A5 book, 67 pages, kettle stitch binding
How are we vulnerable (to images)?— a
question that steered me from a very specific object of
study to an array of concerns that extend beyond the scope
of this thesis. I reversed this question throughout the process (“How are images vulnerable?”), and at times
tried to reduce it (“How are we vulnerable?”). For a while,
I prioritized the image as an object of analysis over the
body, whether it would be my body, a public body or an
imagined one. In the end, the body proved to be inseparable from its image, having left an imprint on the image despite the
author’s intentions, whereas the image affects the body
on several levels, changing both the body that is being
represented and the bodies of those who look at it.
The majority of the objects I name and describe in each chapter are bound together by their shared
premise, claiming to represent martyrs or martyrdom
while they differ in function. Proposed as tools for commemoration, but often transcending this alleged purpose by
other means, some allude to propaganda, when others may
be considered to be self-portraits or simply a means for mourning. These differences were my immediate focus, as to
“compare”, yet their specificities took over shortly thereafter and the mere issue of how they were different did not
seem as central as it once was.
Regarding to what extent the image and the
body of the martyr were linked to persecution and public
death, led me to thinking about vulnerability as a socio-psychological factor. As such, vulnerable bodies and
representations of vulnerability moved to the foreground,
and I attempted to assume the vulnerability of others as the
basis one’s own sense of (bodily) vulnerability. Positing
mourning and permeability as a potential for resistance, I
speculated on a hierarchy of grievability in terms of whose
(public) death would be grievable and who would have the
right to grieve. This all originated from a sense of having been denied grief in the face of martyrs who seemed unreachable (“Is there vulnerability to a smiling martyr?”),
as theirs was claimed to be a meaningful, heroic or at least
inevitable death.
Furthermore, I reflected on what martyrdom could mean in the context of an occupation and/or
resistance, and how self-sacrifice was rendered a source of
self-representation within national liberation movements,
where the representation of a martyr could serve as an icon,
meanwhile her image and act would become inseparable.
When armed struggle and persecution on the basis of identity is in question, martyrdom could also expand its
reach to denote a collective suffering, rendering it potentially meaningful and heroic, making martyrs of those who
would otherwise be considered witnesses.
In the last chapter, I dealt with the “martyress”, a gendered martyr and as such a site for the desires of national patriarchal honor. The martyress led me
to acknowledge how certain bodies could be gendered,
racialized and sexualized and what their alterity could
signify in terms of voyeurism and identification. Drawing
from film theory, I proposed the image of the "female body"
in particular to possess screen-like qualities, a surface for
projections and a source of pleasure. Taking The Bulgarian Martyresses as a point of departure, I contemplated the
complicity of looking at such images and the pleasure that
could be derived from “watching” unveiled bodies and an
aestheticized rendition of violence.
To make way for a practice that concerns
itself with how images and bodies may be vulnerable to
one another, denotes both a study of complicity and a potential for permeability. Whether this would be considered
a “pedagogy of images” or not, it would need to concern
itself not only with what images represent (by themselves
or in relation to each other), but also through which means
they come into being in terms of the tools used to make
them, the mediums they operate within and those who take
part in their “act” as makers and viewers. For me, asking How are
we vulnerable (to images)? was then an initial step as
to coming to terms with our permeability to images — not
only as a burden, and possibly in terms of seeing it as a
potential, especially when our own sense of vulnerability is
in question.