IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/pal/palcom/v6y2020i1d10.1057_s41599-020-0391-x.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Loaded objects: addressing gun violence through art in the gallery and beyond

Author

Listed:
  • Annie Dell’Aria

    (Miami University)

Abstract

Gun violence impacts our experience of public spaces, including how we represent and memorialize tragic events stemming from guns in public ways. Immediate memorials, complete with flowers and other ephemera, frequently appear at the sites of gun violence, at times to be followed by permanent memorials with contemplative spaces and names of victims etched in stone. While communicating loss and grief, both of these strategies usually evade any real political action or consideration of the complexities of gun violence or its causes. Mirroring the stalemate in our political dialogue around guns and their proliferation, our dominant strategies of memorialization similarly offer little more than “thoughts and prayers”. In what ways can contemporary art break through these evasions and even prompt dialogue or change around the complex array of issues that arise with the increased presence of guns in American society? How can art generate experiences for viewers that allow for a more complex consideration of gun-related violence than the cycle of grief seen in immediate and permanent memorials? In this paper, I survey works of art that produce possibilities for transformative conversation around the issue by considering guns as what Bruno Latour calls “actants”. I begin by examining guns in the gallery, first offering a new readings of Chris Burden’s Shoot (1971) and Marina Abramović’s Rhythm 0 (1974), both of which notoriously included real firearms, and then turning to sculptural projects that literally disarm guns, rendering them deliberately strange and prompting complex conversations about their material presence in American life. I then shift focus towards the public sphere to consider works by Krzysztof Wodiczko, Jenny Holzer, and Michael Rakowitz, artists who rewire established circuits of monumental commemoration, public space advertising, and vernacular immediate memorials to generate a sense of distance, and even a safe space for dialogue in the public realm.

Suggested Citation

  • Annie Dell’Aria, 2020. "Loaded objects: addressing gun violence through art in the gallery and beyond," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 6(1), pages 1-11, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:pal:palcom:v:6:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1057_s41599-020-0391-x
    DOI: 10.1057/s41599-020-0391-x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1057/s41599-020-0391-x
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1057/s41599-020-0391-x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Metzl, J.M. & MacLeish, K.T., 2015. "Mental Illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 105(2), pages 240-249.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Laura H Gunn & Enrique ter Horst & Talar W Markossian & German Molina, 2018. "Online interest regarding violent attacks, gun control, and gun purchase: A causal analysis," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(11), pages 1-15, November.
    2. Michael R. Ulrich, 2022. "Balancing Rights and Responsibilities: The Role of Government and Citizens in Combatting Gun Violence," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 704(1), pages 292-309, November.
    3. Rakesh Banerjee & Tushar Bharati, 2020. "Mass shootings and Infant Health in the United States," Economics Discussion / Working Papers 20-16, The University of Western Australia, Department of Economics.
    4. James F. Anderson & Kellie Reinsmith-Jones & Tazinski Lee & Adam H. Langsam, 2019. "A Tri-state Investigation of Firearms Confiscation on Three Regional University Campuses," International Journal of Social Science Studies, Redfame publishing, vol. 7(5), pages 22-33, September.
    5. Huff, Aimee Dinnin & Barnhart, Michelle, 2022. "UNRAVEL-ing gnarly knots: A path for researching market-entangled wicked social problems," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 144(C), pages 717-727.
    6. Jonathan M. Metzl, 2019. "What guns mean: the symbolic lives of firearms," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 5(1), pages 1-5, December.
    7. Yongjin Choi & Ashley M. Fox, 2022. "Fact‐value framework for adjudicating public health policy debates," Review of Policy Research, Policy Studies Organization, vol. 39(6), pages 820-844, November.
    8. Metzl, Jonathan M. & McKay, Tara & Piemonte, Jennifer L., 2021. "Structural competency and the future of firearm research," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 277(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:palcom:v:6:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1057_s41599-020-0391-x. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.nature.com/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.