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AlbaharShahab VtP Annotation: The Dialectic of "Peace"

Historicize your mappings and overlay them. Use a combination of both GIS (if accessible to you) to map out a timeline of events (demining projects, dissident resurgent groups, deforestation over time) and photography documentation as vignettes for localized narratives. I can almost imagine a fun exercise of collage work for this project. 

SenderHannah_transformative toxicities

Playing with the supposed distinctions between progress and destruction, this ethnography signals the prevalance of different kinds of violence in and on place in Colombia. The essay follows a project of demining in an apparent shift away from violence, destruction and ruination and towards peace and liberation. It indicates the continued presence of violence, transformed but nonetheless shaping the landscape. The sentiment conveyed is a feeling of continued threat in an apparently peaceful time.

SenderHannah_counter images

These images are found and created by the ethnographer. The ethnographer indicates her own location in relation to the official stories of landmines in Colombia. She suggests that insights into toxicity can be gained from occupying a particular position - on the ground, seeing politics in practice - and observing official visualisations of toxicity from that place. The interplay between the found and the created make this essay a political commentary on a project of 'progress', where one could be led to believe that the elimination of red dots on a map is an elimination of threat.

SenderHannah_enriching perspectives

The created images share the scale of the human perspective. It would be interesting to see an image from above - an image which shares a similar viewpoint to the map, but of clearances rather than of red dots (signifiers of threat which require clearing/elimination). The ethnographic import of the existing images, is, however, clear. The weight of the decision to clear in this way is felt in the final image: a blitzed landscape destroyed by an anti-destruction project.

SenderHannah_toxicity, politics, projects and peace

Toxicity is politics, projects and peace. The ethnographer tells an important story of toxicity's power to transform across contexts, and yet remain present across time and place. Human-human, human-environmental, toxicities pervade Colombia. Ethnography like this can compel a rethinking of apparent 'progressions' towards peace and safety.

WaltzMiriam VtP Annotation: ethnographic insight

The visualisation shows us political leaders of an area experiencing both floodings and water shortages engaged in a ritual to address the water scarcity. The argument is that this amounts to political apathy, and we get a sense that this is all these leaders do in this regard.

WaltzMiriam VtP Annotation: extend ethnographic message

The caption is quite brief and could be elaborated in different ways to extend the ethnographic message. It would be interesting to know more about the political situation that is described, as well as the place that is mentioned, Chennai. What is the extend of the flooding and the water scarcity, how many people are affected, what are their experiences? What is this ritual and how can we understand it in this context?