Counteracting "Iconographic Silence". Resisting Censorship of the Libyan Genocide through Practice-Based Research

Alessandra Ferrini's essay-film Sight Unseen (2019), which will be shown during the seminar, explores the carefully-orchestrated politics of visibility and invisibility that shape the memory of colonial violence in Italy. It is woven around a legally-unpublishable archive of historical images depicting the capture and execution of the leader of the organised resistance against the Italian colonisation of Libya, Omar al-Mukhtar, in 1931. As an 'iconographic silence' – a ban on the documentation of the genocide unleashed in Libya by Fascist Italy - was imposed at the time, the seminar will unpack this notion to consider historical forms of epistemological resistance. This will be an opportunity also for investigating Ferrini's methodologies as both a researcher and an artist.

Alessandra Ferrini is a London-based artist, PhD candidate at the University of the Arts London, and Research Fellow at the British School at Rome. Experimenting with the expansion and hybridization of the documentary film, she questions the legacies of Italian colonialism and fascism. She has screened, exhibited, and published her work internationally including at Manifesta 13 Paralléles du Sud (2020), Sharjah Film Platform (2019), Manifesta 12 Film Programme (2018), Villa Romana (2019).

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Scientific Organization: Giulia Beatrice