90713 - LAB - Boîte à miracles (M-Z)

Learning outcomes

Students acquire the main tools necessary in the field of exhibition design and integrate the project experience with historical, theoretical and critical knowledge. In particular, students acquire the skills to develop a conceptual and metaphorical project, both to translate the theoretical issues discussed during the courses and to develop a personal vision on the principles, criteria and objectives to be achieved during the various research phases. They also acquire the methodological basis for the graphic and technical representation of the exhibition project

Course contents

In the shadows. The politics and ethics of engaging with images of violence

Over the last few decades, the widespread availability of consumer electronics and the rising influence of citizen journalism have afforded marginalised communities and their allies an unprecedented ability to document the violence they have been subjected to. From videos of anti-Black police brutality shot on smartphones, to images of border deaths produced by nongovernmental rescue organisations present in the Mediterranean, the evidence captured through these practices of “sousveillance” (vigilance from below) have been crucial in exposing state and corporate violence globally, and has become a rallying point in ongoing struggles for social justice.

Yet, the viral circulation of images of racialised subjects in situations of extreme vulnerability and abuse has also raised fundamental ethical and political questions: how to denounce violence without infringing the dispossessed “right to opacity” (E. Glissant)? Or, as black feminist scholar Saidiya Hartman has eloquently put it, “how does one revisit the scene of subjection without replicating the grammar of violence?” And under what conditions “do the possibilities outweighs the dangers of looking (again)?”

The course will interrogate the politics of producing, circulating, exhibiting and consuming representations of violence against marginalised and racialised communities by engaging with some iconic controversies that have emerged around such difficult images. We will collectively discuss a series of aesthetic and conceptual strategies to navigate the tension between the “the necessity of looking and the difficulty of showing” (Forensic Architecture), starting neither from a place of absolute visibility, nor from one of complete darkness, but rather from the liminal space that exists between these two extremes: in the shadows.

Readings/Bibliography

Books and Journal articles

Alexander, Elizabeth. ‘“Can You Be Black and Look at This?”: Reading the Rodney King Video(s)’. Public Culture 7, no. 1 (1 January 1994): 77–94.

Azoulay, Ariella. The Civil Contract of Photography. New York: Zone Books, 2008.

Cole, Teju. Black Paper: Writing in a Dark Time. Berlin Family Lectures. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2023. In particular the essays: Gossamer World: On Santu Mofokeng; A Crime Scene at the Border; Restoring the Darkness; and Ethics.

Cole, Teju. Known and Strange Things: Essays. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2016. In particular the essays: A True Picture of Black Skin and Death in the Browser Tab.

Dattatreyan, Ethiraj Gabriel, and Isaac Marrero‐Guillamón. ‘Pedagogies of the Senses Multimodal Strategies for Unsettling Visual Anthropology’. Visual Anthropology Review 37, no. 2 (September 2021): 267–89.

Gooding-Williams, Robert, ed. Reading Rodney King/Reading Urban Uprising. New York: Routledge, 1993. In particular, Kimberle Crenshaw and Gary Peller, Reel Time/Real Justice; and Judith Butler, Endangered/Endangering schematic Racism and White Paranoia.

Watson, Ryan. ‘In the Wakes of Rodney King: Militant Evidence and Media Activism in the Age of Viral Black Death’. The Velvet Light Trap 84 (September 2019): 34–49.

Magazine articles

Clayton, Jace. ‘As Brilliant as the Sun’. Frieze, 22 February 2018. https://www.frieze.com/article/brilliant-sun .

Félix, Doreen St. ‘The “Radical Edits” of Alexandra Bell’. The New Yorker, 31 July 2017. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-radical-edits-of-alexandra-bell .

Joselit, David. ‘Material Witness: Visual Evidence and the Case of Eric Garner’. Artforum, February 2015. https://www.artforum.com/print/201502/material-witness-visual-evidence-and-the-case-of-eric-garner-49798 .

Films, installations, artworks

Arthur Jafa, Dreams Are Colder Than Death (2014)

Arthur Jafa, Love Is The Message, The Message Is Death (2016)

Alfredo Jaar, The Rwanda Project (1994-1998)

Alexandra Bell, Counternarratives

Forensic Architecture, The Killing of Harith Augustus, https://forensic-architecture.org/investigation/the-killing-of-harith-augustus

Forensic Oceanography, Sea Watch vs the Libyan Coast Guard, https://forensic-architecture.org/investigation/seawatch-vs-the-libyan-coastguard

Border Forensics, The death of Blessing Matthew – a counter-investigation on violence at the alpine frontier, https://www.borderforensics.org/investigations/blessing-investigation/

Exhibitions

Forensic Architecture and the Invisible Institute presentation of the investigation into the killing of Harith Augustus at the Chicago Architecture Biennial, 2019. https://forensic-architecture.org/programme/exhibitions/chicago-architecture-biennial-2019

Forensic Oceanography presentation of the installation Liquid Violence at Short Theatre, 2020 in Rome. https://forensic-architecture.org/programme/exhibitions/liquid-violence-at-short-festival

Penumbra, Complesso dell’Ospedaletto, Venezia, 2022. http://inbetweenartfilm.com/en/penumbra/

Teaching methods

Discussions, screenings, lectures, student presentations, reviews of ongoing work.

Assessment methods

50% of the final mark is assigned on the basis of participation and presentations in class. The remaining 50% is based on the basis of a final project. Students (divided in small groups) will select one (or a series of) “difficult images” and develop an audio-visual installation project (physical or digital) that will reflect on the (non-)presentation of such images.

Teaching tools

Group discussions and peer-to-peer learning activities play an essential part of this module and every student is expected to take part in them. It is important that you read the required material for each session in advance and come to class prepared to discuss it. Participation, however, is not just about talking, it’s also about listening and noticing. This is particularly important in a multi-disciplinary group where we each need to take particular care to use language and references everyone can understand. It’s up to all of us to create a positive dynamic in class where everyone feels respected in their differences and comfortable to talk. If you know you usually talk a lot in class, make sure you make space and time for others to intervene. If are nervous at the idea of raising your hand, remember we all do: we want to hear from you. There is no silly question except the one you don’t ask. Some of the materials we engage in class might be distressing because they deal with violence and harm. Feel free to leave and take breaks if a specific discussion is affecting you emotionally and let’s all try to look out for each other.

Office hours

See the website of Lorenzo Pezzani