Amy Fagin: International Art Competition: Beyond Genocide

In this episode, we speak with Amy Fagin, the author and project lead of Beyond Genocide; members of the Beyond Genocide Arts Award Advisory Council—Bjorn Krondorfer, Alexis Herr, and Sabah Carrim—as well as Linda Paganelli, the 2024–2025 award recipient. The conversation examines the Beyond Genocide arts award and exhibition, focusing on artistic responsibility, ethical representation, jury perspectives, and how art engages audiences with histories of mass violence beyond the exhibition space.

Find out more at: https://beyondgenocide.net/

Chapters

00:00 – Opening
00:01:57 – Questions the Works Should Raise
00:03:51 – Original Vision for the Competition
00:07:06 – Hopes for the Competition’s Future
00:09:28 – Art’s Contribution to Understanding Violence
00:11:03 – Where Artists Enter the Subject
00:13:30 – Observed Impact After One Year
00:15:43 – Value of Engaging Without Winning
00:17:21 – Effect of Historical Distance
00:19:18 – Artistic and Ethical Review Criteria
00:21:12 – Influence of International Perspectives
00:22:36 – Why Choose Beyond Genocide Framework
00:24:31 – Desired Audience Experience and Engagement
00:29:07 – Audience Engagement Beyond the Competition

