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Guest contribution by Dagmar Punter: The researcher as curator — extending or limiting visual peace literacy? (Part 2)

Despite the ‘pictorial turn’ in peace studies, integrating visual research methods remains challenging.[i] Academia seems hesitant to put the visual at the heart of its endeavors. Scholars tend to ‘capture’ and categorize meanings by ‘reading images’ instead of allowing themselves to be ‘captured by’ the image and its evocative and imaginative potential.[ii] The image as data, however, demands the researcher to first ‘sit’ with the image and question which certainties might be disrupted. We often approach the image as text, while visual analysis may require alternative methodological steps and reporting techniques.[iii] It is important to ask: ‘What does the image do to us?’ Instead of: ‘How can we label it?’.

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Guest contribution by Dagmar Punter: “This is supposed to look like a dove” — engaging the public, visualizing peace (Part I)

At the time of writing more than 26.000 black and white ‘Peace Now’ posters are spread and attached to public spaces across the Netherlands. The organizers of the initiative, which started in the ‘peace city’ Utrecht, describe the free poster (image 2) as a ‘positive conversation starter’ in the context of increasing polarization.[i] Citizens are, by making the peace sign visible, enabled to express their feelings of powerlessness and ‘wishes for the world’, while wars at a distance continue to rage. According to its makers, the black and white colors represent current societal contrasts. The bold lines also shape the dove and olive branch, two popular examples of peace symbolism. The font of the poster recalls memories of the ‘60s and ‘70s anti-war protests.

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Exhibition Review – Dorothea Lange: The Great Depression

“I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions. … She told me her age, that she was 32. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean-to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it.” (SOURCE: Dorothea Lange, Photographs of a Lifetime, New York: Aperture, 1982, p. 76)

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Exhibition Review: The Struggle of Memory II

Memory has become a keyword in the arts, the social sciences and the humanities when addressing the past and its legacies. To remember is an individual faculty but, as individuals normally remember as members of social groups, also a collective faculty. Individual and collective memories do not always coincide; in different social groups, individuals remember differently what seems to be the same event. Likewise, personal memories and official narratives are not always identical. Indeed, there is often a profound tension between what individuals remember and what they are required to remember according to official narratives. Insisting on individual memories can put people at risk. Memory is never fixed, it is always emerging, shaped in light of and adapted to present requirements.  

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Exhibition Review: URBAͶ [R]EVOLUTIOͶ – Exposição de arte urbana

Urban(R)Evolution chronicles the fascinating development of urban art, beginning with its early stages as tags, graffiti, and subway pieces, progressing through the influential middle period and, eventually, giving rise to street art. The art form originated with spray paint and wheat paste but quickly evolved to incorporate various techniques from around the globe. The explosive combination of graffiti, breakdancing, and rapping led to a worldwide eruption of popular expression. […] The revolutionary aspect of the show lies in the intentional accessibility of the artwork from the urban art movement. The artists’ openness to working on any surface and their use of diverse media and techniques were groundbreaking for a global art movement. Urban(R)Evolution explores the phenomenal creative explosion that swept across the world, facilitated by the power of mass media and the low barrier to entry for artists. SOURCE: https://urbanrevolution.pt/en/home/ Curators: Pauline Foessel and Pedro Alonzo

The city of Lisbon is an apt place for this exhibition. Over the last ten years, the city has experienced an urban revolution in terms of commercialization, modernization and gentrification, selling out its unique, if partially dilapidated, structure and atmosphere in exchange for revenue stemming from investment capital and the tourist industry which increasingly overwhelm the city’s infrastructure.

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Exhibition Review: The Struggle of Memory

Memory has become a keyword in the arts, the social sciences and the humanities when addressing the past and its legacies (Salzman 2006). To remember is an individual faculty but, as individuals normally remember as members of social groups, also a collective faculty (Halbwachs 1992). Individual and collective memories do not always coincide; in different social groups, individuals remember differently what seems to be the same event. Likewise, personal and official memories and the narratives derived from and legitimized through them are not always identical. Indeed, there is often a profound tension between what individuals remember and what they should remember according to official narratives. Insisting on individual memories can put people at risk. Memory is politics.

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