Interactive Peace Imagery: Eastern Europe in Camera, 5 op

Russian aggression and invasion of Ukraine has made peace in Eastern Europe a problem, not the given it was for many years assumed to be. Images relate to, represent and reflect this destruction and human suffering of the war, but also facilitate creative, critical and propagandistic responses to it. Negative media reports on current events and the focus on violence in large parts of the literature on the visual construction of reality tend to create feelings of passivity, helplessness and hopelessness among observers, denying them visual agency. Widespread alternative media practices do the opposite, while image-based interactive online media puts in question the ways in which images and their spectators act together.

In this course, we implement a new method for reflecting on the visual politics of peace and war: interactive peace imagery (IPI). We focus it on our contemporary European moment as it is reflected in the Eastern European regions most directly affected by the renewal of war and geopolitical rivalry.