“Conflict Reporting” on Third Text, Volume 35, Issue 2 (2021)

Conflict Reporting
Aestheticising Objectivity
By Alfredo Cramerotti & Lauren Mele
Pages 248-262 | Published online: 29 Jan 2021 | Published in print: February 2021
Abstract
In 2001, artists Broomberg and Chanarin documented a day in the Iraq war. The result was a visual yet non-descript narrative, achieved with light and presence; a physical documentation of their journey titled The Day Nobody Died. In 1968 photojournalist Eddie Adams captured Saigon Execution in Vietnam, also a war-time image but with the lens of reportage. The former is a rendition of their experience, not bound by the constraints and facets of aestheticising fact. The latter was presented as news and was the receiver of outrage and scrutiny as such. This article explores how representations of humanitarian crises and wartime are complicit in their perpetuation, and how art demonstrates an attempt at representing such events as futile. We seek to establish a link between what is viewed and what is reported; what is seen and what remains outside the picture; an attempt to unravel what the difference is between viewing and witnessing.
Abstract available at https://doi.org/10.1080/09528822.2021.1873003
‘Conflict Reporting’ on Switch [On Paper] Issue September 2020
Image: Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin, The Press Conference, June 9, 2008 (detail) from The DayNobody Died, 2008
Observing the limits of photojournalism in the face of humanitarian and wartime tragedies, artists have sought ways to bear witness to human suffering freed from the grip of media and government powers. Their approach is not without problems. Perhaps their critical potential lies in testing these limits.
An investigation by Alfredo Cramerotti and Lauren Mele for Switch [On Paper], the only international news weekly where art and culture serve as a window on the world.
Full text here: https://www.switchonpaper.com/en/conflict-reporting/
Forewords | Hyperimages and Hyperimaging
This collection of short essays sometimes dances around issues and takes an oblique approach to the subject of the hyperimage, nevertheless serving to augment our understanding of the idea. What is unique about this book is thirty five pieces of writing, now approaching one theme, which, due to the nature of the commissioning of the individual texts, all enter the subject from different points, with differing influences and different spatial/temporal considerations.
Not only has the accumulation of the texts taken place over time, traversing projects, artists and locations; it has also occurred in tandem with technological developments which have served to shape much of our activity, both quotidian and also professionally as cultural producers.
Forms of Tension
Ewa Axelrad // Profile of the Artist
By Alfredo Cramerotti
THE SEEN
Download the full Artist Profile here
Press coverage for MOSTYN exhibitions: Irma Blank and Laura Reeves
Roven n°12: Les Rituels du dessin: SUR LE RITUEL. CINQ QUESTIONS À IRMA BLANK
by Alfredo Cramerotti, Irma Blank, Joana Neves [Ed.]
15 March 2016
Daily Post: What’s On / Q&A
20 February 2015
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