Manus to Meanjin: A case study of refugee migration, polymorphic borders and Australian ‘imperialism’

This non-traditional research article argues that the refugee and asylum-seeker protests in Brisbane’s Kangaroo Point between April 2, 2020 and April 14, 2021 can be viewed against a backdrop of Australian colonialism—where successive Australian governments have used former colonies in Nauru and Manus Island in Papua New Guinea as offshore detention facilities—as a dumping ground for asylum-seekers. Within the same context this article argues that the men’s removal to the Kangaroo Point Alternative Place of Detention is a continuation of this colonial policy of incarcerating ‘undesirables’ on occupied land, in this case on Meanjin—Jagera land identified by the colonial name of Brisbane. This extension of Australian sub-imperial and neo-colonial dominion and the imagining of its boundaries is viewed though the theoretical prism of a polymorphic border, a border that shifts and morphs depending on who attempts to cross it. In a departure from orthodox research practice, this article will use visual storytelling drawn from photojournalism praxis alongside more traditional text-based research prose. In doing so, it will use photo-journalistic artifacts and the visual politics that surround them, as core dialogical components in the presentation of the article as opposed to using them as mere illustrations or props.

Global Corpse Politics

Taboos have long been considered key examples of norms in global politics, with important strategic effects. Auchter focuses on how obscenity functions as a regulatory norm by focusing on dead body images. Obscenity matters precisely because it is applied inconsistently across multiple cases. Examining empirical cases including ISIS beheadings, the death of Muammar Qaddafi, Syrian torture victims, and the fake death images of Osama bin Laden, this book offers a rich theoretical explanation of the process by which the taboo surrounding dead body images is transgressed and upheld, through mechanisms including trigger warnings and media framings. This corpse politics sheds light on political communities and the structures in place that preserve them, including the taboos that regulate purported obscene images. Auchter questions the notion that the key debate at play in visual politics related to the dead body image is whether to display or not to display, and instead narrates various degrees of visibility, invisibility, and hyper-visibility.

DEEP NEURAL NETWORKS FOR SOCIAL VISUALS: STUDYING CLIMATE COMMUNICATION ON YOUTUBE

Visual politics is becoming increasingly salient online. The qualitative methods of the research tradition do not expand to complex media ecologies, but advances in deep neural networks open an unprecedented path to large-scale analysis on the basis of actual visual content. However, the analysis of social visuals is challenging, since social and political scenes are semantically rich and convey complex narratives and ideas. This paper examines validity conditions for integrating deep neural network tools in the study of digitally augmented social visuals. It argues that the complexity of social visuals needs to be reflected in the validation process and its communication: It is necessary to move beyond the conventionally dichotomous approach to neural network validation which focuses on data and neural network respectively, to instead acknowledge the interdependency between data and tool. The final definition of good data is not available until the end of the process, which itself relies on a tool that needs good data to be trained. Themes change during the process not just because of our interaction with the data, but also because of our interactions with the tool and the specific way in which it mediates our analysis. An upshot is that the conventional approach of performance assessment – i.e., counting errors – is potentially misleading in this context. We explore our argument experimentally in the context of a study that addresses climate communication on YouTube. Climate themes such as polar bear in arctic landscapes and elite people/events present tough cases of social visuals.

A “Common Spectacle” of the Race: Garveyism’s Visual Politics of Founding

The questions of what makes a people a people and how they are endowed with political power are central to political founding. Through the Universal Negro Improvement Association’s first annual convention, this essay reconstructs the central role of aesthetic practices to the constitution of a new people. The convention’s spectacular performances were a vehicle through which participants came to understand themselves as constituting the Universal Negro—a transnational and empowered political subject. Founding was tied to the development of “reverential self-regard,” which was a process rather than a singular moment. Central to this process was both the gaze of spectators whose affective responses confirmed the power of the people and the political leader who served as the people’s mirror. Focusing on a mass movement rather than canonical instances of constituting republics brings into sharp relief the reiterative labors of staging, enacting, and viewing necessary to the practice of founding.

The visual politics of success and solidarity a case study of Chris Niedenthal's photography from The People's Republic of Poland 1978-1982

This thesis focuses on photographs from the Black Star Collection by photojournalist Chris Niedenthal, who did freelance assignments in Poland for Newsweek, Time Magazine, and Der Spiegel during the 1970s and 1980s. By looking closely at Niedenthal’s work, this thesis explores how these photographs respond to and engage with the rising tension in the People’s Republic of Poland (PRL) between the years 1978 -1982. The purpose of this investigation is to study the techniques Niedenthal devised to photograph Poland during a volatile time. Through a comparative analysis of selected images from the Black Star Collection, this thesis considers two phases of Niedenthal’s work in Poland, and examines both the way Chris Niedenthal’s photography attempts to negotiate the restrictions imposed by a totalitarian political system that sought to control its self-image, and how his approach to photography adapted to the rise of the Solidarity Trade Union and imposition of Martial Law in Poland.

The visual politics of success and solidarity a case study of Chris Niedenthal's photography from The People's Republic of Poland 1978-1982

This thesis focuses on photographs from the Black Star Collection by photojournalist Chris Niedenthal, who did freelance assignments in Poland for Newsweek, Time Magazine, and Der Spiegel during the 1970s and 1980s. By looking closely at Niedenthal’s work, this thesis explores how these photographs respond to and engage with the rising tension in the People’s Republic of Poland (PRL) between the years 1978 -1982. The purpose of this investigation is to study the techniques Niedenthal devised to photograph Poland during a volatile time. Through a comparative analysis of selected images from the Black Star Collection, this thesis considers two phases of Niedenthal’s work in Poland, and examines both the way Chris Niedenthal’s photography attempts to negotiate the restrictions imposed by a totalitarian political system that sought to control its self-image, and how his approach to photography adapted to the rise of the Solidarity Trade Union and imposition of Martial Law in Poland.