http://elea.unisa.it/xmlui/handle/10556/4094 Mon, 20 Apr 2026 10:01:01 GMT 2026-04-20T10:01:01Z http://elea.unisa.it/xmlui/handle/10556/4131 Representation, Victimization or Identification. Negotiating Power and Powerlessness in Art on Migration Berggren, Erik A commonplace idea, and worry, in much political art is the emphasis on not to victimize the object/subject in artistic strategies, and to portray people as subjects with agency. And the way to do this is to allow for identification. This article asks if this strong idea might be shaped by an ameliorating guilt for victims, which in turn is partially informed by an inability to free the gaze from a hegemonic view of people as agents. Instead the article looks at some contemporary artists who surface an opposite recognition, the radical lack of power for large groups within the global migration system, without attempts at temporary symbolic solutions. It will be argued that ththe recognition of powerlessness is and has always been a ground for political as well as artistic representation, mobilisation and solidarity. Tue, 01 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMT http://elea.unisa.it/xmlui/handle/10556/4131 2019-01-01T00:00:00Z http://elea.unisa.it/xmlui/handle/10556/4122 Borders Kill. Tania Bruguera’s Referendum as an Artistic Strategy of Political Participation Moralli, Melissa; Musarò, Pierluigi; Parmiggiani, Paola Since the rise of modern nation-states, borders have played the important role to order society because they have the power to define territories, not only on the ground, but also on the level of the imaginary by shaping national identities and perceptions of the world. Borders can be intended not as places, rather as processes, as socially constructed and shifting structures of practices and discourses that produce norms of difference and exclusion. Within this context, arts, and particularly performing arts, can play a role in challenging these forms of representation, overturning the spectacle of the border into collective performances. Drawing upon these conceptual premises, the article presents the empirical insights related to Tania Bruguera’s ‘Referendum’. Referendum was intended both as a performance and as a form of political activism, inviting people to vote on the following question: “Borders kill. Should we abolish borders?”. After analysing the collaborative procedure that led to the final results of the performance, we reflect upon the role of arts as pedagogical and political tool capable of changing the existing imagery on borders - and specifically on the Mediterranean Sea - and human mobility, stimulating new forms of debate and responsabilization in terms of co-citizenship. Tue, 01 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMT http://elea.unisa.it/xmlui/handle/10556/4122 2019-01-01T00:00:00Z http://elea.unisa.it/xmlui/handle/10556/4121 Counteracting Dominant Discourses about Migrations with Images: a Typology Attempt Gomis, Elsa Claire This article examines a series of art and media images which have contributed to counteracting dominant discourses about migrations. Through recourse to recent research in political science and psychology, it suggests that both the genre of the images and the very nature of their message contribute to shapingopinions and public policies. Specifically, it emphasises how the recurrence of certain motifs helps to diffuse a feeling of anxiety about the migration “crisis”. By doing so, this article updates the “Funnel of Causality”,a theoretical tool elaborated by political scientists to analyse voting behaviour that is now used to understand attitudes toward migrations. In this scheme, the media effect, in which images play an increasing part, is consideredto be of minor importance, whereas moral values appear to be crucial. However, the present article shows how these very values are fostered and conveyed by certain images, particularly those of fictional nature. Tue, 01 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMT http://elea.unisa.it/xmlui/handle/10556/4121 2019-01-01T00:00:00Z http://elea.unisa.it/xmlui/handle/10556/4120 Ai Weiwei and JR. Political Artists and Activist Artists and the Plight of Refugees Peterson, Abby The article will address Ai Weiwei’s and JR’s political engagement with the refugee crisis, the former as a political artist and the latter as an activist artist. Ai, in a series of conceptual installations and the feature film Human Flow, as did JR at Tecate on the Mexican-US border, have sought to shed light on the securitization of migration and the hollowness of neoliberalism’s human rights discourse. More generally, the article will interrogate the roles of the socially concerned political artist and the socially involved activist artist. An underlying question deals with the power of representation inevitably wielded by artists. While the ‘dilemma of representation’ cannot be resolved, the article explores the different approaches to this dilemma employed by Ai and JR to mitigate the dilemma. Tue, 01 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMT http://elea.unisa.it/xmlui/handle/10556/4120 2019-01-01T00:00:00Z