麻豆影院

CU 麻豆影院 art history professor explores how art can create community to counter violence

Leo Tolstoy once mused that art could thwart violence, writing, 鈥淎rt should cause violence to be set aside, and it is only art that can accomplish this.鈥澨�

A CU 麻豆影院 art professor tends to agree.听

In her upcoming book,听听(Duke University Press, May 2023) 麻豆影院 Assistant Professor of听Art and Art History听Brianne Cohen听delves deeply into the role that art can play in creating public commitment to curbing structural violence in Europe.

Art often looks at past violence, and has, at times, enabled it. In听Don鈥檛 Look Away, Cohen explores how it can be used to prevent violence, particularly by helping to create a 鈥渟hared social sense of vulnerability鈥� and 鈥渕ass stranger relationality.鈥澨�

鈥淎rt can have a critical role to play not only in challenging injurious public discourse but also in actively reconceiving the groundwork of more ethically self-reflexive, pluralistic public spheres,鈥� she writes. 鈥淚 wish to transform a question of informed public action in the aftermath of violence to one of the informed public prevention of both direct and more indirect aggression.鈥�

Cohen grew up in Dallas and spent four years living in Germany as a child. She later did graduate work in Germany, London, Brussels and elsewhere in Europe. Her experiences鈥� including moving through German society with a traditional Jewish name, to Irish Republican Army terrorist threats against her brother鈥檚 British school, violence in response to the publication of cartoons depicting the Muslim Prophet Muhammad in Denmark and rising anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic and anti-Roma sentiment in Europe鈥攁ll helped shape her interest in broader questions about 鈥減ublic spheres.鈥�

鈥淭hose real instances of violence raised questions of who belonged, in terms of community,鈥� she says, 鈥渁nd the meaning of a pluralistic society.鈥�

Her book approaches the question of 鈥渨hat it means to make a public sphere through a visual realm and how to bring strangers together around common matters of concern鈥� via an examination of the work of three participatory, 鈥渞ecursive鈥� artists, German filmmaker听, Swiss artist听, and the art collective Henry VIII鈥檚 Wives.

Reflecting on violence and vulnerable populations in Europe, which has often generated 鈥渇ear-based publics,鈥� Cohen argues that their backward-looking art is a more potent tool to prevent future violence than art focused on current events or bringing perpetrators to justice.

鈥淚鈥檓 really interested in how we prevent violence in transnational space, and the question of art as nonviolent action. I鈥檓 trying to think about how we can prevent violence in the first place, not just thinking about the aftermath, what kind of images and artwork can change public attitudes and the conditions that allow this kind of recurring violence to happen,鈥� she says. 鈥淢aybe it鈥檚 utopian, but art can change public mindsets.鈥�

She examines Farocki鈥檚 2007 film,听, which he created from 1939 Nazi footage of a Dutch refugee camp for Jews fleeing Germany that was subsequently converted into a labor camp and stopover for prisoners who were later sent to death camps.听

Cohen highlights the image of a 10-year-old girl named听, which became 鈥渁 quintessential image of the Jews鈥� subjugation in the Netherlands.鈥� But as a 1990s documentary revealed, the girl was 鈥渋n fact Sinti,鈥� Cohen writes, highlighting a 鈥渓esser-known genocide.鈥澨�

The film 鈥渞ecursively brings into public circulation and awareness questions of slow and direct violence for contemporary Romani peoples, a fact that has not received any in-depth interpretation in film or art historical scholarship,鈥� Cohen writes.听

鈥淲ithout a historically self-reflexive attention to how publics have perpetuated such violence, it would arguably be impossible to begin the project of actively envisioning a pluralistic, nonviolent social imaginary in the future.鈥�

Hirschhorn鈥檚 installation of his 鈥溾�� in a Turkish-German neighborhood in Kassel, Germany, generated controversy, in part because he was perceived as an outsider imposing his vision on marginalized people. But Cohen argues that his installations in 鈥渂anlieues鈥濃�攁 derogatory French term for immigrant suburbs鈥攅ffectively link 鈥渄isparate, embodied, and virtual publics around such common matters of concern.鈥澨�

With the atomization of information and people in the internet age, art can play a role in countering violence by creating community, she says.

鈥淭ypically, you can solve questions of civic relations or matters of concern through the local community,鈥� she says. 鈥淏ut once you get to a huge, transnational space鈥攐nline, social media鈥攈ow do you connect strangers in ethical ways? Artists are part of that. They can create publics that ethically bind people together.鈥�

At the top of the page: A scene from Harun Farocki's film Images of the world and the inscription of war, 1988 film. Courtesy Goethe-Institut London.