Research Area D Images of Disasters (D17)

Project Leaders: Monica Juneja, Gerrit Jasper Schenk
Project Members: Jacob Birken, Noura Dirani

The violence unleashed by natural disasters exposes human beings to the most elemental of borderline situations. Such extreme situations bring forth specific culturally formed patterns of action, ways of comprehension and coping which perforce transcend responses at the individual level in order to be effective. This makes all disasters, even those which unfold in the heart of “nature”, profoundly socio-cultural happenings.
The aim of the project was to critically examine transcultural images of natural disasters. The international conference Imaging Disaster took place in March 2012 and lead up to towards an exhibition at the Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen Mannheim in 2014.