katelynn dunn

Readings in the Garden

October 23 @ 2 – 4 pm

Katelynn: Welcome everyone and thanks for joining us today for Readings in the Garden, readings in public space about critical issues that affect the US and global societal and class ecosystems today. My idea is to bring the public into the space of the garden and situate this as a place for fruitful dialogue about issues such as racism, hierarchical class constructions, body politics, and sexism. Most importantly, artists are invited to read texts that interest them and are impactful for the audience.

Today Karen Dias is going to read an excerpt from Elain Scarry’s book The Body in Pain. She’s reading an excerpt from Chapter 2 titled “The Structure of War: The Juxtaposition of Injured Bodies and Unanchored Issues.” The aim is to create a platform for discussion about war imagery and media ecology.

Karen is an interdisciplinary artist and educator. She’s originally from Mumbai, India and she lives in Brooklyn, NY since 2019. She’s spent 13 years as a documentary photographer, reporting on stories around the subject of women’s rights and social justice in India. She has photographed all across Asia and for 4.5 years worked as a photojournalist for Gulf News in the United Arab Emirates. Her work has been published in The Washington Post, Al Jazeera, BBC, The Guardian, National Geographic, Le Monde, and Courrier International, among others.

She’s known to employ her knowledge and curiosity to investigate the potential function of the image and its meaning in contemporary society. Further to this, she asks the public to reconsider their role and responsibility in the contexts of viewing and creating meaning of the images themselves. She is particularly interested in how marginalized communities are represented in the global media landscape in documentary image-making. 

Her artistic practice has evolved to include sculpture and mixed media, with her longstanding documentary practice informing these as they represent the bordering and merging of our political and personal lives. Through her use of found objects, everyday materials, and photographic image-based processes that interconnect previously seemingly disparate visual and material elements, her work questions the very foundation of socio-political hierarchies.

She brings together juxtaposed representations of institutional, historical, and social forms and ideograms to create new conversations about state power, individual freedoms, and representation.

Dias’ work poses to the viewer questions about their role as a participant or witness in acts of violence and oppression. By interweaving contemporary visual and material cultural signals through an intersectional and feminist political lens she brings into question the emblems, icons, and motifs of violence, power, conflict, and death, probing their limitations in representations of our bodies, landscapes, pain, and suffering.

With this experience you can see that she has a deep concern for the photographic medium and its potential to communicate the very important notion of veracity regarding images of people, contexts, landscapes, as well as a keen interest in the realistic voice of the photographer.  

Again, thank you very much Karen for being here and introducing us to this reading as well as your perspective on images in contemporary media.

Karen: Thank you for having me, and I am very happy to present this text.

Here is a short intro about the book and the author.

Elaine Scarry is an American essayist and professor of English and American Literature and Language. She is the Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value at Harvard University. She is a recipient of the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism and author of The Body in Pain, On Beauty and Being Just, and Who Defended the Country? And Resisting Representation.

The Body in Pain is known as a definitive study of pain and inflicting pain.  Scarry argues that physical pain leads to destruction and the unmaking of the human world, whereas human creation at the opposite end of the spectrum leads to the making of the world. Part philosophical meditation, part cultural critique, this work explores the nature of physical suffering. The study of pain is based on a wide range of sources including literature and art, medical case histories, documents on torture compiled by Amnesty International, legal transcripts of personal injury trials, and military and strategic writings by such figures as Clausewitz, Churchill, Liddell Hart, and Henry Kissinger.

Not only is physical pain difficult to describe in words, it also actively destroys language, reducing sufferers in the most extreme cases to an inarticulate state of cries and moans. Scarry goes on to analyze the political ramifications of deliberately inflicted pain, specifically in the cases of warfare and torture, and she demonstrates how political regimes use the power of physical pain to attack and break down the sufferer's sense of self. Finally, she turns to examples of artistic and cultural activity; actions achieved in the face of pain and difficulty. (https://www.si.edu/object/siris_sil_656954)

Reading of the text

End of the reading

Katelynn: Thank you again for this reading, and now I have a few questions to ask from our discussions over the past couple weeks. After that, we will open the floor for questions from the audience.

Q&A

Katelynn: So first, I think it’s worth it to perhaps explain a bit about why you chose the text at this point in time. And then, what did it lead to in terms of your art practice?

