The 30th Annual Visible Evidence conference, Decentering Documentary: New Visions and Perspectives, was held at Monash University, Caulfield Campus, Melbourne, Australia. I was honored to join my fellow artists and scholars on the Witnessing Gaza workshops and saw “safe and brave” discussions unfold in each session, brilliantly facilitated by our chair, Dr. Pradāp Rughani.

(Photo by Agnieszka Piotrowska)

Leshu Torchin, Pratap Rughani and Brenda Longfellow convened the following 2 Workshops:

Witnessing Gaza 1. Setting the Stage: Histories, Practices Of Resistance And Genocidal Visual Modalities

Sary Zananiri (Monash U): As a historian, I will reflect on the longer histories of representation in Palestine including photographs of Australian troops in Gaza during both World Wars. The photographs provide a useful prompt to consider comparative cultures of settler colonialism.

(Photo by Agnieszka Piotrowska)

Nayrouz Abu Hatoum (Concordia U): Attending to the Fugitive: Videos from Toufan al-Aqsa. In this presentation we read and analyse Palestinian resistance visuals from Gaza during the genocide through a decolonial lens in which we show how the resistance is operating through different modes of opacity and temporal distancing. The Palestinian resistance has long been producing media and visible evidence of their operations with careful calculations of when to release videos and with whom these videos are in conversation – the Israeli public, the broader Arab public, and / or Palestinians more specifically. Drawing from our earlier work in which we analyzed resistance videos from 2012-2020, we reflect on the growing scale of their video production capabilities during “Toufan al-Aqsa.”

Dale Hudson (New York U, Abu Dhabi): Discussions of witnessing have concentrated on the visible as pre-eminent mode of evidence. However, Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza presents challenges beyond what is immediately visible: (1) IDF use of AI-generated kill lists and (2) long-term ecological degradation from phosphorous attacks and unguided missiles, affecting humans and nonhumans. 

(Photo by Agnieszka Piotrowska)

Sheezah Taimouri (Southern Illinois U): In making its case to the ICJ that the Israeli assault on Gaza was genocidal in intent, S. Africa presented declarations from the top brass of the state and military as well as selfies of soldiers celebrating the destruction of Gaza as evidence. I want to highlight the mass scale murder of children in Gaza as evidence of genocidal intent and policy. Evidence will be popular tik tok videos by Israeli influencers mocking the suffering of mothers and children.  I want to trace the nature of sadistic combination of death and erotic pleasures that are offered as “entertainment” in creating the culture of genocide, in which “un-childing” (Jasbir Puar’s work) is one aspect of an overall sadistic pleasure in annihilating the future for Palestinians.

(Photo by Agnieszka Piotrowska)

Witnessing Gaza 2. Modes of Witnessing: Technological Mediations, Evidencing Genocide and Restorative Narrative

Leshu Torchin (U St Andrews): In Creating the Witness: Documenting Genocide on Film, Video, and the Internet, I argued for the constitutive function of media in developing popular understandings of the crime of genocide. The use of the work “genocide” in describing the atrocities and pressing for action against Israel, demands attention. It reveals both the dual definitions of the term (popular and political-legal) cultivated in the witnessing work, and asks us to reflect on the attendant stakes of usage, particularly as it continues to act as rallying call for intervention in a history of action largely limited to after-the-fact prosecutions. This provocation invites a reflection on the work of new media technologies, developing and diversifying definitions of genocide, and the urgent case of Gaza. 

(Photo by Agnieszka Piotrowska)

Anita Chang (California State U, East Bay): When genocide is seen as a form of necropolitics (Membe), we become witnesses to wider structures deciding who lives and dies. The war in Gaza compelled me to complete What We Never Forget For Peace Here Now, a personal peace memorial video exploring how we forget and remember witnesses of war.

Pradāp Rughani (U Arts London): Profound insights into the possibilities of finding shared responses across divides are embodied in the Bereaved Families Group where Palestinian and Israeli people who have lost children / loved ones in the war make common cause to sue for peace. Rughani has worked with families in post conflict situations for many years, some navigating understandable hostility from within their own communities as individuals seek to re-humanise “others” and imagine new futures borne from surviving trauma.

(Photo by Agnieszka Piotrowska)

Narmeen Ijaz
(Indiana U, Bloomington): Using poststructuralist frameworks of witnessing and trauma, I will discuss the role of social media in transforming “witnessing” into living testimonies of the war in Gaza. These videos, often shared by victims themselves, transcend mere evidentiary documentation, embodying the limits of collective memorialization of trauma and a political and moral reaction by the subaltern groups towards the genocide and other atrocities.

Brenda Longfellow (York U): My contribution looks at the singularity of live-streamed Instagram posts that have provided highly personal, often graphic and deeply affective media documenting the impacts of the war on Palestinians in Gaza. The work of these first person posts is complex. While interpelating global online communities and providing  a countervailing force to mainstream media, they undermine the pieties of international humanitarian regimes that assume the production of visual evidence leads to substantive interventions to end violence.

(Photo by Agnieszka Piotrowska, Bentley Brown)

3 days packed with knowledge, ideas, provocations and much needed imagination from new colleagues and old, like my dear professors from UCSC, Peter Limbrick and Sharon Daniel.

“Taking the antipodean location of this year’s gathering as a provocation and impetus for thought, Visible Evidence XXX invites participants to reflect on the theme of “decentring.” The metaphor of decentring, whether in terms of vision, power, or perspective, is uniquely pertinent to the historical moment we find ourselves in. What are our investments in the geography of documentary production and circulation and what questions need to be asked about its assumed centres? What is to be gained from rethinking the existential centre away from the human and towards the environment or the posthuman in nonfiction screen culture? How are we grappling with the challenge to the centrality of visible evidence posed by artificial intelligence? Is it time to acknowledge the global re-centring of feminist documentary? The essay film has always engaged in processes of centring and decentring the self-how can we push this project forward? We believe the idea of decentring enables new approaches to a range of pressing issues.”