Christiane Brosius Are There Forms of Media Representation of Extreme Crises that Avoid Commodification and Spectacle?
In the face of extreme crises, such as natural disasters or national catastrophes, media representation frequently tends to be voyeuristic and to transform these events into spectacles. Considering this tendency, CHRISTIANE BROSIUS investigated whether there are forms of representation that allow to be close to people’s suffering and yet not to commodify it. She chose the 2015 earthquake in Nepal as a starting point and used both images uploaded to social media as well as traditional anthropological fieldwork for her research. In this video, she explains that in the context of Nepal, she discovered not only that artists can avoid commodification of disaster by representing and emphasising ordinary everyday acts but also that artists quickly developed a network to help and to respond to the needs of their communities in the aftermath of the earthquake.
LT Video Publication DOI: https://doi.org/10.21036/LTPUB10420
Art in the Aftermath of a Catastrophe. Gazing, Walking, Participating in the City
- Christiane Brosius
- In: Breaking Views. Engaging Art in Post-Earthquake Nepal (eds. C. Brosius and S. Maharjan)
- Published in 2017