(In)visible Landscapes of Migration: Corporality of the Image in The Passage

The paper deals with a visual representation of forced migration in its specific spatial and temporal geopolitical manifestation near the borders of Croatia from 2015 until today by focusing on The Passage, a collection of memorial portraits of migrants who lost their lives in the bordering regions of Croatia. The text will demonstrate that forced migration can be seen not only as an exile from one’s homeland but can also be attributed as the act of prevention of access in a material sense (by preventing entry to a given country in search of protection) and in a symbolic sense (by obstruction of the right to appear and assemble). This way, we see exile not as a centrifugal force of displacement but as a rhizomatic, meshed movement of potential material and visual techniques of entry and deportation. The paper will advocate those practices that help to establish migrant presence at the borders of Europe not as an aberration but as an occurrence that requires systemic changes in power relations of representation by rearticulating imaging techniques of migrant (in)visibility beyond the tropes of either victimization, generalization or absence.

Boris Ružić

Boris Ružić


Boris Ružić is an assistant professor at the Department of Cultural Studies, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Rijeka, Croatia. He holds a PhD in interdisciplinary humanities, grounded in film studies and visual culture, with a focus on the political potential of the (moving) image in contemporary documentary film and vernacular images of social unrest. His interests lie at the intersection of politics of emancipation, (amateur) moving images, unstable archives and narrators, as well as digital technologies. He co-authored a book on contemporary film and media analysis. Programme selector for History Film Festival. Currently a researcher on three international projects in the domains of humanities, film and visual culture, and memory studies.
 

Marija Katalinić

Marija Katalinić


Marija Katalinić currently works as a project coordinator at the European Cultural Foundation and is in the final stage of her doctorate at the Institute for Cultural Inquiry at Humboldt University in Berlin, where she is conducting research on women, memory, and family in Croatian documentary cinema. Katalinic holds two master’s degrees: an MA in Journalism (University of Zagreb) and an MA in Visual Culture (Westminster University, London). Her interests address cultural and critical approaches to memory, cinema, and gender, which she ties with contemporary visual culture practices. Her professional background includes managing cultural projects, working in film productions, curating and advising cultural and cinema programs.


Articles

Contemporary
Southeastern Europe

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