KHAS ERC Performance and Politics Webinars – Danyel Ferrari

“Absolutely Vile” or “Powerful”: Immediate Memorialization and the Subject of “Empathy” in Art on Forced Migration

Speaker: Danyel M. Ferrari

Moderator: Berkem Yanıkcan

Time: Wednesday, November 3, 2021 at 7:30 pm Istanbul (GMT +3)

12.30 pm New York, 4.30 pm London, 5.30 pm Central European

Please register in advance for this webinar:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88677142380

Meeting ID: 886 7714 2380 Passcode: 234015

In the years following the summer of 2015, primarily regarded as the “deadliest summer” in forced migration, numerous artworks have appeared in response to migrant deaths at sea. Two, in particular, Ai Weiwei’s #safepassage and Christophe Büchel’s Barca Nostra, utilize similar modes of memorialization and share a problematic reliance on humanitarian discourses yet have been met with distinctly different public receptions. The sorting of these artworks into a polarized opposition between “vile” and opportunistic, on the one hand, and “powerful” and empathetic on the other, offers insights into how the visual discourse of feeling around art in response to such deaths is constructed and informs the subjectivities of their audiences. This presentation considers that the polar opposition between the “vile” and the “powerful” ascribed to these two artworks might arise not from differences in how they construct an image of “the refugee” but rather in how they facilitate the construction and representation of the viewer as a “moral” neoliberal subject of empathy (“IRL” and via social media).

Danyel Ferrari is a PhD Candidate at Rutgers University’s School of Communication and Information Studies, in the Department of Journalism and Media Studies. She earned her MA in Gender Studies at Central European University, focusing on International and European Refugee Law. She holds an MFA from the Hunter College City University of New York and a Bachelors’ degree in Fine Art and Visual Critical Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has a professional background in art and arts administration. Her doctoral research focuses on engagement with public art as a form of political subjectivity production through effect and public performance, both on-site and on social media. She is particularly interested in how affective response is mobilized in artworks that address complex political issues and what political ends affect work.

This webinar series and the “Staging National Abjection” research project are sponsored by a European Research Commission Starting Grant (ERC-2019-StG, Grant ID: 852216).

Website: https://stagingabjection.com/

Twitter: @StagingAbject

Instagram: @stagingabjection

Facebook Page: ERC Staging National Abjection/ERC Ulusal Abjeksiyonu Sahnelemek