'Aesthetic Violence in the Anarchival Turn: On the Infinite Visions of History', Found Footage Magazine, Special Issue 5, March 2019.
Synopsis:
In this article, I examine three films: two features—Rey (Niles Atallah) and Spell Reel (Filipa César)—and my own short film, I Think You Should Come to America in relation to my concept of aesthetic violence. I consider aesthetic violence to be a politically necessary artistic action that aims to expose the workings of what cultural theorist Rob Nixon calls slow violence: violence that “occurs gradually and out of sight, a violence of delayed destruction that is dispersed across time and space, violence that is typically not viewed as violence at all” (Nixon, 2013:2). Each film discussed here combines archival footage with new material to portray instances of long-term violence. Rey’s historical context is the oppression of the Mapuche tribes by the 19th century Chilean government. Spell Reel explores the Portuguese colonisation of West Africa’s Guinea-Bissau. I Think You Should Come to America interprets Hollywood representations of American Indians as part of the oppression of Native American populations. Through these three films I see aesthetic violence as a plea for productive (as opposed to reproductive) ways of analysing and critiquing contemporary uses of media.
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