Peace videography: visual dissonance as a social practice in everyday life

Based on a non-stop flow of digital data and cooperation between researchers and “antisocial neighbors,” our project will mash up dissonant conversations and restless public encounters into an imaginary peace videography. The project aims to create peace imaginaries in social circumstances characterized by the absence of peace and expectations of peaceful adjustment to expand the range of possible human activity. Employing new visual recording technologies, the project will produce new knowledge on the operation of visual images in the context of everyday life, peace and conflict in the digitized Finland of the 21st century. We will further develop our earlier work by analyzing visual media other than photography, especially video art; focusing on communicative practice and resulting affects rather than product; rethinking earlier work in light of digitization; and equalizing the loudest voices on the top with the critical cries from the margins. We will achieve this through a series of mash up workshops where the team’s research output and analytical expertise is tapped for enhancing peaceful communication.

In the project Peace Videography, we explored diverse visualizations of peace and theorized them in light of the existing literature, including our earlier work. As integral part of the project, young visual artists produced images of peace (paintings, photographs and videos) that we displayed on the project’s website, www.imageandpeace.com. In addition to our conceptual and theoretical work, we applied the project’s findings to peace mediation, peace building and peace education thus adding a practical dimension to our work and addressing diverse audiences. Furthermore, we discussed visualizations of paths to peace in the context of post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina. Finally, we continued our cooperation with Rune Saugmann on the photography of Richard Mosse and analyzed it in terms of appropriation, sensor realism and skin color.