Christiane Brosius Are There Forms of Media Representation of Extreme Crises that Avoid Commodification and Spectacle?
Christiane Brosius is Professor of Visual and Media Anthropology at the University of Heidelberg, where she is also spokeswoman of the research area ‘public spheres’ as part of the Cluster of Excellence ‘Asia and Europe in a Global Context’. In 2015, she was Visiting Fellow at the Institute for European Global Studies at the University of Basel. Furthermore, she is founding member of the ‘Archives of Everyday’, an interdisciplinary research and teaching network in collaboration with the University of Leiden and University College London.
Area of Research
Visual Anthropology, Media Anthropology
since 2009
Full Professor
Heidelberg University (Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg)
Faculty of Behavioural and Cultural Studies
2002-2009
Assistant Professor
Heidelberg University (Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg)
Department of Anthropology at the South Asia Institute
2008
Habilitation
Heidelberg University (Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg)
Faculty of Behavioural and Cultural Studies
2000
PhD
Europe-University Viadrina
Department of Comparative Social and Cultural Anthropology
1986-1994
Studies of Art Education
Goethe University of Frankfurt
Art History and Cultural Anthropology
- Member of the DAAD-funded Research Collaborative on "New Directions in 'Active Ageing' and 'Age-Friendly Culture' in India and Germany", with JNU, Delhi (since 2016)
- Project Leader and Member of Mobile Spaces: Urban Everday Practices from a Transcultural Perspective, University of Heidelberg (2014-2015)
- Founder of 'Forum Urban Spaces' (since 2013)
- Project Leader of "Creating the 'New' Asian Woman: Entanglements of Urban Space, Cultural Encounters and Gendered Identities in Shanghai and Delhi", funded by HERA - Humanities in the European Research Area (since 2013)
- Founding Member of the Interdisciplinary Research and Teaching Network 'Archives of the Everyday', with the University of Leiden and University College London (since 2013)
- Speaker of Research Area B 'Public Spheres' at the Collaborative Research Centre/Cluster of Excellence 'Asia and Europe in a Global Context (since 2012)
- Member of the European Research Initiative “Ritual, Media, and Conflict” (2007)
- Founding Member of Tasveer Ghar ("House of Pictures") (since 2006)
- Coordinator and Head of Subproject A4 "Agency and Territorial Rituals in India" at the Collaborative Research Centre (SFB) (since 2005)
- Member of the Collaborative Research Centre (SFB) 619 "Dynamics of Ritual" (2002-2005)
Fellowships
- Invited as Fellow of the Marsilius-Kolleg at Heidelberg University (2016-2017)
- Visiting Fellow at the Institute for European Global Studies at the University of Basel (2015)
- Fellow at the Network Aging Research (Netzwerk Alternsforschung NAR), Heidelberg University (2010-2012)
- Associate Guest Professor at the School of Arts & Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India (Ford Foundation Fellowship) (2005)
- Research Fellow at the Institute of Theatre Studies, Gutenberg-University, Mainz (2000-2002)
In the face of extreme crises, such as natural disasters or national catastrophes, media representation frequently tends to be voyeuristic and to transform these events into spectacles. Considering this tendency, CHRISTIANE BROSIUS investigated whether there are forms of representation that allow to be close to people’s suffering and yet not to commodify it. She chose the 2015 earthquake in Nepal as a starting point and used both images uploaded to social media as well as traditional anthropological fieldwork for her research. In this video, she explains that in the context of Nepal, she discovered not only that artists can avoid commodification of disaster by representing and emphasising ordinary everyday acts but also that artists quickly developed a network to help and to respond to the needs of their communities in the aftermath of the earthquake.
LT Video Publication DOI: https://doi.org/10.21036/LTPUB10420
Art in the Aftermath of a Catastrophe. Gazing, Walking, Participating in the City
- Christiane Brosius
- In: Breaking Views. Engaging Art in Post-Earthquake Nepal (eds. C. Brosius and S. Maharjan)
- Published in 2017