Karen: A few months ago, a writer friend in India, who has been working on a book about human rights violations and state-sponsored violence sent me a list of books he wanted to read which he couldn’t find in India. He said, “I can’t finish writing my book until I finish reading all of these.” I think he described, very succinctly, in one sentence, how I think when I approach my work too. One of the books on his list was The Body in Pain by Elaine Scarry. I went to Strand and bought the only copy they had. One of the reasons for me to choose this book to read today is that it’s helped me make sense of my own practice which looks at the intersecting of state violence and domesticity, the everyday nature of objects and how they are transformed into structures of danger and tension. A large part of my own thinking in art is a constant conundrum of what my art could do for the viewer, what kinds of questions do I want to arrive at and how we can unentangle some of the ways in which we think about war, conflict or death and suffering. I think it is, essentially, what artists, journalists, activists, poets do, those whose work is concerned with social. justice, especially with working class and marginalized communities, to place ourselves uncomfortably next to someone else’s pain, like learning to read someone’s pulse without touching their wrist.

Somewhere in this book, Scarry says, “…to have great pain is to have certainty; to hear that another person has pain is to have doubt.” While this book largely focuses on the infliction of pain as torture in war and conflict and the political and philosophical ramifications of pain, what resonated with me the most were the personal accounts, recounting of trials and fact-finding that shed so much light on the relation of torture to domestic lives, objects and spaces. A place like this garden could, in a dictatorial regime, be transformed overnight into a prison or execution ground. I think this book allows us to understand that violence is not just violence, it is a physical wound to the flesh and an emotional injury to our souls.

Katelynn: Next, I think it’s important for the discussion and for the deeper reflection on structures to make note of the beginning of the excerpt, which focuses on the room itself. And this being a concentrated space of architectural design, I think we should touch on it.

From the beginning of the text, we see that there is a structural importance that is being called upon in regard to torture and violence.

And this is physical or tangible but is also represented by the invisible social construction of “safety” and of “shelter,” which are then broken down by the torturer, effectively dissociating the tortured from their previous knowledge of what safety may be or has been in the past.

Scarry states, “All aspects of the basic structure – walls, ceiling, windows, doors – undergo this conversion,” (page 1) from safety to a form used against the body. We spoke a bit about this, and about space being subjectively defined, and how the author here speaks of a violent space. (structure and space)

On the second page of the excerpt states, “The appearance of these common domestic objects in torture reports of the 1970s is no more gratuitous and accidental than the fact that so much of our awareness of Germany in the 1940s is attached to the words “ovens,” “showers,” “lampshades,” and “soap.” What about our knowledge of the common object is not an attachment to the punishment and also a detachment to it? By seeing these items every day, we become desensitized to their intense meaning for those who may have found these things to be violently oppressive through their use against humanity? What do you think about the possibility to create dialogue about these objects, or images of objects, in relation to art, your practice?

Karen: Over the last couple of years, I’ve been working largely with everyday objects, razor blades, chillies, safety pins, burlap, medical gauze which comes largely, from my own experiences with violence, domestically and legally and being witness to how the state and domesticity interact to form new structures. There are everyday objects that we use absent-mindedly but which we also fear for the danger or potential for injury they inherently possess. For me, objects are not a replacement for images, but a different, complicated way in which to explore how violence can be represented. These very objects also be used in defense or for safety.

When we look at public protests, the difference in objects used by protesters vs the police or military, they are vastly different in their function. People use objects that are available to them, that are affordable, that are easily purchasable at your dollar store or department store like candles, hand-made signs, face masks, eye protection goggles, tape, wire, rope, etc. unlike objects used by the state, which are specifically manufactured to inflict violence on people. When we experience pain that is caused by an object or in a specific landscape, we will continue to associate that object or space with the pain we experienced. A doctor will look at the same tools very differently than a doctor who is employed by the state to inflict medical pain on prisoners. Having worked as a photojournalist for a very long time, I feel the same responsibility making images as I do with making objects, they still concern real people, they still engage with real world issues even though they are made insularly, inside a studio or within 4 walls. It feels urgent to start to dissect what these very large words like ‘war’ or ‘violence’ actually mean. In the book, the author talks about war being a direct infliction of pain on human flesh. If we start to think of war as a direct violation of an individual’s bodily autonomy, we might start to empathize in ways that we may not have before which is why this book really questions our understanding of pain because it’s something that’s very difficult to describe to another person accurately, let alone photograph or represent meaningfully.

Katelynn: The next question is about violent images. So, how do you think the representation of violent acts and events affects the public within the news media landscape? And, can you speak to your experience representing violence in the media through images?

