糖心TV

This workshop seeks to explore the different languages and representations of poverty and their political implications. Representations of disadvantaged persons are never neutral, but often transform a subject into the object of another’s discourse. Representations of poverty can be acts of violence with long lasting legacies, or they can be forms of protest. Poverty, a matter of social injustice experienced at the local and global level, follows complex patterns of communication. This workshop interrogates the relationships between subjects and audiences and the implications of spectating – an act which simultaneously recognises and dismisses poverty. This workshop is inspired by the highly charged representations of poverty (local and global) in contemporary media, but also explores the territory of inquiry opened up by landmark texts on this subject, such as Peter Brown’s work on the ‘Aesthetics of Society’ which prompts us to consider the undercurrents and implications of the emplacement of poverty in society, and Gaston Bachelard’s Poetics of Space which prompts us to consider the implications of the imaginations and experiences of space. This workshop welcomes papers on a diverse range of topics related to this theme, from any time period or geography; for example the representations of poverty by photographers, journalists, artists, activists, non-governmental organisations and public bodies, and the responses of people who are the subject of these representations. Who owns the language of poverty? Who can access and use it? What is being communicated and to whom? Do the aesthetics of poverty ever create a form of power, and for whom? What forms of public engagement are fostered by hegemonic representations of poverty? The workshop also aims to capture the aesthetics of poverty, present in art, in material culture, in public spaces, in embodied and lived identities, in order to give a face to something that is often made to be invisible in society.