On the 1st April, Steve Swindells came to give the second half of his lecture series. This lecture was called 'Regarding the pain of others' which related to the transcript of Susan Sontag's book of the same name. Steve discussed the moral duty and ethical awareness of photographs, specifically photographs of torture and victims of war. Throughout the presentation, no images were shown however at the end we were then asked if we should see the images related to the presentation, this produced a very heated discussion;
- Gender division: Boys are more open to images of violence (video games and films).
- Selfish: we may be traumatised by the images.
- Censorship: we have a right to decided what we should see, our choice.
- Are galleries the right place to for the display of these images?
- Death: fundamental part of life - should be open to images of it.
- The images are a part of our history - we need to be aware of what has happened in the past in order to prevent it in the future.
- Whether we view the images may depend on who is the victim, perpetrator and audience.
- Are we 'innocent'? Is innocence merely distancing ourselves from the truth?
- Everyone is capable of killing if forced...
During the afternoon session, we were asked to respond, in groups, to the discussions from the morning. Can the suffering of others be portrayed in a manner that respects and maintains the human dignity of the victim(s)? How can we best show our creativity when responding to acts of violence without undermining our humanity?
As a group; myself, Emma, Nicola and Dominic decided that we wanted to produce a piece that represented the violence act but without any reference to a specific event and person, to retain the victims dignity. We reponded by preforming a violent act; we slashed the top layer of paper, and then on the underneath layer used red to represent the blood shed, over the top we then wrote some titles from Goya's etchi
ngs in spanish. We chose to write the text in spanish to remove/distance the viewer from the act; censoring the piece of art. However at the same time, we also allowed the opportunity for people to take the initiative and investigate further into the topic. Some of the titles used in the piece were; 'Swallow it, dog', 'One can't look', 'And they are like wild beasts' and 'That's tough'.Yet again, I really enjoyed this lecture and drawing session. I felt I absorbed more from the lecture and the drawing session allowed me to express my thoughts and feelings. The group situation also provoked further discussions on the topic as we had to combine our thoughts to produced a collective piece of work. Overall I was pleased with the result, and after further thought I realised the piece was similar to the work of Lucio Fontana, despite being created for different reasons.
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