Karen: I think it’s important to think about what how violence manifests itself and what it can look like, whether its emotional trauma, bodily injury, death, destruction of structures, religious, social and political, destruction of nature and the climate, etc. The violent images that we talk about have very real impacts on the body, mind and physical environments.

In my experience working with newspapers over the past decade, I’ve documented stories about extra judicial killings by the Indian military and anti-mining resistance movements and different social justice issues across India. As a photojournalist, I feel like pain is one of the most difficult things to photograph. It’s evasive, it disappears in a still image. It’s such an ongoing feeling that feels impossible to lock down in a photograph without being overbearing and didactic. When you photograph people who have lost loved ones to state-sponsored torture and violence, you are depicting the aftermath of the event, remnants of the pain may exist but it dissolves into a certain longing or nostalgia in a photograph.

I’ve photographed for a lot of American newspapers on assignment in India and time and again, I would have requests for photos of cows or women in saris. This points directly towards the Orientalist nature of the American media in representing the Global South which is an after-effect of imperialism and colonialism which views our communities as perpetual victims. I think this relates to the art world too where they want our bodies and not our minds. Artists are constantly made to revisit our traumas to validate our work and our cultural histories, largely biased against people of color. Both journalism and art, while they sit at loggerheads, often engage in such contrived visual narratives. In our attempts to invoke empathy or concern, image makers walk a very risky line in othering already marginalized people. I do not mean to suggest that we should not engage with issues that do not directly affect or concern us, because the politics of Somalia affect you as much the politics of India does even if it’s not immediately visible. I cannot claim to have a cohesive answer to this question but a good example would be to think about what the photographs of Emmet Till’s photographs did for the American Civil Rights movement vs what Dana Schutz’s painting achieved. We need to listen more carefully to what people are saying about how they want to be represented. For a long time as a young photojournalist, I thought the work we do was about ‘giving a voice to the voiceless’ and it took me a while to understand that nobody is voiceless, the impact is in the act of listening.

Katelynn: So, in light of the controversy around the 12th Berlin Biennale where Iraqi artists removed some of their works from the show when another work by Jean-Jacques Lebel titled Poison soluble. Scènes de l’occupation américaine à Bagdad (Soluble Poison. Scenes from the American Occupation in Baghdad) from 2013, was displayed showing images of torture in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison, I think the question about what can be shown, what should be shown, and the different opinions about this are quite relevant, and I wouldn’t say further to this, but underneath this very visible issue in contemporary art and curating there is the generalized question about censorship. And censorship happens in various forms, from individual choices to not share information to much grander legal restrictions on what can and cannot be shown via images. How do you think the art world and documentary photography can contend with fetishization of violence and self-censorship?

Karen: That’s a very large, complicated question with very different answers depending on who is being represented, who is viewing the image, and what the intent and final form is. You mentioned the controversy around the latest Berlin Biennale. For those who may not be aware, several Iraqi artists pulled out of the biennial in protest of a French artist’s depiction of the torture of prisoners in the Abu Ghraib prisons in Iraq. For context, the exhibit was made up of larger-than-life size prints of the Iraqi POWs being tortured, heads covered, naked, handcuffed, bloody and injured, with their torturers, the American troops posing with thumbs-up and smiling in the background. The images are extremely graphic and disturbing. This is one context.

Another context for the same set of images would be when these images were initially published across the world. The Abu Ghraib torture photos were handed over to the Army’s investigation team by an American soldier who was working at the prison. These images were first published on CBS and The New Yorker and then went on to be published across the world. A lot of the photos blurred the prisoner’s faces and it was one of the first times that the US’ human rights violations were brought to international light in such a photographic manner. Besides the soldiers being tried criminally, international shame, investigations, and activism and organizing around anti-war efforts; we can say that publishing those images had created a ripple effect around the world that was largely quantifiable. Over the years, the US government had released thousands of images of its troops torturing prisoners of war.

So, what changes in the context of the Berlin Biennale and the re-publishing of these images in large scale? There are a few things to consider when we talk about the viewing of violent images and I’ll put forward a list of questions: Who is the audience and what does that audience take away from viewing images of prisoners of war being tortured? What is the intended outcome of the artist/photographer (i.e. French artist VS the American soldiers who made the photographs)? Where is it being displayed? Does the location have any bearing on the people being depicted? Finally, how do I want to be represented and do I want to be represented this way?

