitable end implied by the martyr video with the unending reading of 1001 Arabian Nights is reinforced through the looping of the video. What the work achieves is a spatial and temporal suspension in which the Palestinian no longer "fits" within their assigned place of identification. Further, as an event of disidentification, it presents the anthropologist with the unrepresentable. My presentation explores the challenges facing anthropology when confronted with the unrepresentable, and what contemporary visual art can offer ethnography when working with subjects in uncertain times.