Transcript

0:00

My main concern with reaching other people with this form of communication is to pierce through the layers of history, geographical distance, inability to communicate through language and understand genocide on a global scale throughout history. That’s meaningful to me and anybody that, you know, has a chance to observe any of these artworks for themselves. In this episode, we focus on the Beyond Genocide arts award and exhibition, a project that brings artists, scholars, and jurors into conversation round genocide, memory, and representation. Amy Fagin is a visual artist and the author of Beyond Genocide, a long-term arts project examining genocide and mass violence through contemporary manuscript illumination. She is also an independent scholar in genocide studies and leads the project’s conceptual direction, jury structure, and expansion through commissioned works. Amy, as the creator and project author of Beyond Genocide, when you think about Beyond Genocide as a long term project rather than a single exhibition, what kinds of questions do you hope the works raise rather than resolve? Well, when I conceived of the project, which believe it or not, was in 2000, the first question that I asked myself is why is there such a Grand Canyon chasm between my compassion and understanding and connection to case study, history of genocide and my life? And why is there such a you know, an unbridgeable gap of indifference? Because I certainly didn't feel indifferent, although I did not have a knowledge base in any way, shape or form; I'm not a historian. So that My main concern with reaching other people with this form of communication is to pierce through the layers of history, geographical distance, inability to communicate through language and understand genocide on a global scale throughout history. That’s meaningful to me and anybody that, you know, has a chance to observe any of these artworks for themselves. Bjorn Krondorfer serves on the Arts Award Advisory Council for Beyond Genocide. He is a Regents’ Professor and Director of the Martin-Springer Institute at Northern Arizona University, where his work focuses on religion, memory, and ethical engagement with mass violence. Looking back at your involvement from the inception of Beyond Genocide, what core vision or need did you and the founding team hope this competition would address within the global art community? So as one of the members of the Advisory Council and also the people who make some choices on who to invite as an artist and who to be voting and discussing who the artist should be, who should get the prize. We are continuing a longer art project by the founder Amy Fagen, who has worked, in her own particular style, on visually representing the genocides without being graphic or direct, but really through an artistic means that inspires people to think about the gravitas, the gravity, the implications of what a genocide might mean. It's not a direct graphic image. It's like you have to engage with the art. And I think her idea is that this kind of very specific approach to genocidal violence that is not photojournalism, that is not political art or a poster that you carry in a demonstration, for example, but something that engages the viewer in a different way and actually asks for engagement. So I think that we understand it's a core vision. And she wanted to expand this beyond her own work to get a global approach also through the participants, rather than her taking a global approach herself, which she has in the past, but she now wants to bring in other artistic voices that kind of understand her entry point, her vision, but use their own art forms and define art very broadly, from film to paintings to visual art to other forms, art installations, all of these kind of things can happen. And who some replicate her vision of a form that draws a person in and then have him or her think through the implications of genocidal violence after the fact, so to speak. So Beyond Genocide I think has two meanings. One is ‘Beyond’ which is not the graphic indirect assault that we are witnessing. And ‘Beyond’ might also mean a time, as in we now have had time to reflect upon it because we know what this genocide has been and we can begin thinking about the repercussions of it. That is my understanding of the project as one the Jurists and Advisory Board members. Sabah Carrim serves on the Arts Award Advisory Council for Beyond Genocide. She is a postdoctoral scholar in Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Northern Arizona University's Martin-Springer Institute and a visiting scholar at Rutgers University's Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights. Sabah, you were just appointed to join the panel. What are your thoughts and hopes on the future of this competition? Thank you, Luis. I believe this competition because it's innovative, there is no other like it so far in terms of the connection between art and genocide. I believe that this competition has a lot of potential. First of all, the award is $5,000. It's not a small amount. And the promise is that the winner would be given the chance to display their work in many forums at once. And of course, it is international. And that means that these forums could be anywhere in the world, including in the United States. Now, as a creative writer, what I know is that if there is, for instance, a call on ‘wild rice’, the theme being ‘wild rice’, you will inevitably have about 100 entrants. Out of 100 entrants the first three will get prizes. The first, second and third prize maybe, and the rest of the 97 will probably be disappointed. What will happen is out of the 97, 50 will go on to maybe just drop the project and forget that piece they wrote, but the remainder would probably find a different competition or a different venue to have that short story published about wild rice in which they put in so much effort. And the point is that in terms of thought leadership, a competition of this dimension with a winning prize of $5,000, and the ability to have one's work placed in various venues across the world would actually would create the kind of fertile ground for new thoughts, for new thought leaders to emerge in the field of art and genocide, something that's never been done before. And that is the reason why I'm very excited about having been invited to be on this panel and of course, to experience the judging of the competition with my colleagues. Amy, back to you. Beyond Genocide sits alongside academic genocide studies without replacing it. How do you think about the distinct contribution art makes to understanding mass violence? I think it gives an opportunity for people to reach a level of understanding through an emotional portal, and I think all artists worth their salt will tell you that they are not answering questions, but asking more questions and helping people to ask their own questions. So and especially with regards to visual art, it's a very one on one kind of encounter. So you're forced to be with the spirit of the artist that produced the original work, and it's static, so it gives you an opportunity for contemplation. So as I said before, it just really cuts through those layers of