- Convenors:
-
Raminder Kaur
(University of Sussex)
Mariagiulia Grassilli (University of Sussex)
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- Format:
- Panel Discussion
- Start time:
- 28 March, 2021 at
Time zone: Europe/London
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
We explore representations and performances against racism as 'catalytic signifiers' that contribute to empowering narratives and uprisings, whilst investigating the ripple effects that re-thinking and reclaiming icons - films, statues, monuments, sounds etc. - have for social change and equality. Session 1: Catalysis?
Long Abstract:
Viral videos, murals, graffiti, performance activism, tumbling statues, and Black Atlantic film screenings are all part of empowering audio-visual-digital narratives that contribute to the rising momentum against ongoing institutional racism on the backs of the legacies of colonialism, slavery and exploitation across the world. Our panel sets out to explore such representations and performances as 'catalytic signifiers' in moments of rupture that have contributed to explosive uprisings, whilst also investigating the ripple effects that re-thinking and reclaiming icons such as films, statues, museums, monuments, streets, sites names and sounds are having for social change and equality in contemporary and historical eras.
By denouncing police brutality, capturing and sharing films of racist violent attacks, and/or digitally amplifying anti-racism protests across the world, audio-visual-digital conduits have connected local and global struggles for rights and recognition - from the Rhodes Must Fall movement that started in South Africa, Black Lives Matter in US and UK to migrants 'braccianti' rights in Italy, indigenous communities, Palestinians in Israeli occupied territories among other ethno-racial minorities. Meanwhile catalytic imagery such as victims of state-corporate brutality from the townships of Johannesburg to the favelas of Rio de Janeiro and the plains of South Dakota have ignited such protests. This is amid growing awareness of the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on Black, migrant, minority, and indigenous communities - further linking social exclusion and health inequalities to ethnic/racial discrimination. We welcome contributions on any of these and related themes that examine the catalytic use of audio-visual-digital imagery in historical and contemporary movements for ethnic/racial equality.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
A visual essay as a global journey of the multiple demonstrations of protest and solidarity across the world, reflecting on how Black Lives Matter sparked actions of solidarity and demands for justice against police violence - everywhere connected by widespread inequality and institutional racism.
Paper long abstract:
Social media, global news, graffitis, murals, performances have visually accompanied the thousands of people who have marched across cities in every part of the world giving support to the Black Lives Matter movement sparked again in June 2020 by George Floyd's infamous murder. Local and global struggles have adapted the call for justice to their contexts of injustices whilst denouncing police brutality against Blacks and First People in the US, aboriginals in Australia, 'braccianti' in Italy, Palestinians in the Middle East. From the townships of Johannesburg to the favelas of Rio de Jaineiro and the plains of South Dakota, a global movement was visually captured through smartphones, news reporters, viral videos and art work. Performative parading and artistic actions were symbols of visual resistance alongside celebrity presence and filmmakers visual statements.
A collage of images from multiple places in different contexts, here aims to reflect on the powerful force of collective action and offer a visual sense of the global dimension of the protest.
Paper short abstract:
What exactly is the spark that ignites protest when it comes to visual/audio-visual imagery? What makes for a viral (audio-)visual phenomenon when it comes to anti-racist/xenophobic movements? At what point can the specificities of racial identities dissolve while still mindful of racist injustices?
Paper long abstract:
The Vietnamese girl fleeing a Napalm attack; the videoed police beatings of Rodney King; the lifeless boy Alan Kurdi on a beach; the chokehold on George Floyd against his murmurs ‘I can’t breathe’ – these are just a few (audio—)visual signifiers that catalysed a swell of anti-racist and anti-xenophobic protest in modern times. While imagery might not on its own trigger a movement, it can certainly amplify the moment into a movement. In this paper, I consider what are the features of viral imagery in a world that is super-saturated with imagery? How can and do visual and audio-visual signifiers catalyse emotional and physical reactions that can escalate? At what point can the specificity of racial identities dissolve while still retaining race—bound or racist injustices in sight?
Umberto Eco talks about the photograph’s potential for ‘argumentative capacity’ such that ambiguity is reduced and imagery is made to speak; and in the case of audio-visual footage, the spoken is amplified to speak for all. But we need exercise caution when the phenomena unleash liberal humanism – ‘race does not matter’ and essentially ‘we are all the same’. In this paper, therefore, I revisit Paul Gilroy’s ‘planetary humanism’ that works against political and intellectual divisions based on race for they continuing Eurocentric discourse or ‘codes’. Calling it a transformative and performative planetary humanism, I propose that while going beyond race becomes critical to socio-political change, organising and raising awareness around race remains essential to challenge the morphing of hierarchical and racialised regimes.
Paper short abstract:
Taking inspiration from the Gramscian interpretation of catharsis, this paper is analysing the imagery around toppled statues in the summer of 2020 in the UK, and probing into the limits and potentialities of their catalytic dynamism and cathartic nature.
Paper long abstract:
In the UK and the US the summer of 2020 saw the media landscape being saturated with images of toppled statues. From graffitied Confederate statues to a Columbus engulfed in flames in the US, all the way to the dumping of Edward Colston into Bristol harbour and the quick and quiet removal of yet another slave trader, Robert Milligan, in the UK. The falling of one statue prompted the falling of the next. Catalytic in their dynamism, soon all eyes were, yet again, on Rhodes with a banner in blood red writing appearing on the Oxford High Street “Rhodes you’re next”, and perhaps more ambitiously on that of Churchill in Parliament square.
Wrapped up in memes, photographs, gifs and videos these catalytic signifiers indicated a rupture in the epoch of coloniality. Frustration and anger regarding racialised covid-19 inequalities, the injustice of Grenfell, the Windrush scandal and police brutality erupted and was directed at statutes. Focusing on the UK especially, this paper is interrogating just how catalytic these moments were, for whom and how. Delving into their limits, imaginations and potentialities, it argues that they were catalytic for inducing moments of catharsis, in the Gramscian terms. Shattering statues which emanate affective material violence, in a cathartic spectacle and catalytic knock on effect, speaks of a radical political potentiality of the public. Yet, it is crucial to interrogate how far this potential is able to penetrate engrained racist structures and catalyse change, and how much this catharsis has been re-appropriated and devoured.