One of the main distinctions between the use of violent images in journalism vs in the art world, is that the artworld doesn’t have to live up to a code of ethics, fact-checking, truth bearing, legality or responsibility to communities being represented, like photojournalism does so the boundaries with appropriating and working with images of violence as an artist are non-existent. You are responsible for yourself and your own code of ethics that may or may not align with the morals of others or have any liability. There is no framework in the art world to distinguish whether, what the art world calls ‘research’ is factual and correct, whether information is based in truth, whether your social practice is ethical, or if the people and stories you represent through somebody else’s labor is truthful. To circle back, how and why we display images of violence comes down to what is the intention, what is the outcome and what is the platform and does it serve the people or the cause being depicted? And, if not, then am I engaging with this? How can I engage with this in a meaningful way?

Katelynn: For example, there is an American policy banning images of American soldiers that are either rinjured or dead that’s existed since the early 90s, from the immediate post-Gulf War era. I think the media landscape is greatly obscured, so the public never has the full picture of how greater powers may be putting citizens at risk. How important is it for contemporary art to confront the censorship of war images, and to actually present images of violence, not to fetishize or shock even, but to form a dialogue?

Karen: In 2009, the US military reversed an 18-year-old policy which would now allow news media to photograph flag-draped coffins of American soldiers’ dead bodies brought back to the homeland. The caveat was that the family members of the dead soldiers must have a say if they would like their family members coffins to be photographed. Since the Gulf War in 1991, the US military had banned the American news media from publishing images of soldiers’ dead bodies or their coffins – a policy which was passed under President George Bush’s administration. The argument was that such images provided no dignity to the dead and acted as an invasion of privacy of their living family members. By April 2004, a year after the American invasion of Iraq, almost 700 US soldiers had died. On April 18, 2004, The Seattle Times published a front-page photo that depicted 20 coffins draped in the American flag inside a plane., in a long row as the interior of the plane and the coffins recede in the distance. About 8 individuals are to be seen in the image, similarly receding into the background like the coffins. The individuals are blurred and not entirely in focus but appear to be wearing military fatigues bending over the coffins, in what looks like a preparation for take-off. The image was taken by Tami Salicio, a government contractor working for a cargo company when the plane made a pit-stop in Kuwait en route the Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, USA. She forwarded the photograph to a friend and it found its way to the front page of The Seattle Times with her permission. The image set off a media storm, outrage in the government and the military and Silicio was fired from her job. The Seattle Times had breached the 1991 policy of ban on such images. The newspaper said that they felt a sense of responsibility to show the American public the true cost of the America invasion of Iraq. Tami would later tell the media that she was moved by the amount of human freight she was moving and felt compelled to take the image.

While we can imagine that the most obvious reasons for any government’s restriction on publishing images of their wounded or dead soldiers are put in place to protect public morale and support of their war, lest the bodies of dead soldiers make the public rethink their position in support of their government. Though arguments can be made that this image ban is a violation of America’s First Amendment Act, it is also important to remember that the US military placed great consideration for the grieving families allowing them to have a say in whether they would like their dead troops to be remembered in death through photographs. It would seem fair that all families grieving for their dead, loved ones must be given the right to consent, the right to privacy and the right to decide on the publication of such images but the speed at which news is now required to be disseminated may not allow for such detailed consent-forming. Does this absolve us, especially those bringing us the news, from this important detail? 

While the outrage over this photograph was widespread, very few called attention to the fact that perhaps public anger might have been misplaced, that we should have been angered that so many men and women were dead, that we should not have agreed to see our fellow Americans returning home merely as bodies and that maybe our anger should perhaps have been sitting outside this photograph, in the peripheries of what we see as real and in the playgrounds of our imagination that has the capacity to fit a lot more dead bodies outside this frame. There could be an argument made over the distinction as to whom our bodies belong to and how we can claim another's' body as our own. 

In the act of reclaiming images of the dead bodies of our loved ones, the decision to be seen and not be seen as merely the remains of your body, remains truly personal especially for those bodies that continue to live in the aftermath. Grieving moves away from being personal and becomes public, it is not merely an act that is performed among close family members and friends, it invites the grieving of the public, of well-wishers, of the state, of the religious and beyond, of supporters and maybe even of our oppressors. It is important for us to question the distinction between the names and faces that we are allowed to know and see.

Katelynn: Now I think we can open the discussion to the audience. If there are any questions, please just raise your hand and we will bring you a mic.

Open forum for Q&A.