history and geography and anything that really prevents an authentic, vital communication between the artist and the viewer. Linda Paganelli is the 2024–2025 Beyond Genocide award recipient for her project “Echoes of Abandonment”. She is a visual anthropologist and artist whose work uses immersive and sensory approaches to explore genocide, memory and their ongoing social aftermath. as a previous award recipient of Beyond Genocide, when working within a project explicitly focused on genocide, where do you choose to enter the subject? Being through history, through memory, material or sensory experience? The answer should be more complicated than what I'm going to say because I believe entering the topic of genocide is not only from an angle. And regarding my path and my journey, being a visual anthropologist, started from war zones like Afghanistan and the Middle East, I think step by step I reached the subject and is a mix of field research and history archives and more importantly, testimonies. So I think for me is a combination of all of this. And of course, I never met victims of a past genocide like people that are gone, of course, but I met a lot of people that survived in my life. And so this gave me also this trend to carry on and tell this story in a multimodal way. So not to, let's say, beyond academia, but also to reach a larger number of people. So I would say the is a combination of all of this. And until few few years ago, I didn't even know that this was my subject. I realized after working on a few projects and now it is very clear for me. Alexis Herr is a member of the Beyond Genocide Arts Award Advisory Council. She is a Holocaust historian and educator and currently lectures at the University of San Francisco with a focus on genocide education and public history. Now that the competition has been running for a year, what impact have you observed on artists, audiences or global conversations, and how do you envision its role evolving in the future? For me, I think that one of the most important and powerful things about genocide education is thinking about ways that we can engage with diverse audiences and leave a lasting impact. A lot of the work that I do focuses on testimony because it's hard to hear a personal story and walk away and not have it be rattling around in your brain. And what art can do is something similar. It raises greater ways to connect with something that feels too challenging to understand. And because of this, it makes it perfect for us to be doing this art competition in terms of how does it reach new groups, new people. It's a universal language. Art really is. And so one of the things that we as a committee did was consider which genocide to talk about and invite applications for it this year. And I was really pushing for the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar-Burma. And part of the reason for that is because I have friends who are survivors of this genocide, and they're so frustrated that no one is talking about it that there is such a global silence around this very long lasting conflict. And so it was really powerful for me to be able to email my friends and say, Hey, we're doing this competition. Please contact people, you know, And it's my hope that this call for art will also go to the over a million people who are in refugee camps and who have fled this genocide, that maybe they have something to add or to say. So one of the things that I'm really excited about with this competition is not just hoping to invite incredible artists to create projects, but also helping survivors and victims feel heard and seen and give them a greater platform to talk about what has happened. Even for artists who are not ultimately awarded what value do you see in the act of engaging seriously with these things. And how might that engagement resonate beyond the competition itself? I think it's important to remember that art gives one a lot of freedom, a lot of creative freedom, and I think there are many ways of interpreting the two words ‘Beyond Genocide’. I do know that these competitions are based on actual genocides that have happened, but we should also remember that the dates we put down for the start and the ending of the genocide are sometimes quite nominal. In the case of Rwanda, it is known that many more people died in the aftermath of the genocide rather than during the official genocide. In the case of, say, the Yazidi genocide, the local community there considers there having been not one genocide, which we recognize in 2014, but 74 others. So I believe that if anyone enters this competition, they should keep all of these nuances in mind and extend their repertoire, their understanding, the vision of the genocides that they are dealing with or that they are exploring beyond just the dates that are given to them, because these dates are just the official dates that have been handed down by authorities who’ve decided when a genocide started and when it ended. Amy, some of the case studies addressed are historically distant, while others are ongoing. How does temporal proximity contribute as a factor into how the project is structured or curated? Well, the project has gone through, I would say, two major phases. And originally when I conceived the project, it was designed to be primarily in the form of manuscript illumination. But the life of an artist is never predictable. And after, you know, 15 years of dedicated effort with this single genre, I found that I was really working in a little bit of an isolated echo chamber and wanted to bring in other artists working with different modes of modalities to help build a conversation between the art pieces. So there's a foundation with this rubric that, you know, the illuminated manuscript as a sacred art form that is reflective of the best efforts of humanity. And with that expectation that we come to this project, come to experience the work itself with an understanding of our own failings and our own best efforts. And I think by building the conversation, by creating this contest and including other modalities, it's really created, I would say, an enriched artistic environment that builds on the original idea. When reviewing submissions on a subject as sensitive and profound as genocide, what artistic and ethical criteria do you prioritize to ensure both creative excellence and responsible representation? That is part of the difficulty of making choices and of inviting people to present that art. I think in my understanding it would be. And that kind of said this, in the first answer, you know, for example, photojournalism is not what we're looking for. We're not looking for a representation of the actual violence in some shape or form, whether it's a photo or a painting that does the same thing, but something that gets to probably the human dimension of the experience of a genocide and genocidal violence, the disruption of community life, the destruction of individual lives, the destruction of a whole way of living, I think all of these things would be considered part of how we evaluate. But what is presented to us, you know, and I'm thinking of Banksy, for example, the artist who makes really political art in many ways, but is also very creative. If he would ever sign up for this one, of course, which he would not, but say he would, I think it would be an interesting testing ground for us to figure out, say we don't know his name, we don't know the fame of this person, whether or not this would be too much realism that is is easily grasped and understood, even though it has always irony in it, in his case. Or whether that is something that seems a little bit too much on the surface for the kind of project that Amy Fagan has in mind that she would like to sponsor. Give that the competition is open to international applicants, how have diverse cultural perspectives influenced the types of works you've seen and the way the jury evaluates them? I've said this before, but I think art really is a universal language, but narratives are not. I was concerned, for example, last year we looked at art submissions that dealt with the genocide in former Yugoslavia and Bosnia, and there are conflicting narratives about this genocide. The kind of, you know, brass tacks of it are the victims were Bosniaks who were Muslim, and the perpetrators were Bosnian Serbs who are predominantly Christian. And present day, there is denial in part by Bosnian Serbs in the government that claim that what occurred was not a genocide, despite recognition, international recognition that it was. So I was fearful that we were going to perhaps have a submission that would have been a counter narrative. Fortunately, we did not. So I think, you know, that's something that I'm always kind of paying attention to. There are, you know, in every genocide, unfortunately, there is denial. It's part of the story. So we're always having to be careful of that. Linda, as a selected artist, what drew you to Beyond Genocide as a framework for engaging with the history of genocide through installation and visual form? So, there is many layers to be mentioned. So first of all, Amy created a beautiful series of illumination to which I relate in Echoes of Abandonment. So this same pattern are reproduced on the piece itself. So it meant that there is a dialog between the illumination and the piece itself. Also sort of to say that there are some patterns that in all these histories are the same or have happened that are slightly different. But the main idea behind it or the main cruelty or the main violence or the main historical situation are similar. And also, of course going into the bigger frame of it being part of beyond genocide and having this possibility also brings in educational work and possibility to have a communication with, not only beyond genocide, but the whole community of genocide studies experts and also now will bring us to a Holocaust museum in Johannesburg with the permanent collection. So it opened up a lot of different sector of possibilities that otherwise I would not have reached alone. Amy, and for your final thoughts and final words, when audiences encountered these works in a museum or exhibition space, as Linda noted, a gallery, what kind of engagement do you hope they leave with? Do you hope that they didn't leave with an intellectual, an emotional or something else entirely? And after that, how else can they engage with beyond genocide? Well, the original series, as a genre in and of itself, the form of manuscript illumination, is really a type of art form that is meant to be appreciated for a lifetime. And these specific art pieces are thoroughly researched, you know, whether it's the historical component or testimony to provide really like a portal through time and space for an individual to understand. First of all, for me to understand, to just develop a visual concept out of the research that was compiled, an accurate case study. So and this case study is, composed into a series of anchor cultural components of the both the victim and the perpetrator population in a location that this atrocity crime took place; historical, geographic. So that the individual can really get a sense of after really looking carefully at each one of these eliminations and selecting individual aspects, asking questions about different components, whether there's an illuminated prayer or an artifact that would explain a visual piece of architecture or component of, you know, the cultural history and cultural identity of the victimized group in the context of the history of that crime in and of itself. So understanding is really, I would hope, the key. But there's also a level of real or just sort of awe and appreciation and an upwelling of compassion that I think is an inevitable component of looking at artwork that is so exquisitely technically ascribed and appreciated. We're all looking at the new artists that are submitting their prototypes and discussing how the prototypes will be part of the dialog. And in the case with Linda, Linda's work, I think one of the takeaways for me is how vital and raw and alive the videos are on this beautiful, subtle monument that can be put in multiple gallery settings from, you know, my aim with the project itself was to make it available in a drugstore, if that's where we could get an exhibition opportunity, just not so rarefied and economically valuable like a work of art in a museum setting may be. But to really just be a project that anybody and everybody can approach, even though the art form of the illuminated manuscript does have, a level of intellectual demand, but every art form really does. So, encouraging people to just sort of step through and hopefully, with the next competition's winner will increase that dialog and employ a variety of modalities to help people through their indifference. Thank you. And just one final touch. How else can audience members engage with the genocide outside of the art competition? Well, one of the new developments with the series is an effort to create a one day seminar and two day workshop for educators, primarily university professors who are working in a classroom setting and also potentially cultural institutions that have an educational component that look at mass atrocity crimes to help inform the general public and within the construct of their communities and the seminars will give people an opportunity to get a better understanding of how to teach and think critically about each individual modality, whether that be visual arts or performance arts or literary arts. So we'll examine some of the leading artists of our time that have chosen to work with some of these case studies. And that would be a wonderful way for really any educator to participate with this project. And the exhibition is open to any artists that would like to submit a proposal. The award is $5,000 and ultimately I'll probably turn the award process over to an institution. I will oversee it now, but as we move forward, I've got a commitment to eight of these annual awards, and I'm thinking after year four, I'll probably have an institution manage the rest of the oversight. This has been Not to Forgive, but to Understand, with Amy Fagin, members of the Beyond Genocide Arts Award Advisory Council, and previous award recipient Linda Paganelli. You can follow the podcast for future conversations on genocide, memory, and responsibility, and find this episode wherever you listen.