Bertolaccini, L. M. (2024).

Masks of violence. Visuality and politics
in the images of Ni una muerte indiferente.

Masks of violence. Visuality and politics in the images of

Ni una muerte indiferente.

Máscaras de la violencia. Visualidad y politicidad en las imágenes
de Ni una muerte
indiferente.

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyze the images of an urban protest intervention called Ni una muerte indiferente (Not
one indifferent death) carried out by “Mujeres de
Negro Rosario”, Argentina,
in November 25, known as the international day for the
elimination of violence against women
(redefined as the international day for the elimination of violence against women, lesbians,
trans, transvestites and non-binary
people). With this purpose,
we will explore the expressive tools used, with a special focus on the use of masks and their ways of inscription in the
public space. Likewise, we will study the relationship between violence and image, based on the analysis
of the configuration and perception of the deaths that are propitiated there; the tension
between presence and absence; the game
between the singular-universal pair; and, finally,
the link that is possible
to think between image and testimony.

Keywords:
Activisms; Argentina; public space; political aesthetics; feminisms

Resumen

Este
artículo se propone analizar las imágenes de una intervención de protesta urbana denominada Ni una muerte indiferente, realizada por el colectivo “Mujeres de Negro de Rosario”, en Argentina, en el marco del 25 de noviembre,
conocido como el día internacional de la
eliminación de la violencia contra la
mujer (que ha sabido ser resignificado para implicar mujeres, lesbianas,
trans, travestis y no binaries). Con este objeto,
se explorará el conjunto
del herramental expresivo utilizado, poniendo especial foco en el empleo de máscaras y en sus maneras de inscripción en el espacio
público. Asimismo, se estudiará la relación entre violencia e imagen, a partir del análisis de la configuración
y percepción de las muertes
que allí se propician; la tensión entre presencia
y ausencia; el juego entre
el par singular-universal; y, por último, el vínculo que es posible pensar entre imagen y testimonio.

Palabras clave: Activismos; Argentina; espacio público; estética
política; feminismos

This work is under an international license Creative Commons Atribución-NoComercial
4.0.

Table of Contents. 1. Introduction. 2. Not one indifferent death. 3. Violence
and image. 4. Conclusions.

How to cite: Bertolaccini, L. M. (2024). Masks of
violence. Visuality and politics in
the images of Ni una muerte indiferente. Ñawi. Arte, Diseño, Comunicación, Vol. 8, Núm. 1, 17-29.

https://nawi.espol.edu.ec/ www.doi.org/10.37785/nw.v8n1.a1e

1.
Introduction

My eyes blacken Before these days

of light and other people’s laughter,

of salt, of hollow death

in blood. I would like to bare my cry

in the street, to overturn them in the corners, to break through walls

and songs to strike
at the lowest, Climb the
thoughts,

devour the roots of wonder.

My hands wither embracing nothingness like those cloudy leaves that cling to the tree. Mockery
blows its clarinet
and my fog uncurls,

asks me for freedom,

it leaves and strangles the hours.

Nothing, Susana Thénon

Original Title: Nada

In this article, we propose to
analyze the images of an urban protest intervention, called Ni una muerte indiferente (Not one indifferent death),
carried out by the collective “Mujeres de Negro
de Rosario” (Women
in Black of Rosario), from Argentina. This intervention was carried out in the framework of November 25, known as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, a day that has been redefined and expanded to involve women, lesbians, trans,
transvestites, and non-binary people in its vindication.

November 25 is a day in which, year after year, demonstrations, interventions, and various activities are held to highlight gender violence. It is a day on which the Latin American feminist movement has had a very important

impact. Although the UN adopted the date at a later
date, it was proposed in 1981 in
Bogotá, Colombia, in the framework
of the “First Latin American and Caribbean Feminist Meeting,” to
remember the femicide of the Mirabal
sisters in 1960 at the hands of the dictatorship of Leónidas Trujillo in the Dominican Republic.

In this paper, we want to question
ourselves about the place of the visibilities produced in the street intervention, Not one indifferent death, based on the images and the scenic devices
constructed there. In this way, we will analyze
the composition of the forms
of appearance and explore the expressive tools
used, focusing on producing meanings,
images, and narratives. In the same way, with a special
focus on the analysis of the masks used in the intervention mentioned above, we intend to study the relationship between violence and image, more specifically between gender violence
and image, starting
from the analysis
of the configuration and perception of the deaths that are propitiated there; observing the tension between
presence and absence;
considering the game
between the universal-singular pair and, finally, exploring the link that it is
possible to think between image and testimony.

In the same way as the occupation of
space becomes central, since the constitution of images, meanings, affects,
and narratives is anchored to materiality in the development of aesthetic-political practices, we propose to analyze the ways in which the
intervention is prescribed in public spaces.

Finally, we understand that the
forms of activism and public expressivity we analyze are in dialogue with other traditions of social street struggles. This is why we study what other repertoires of Argentine social
protest masks have been used,
as the militant tradition articulated around human rights.

2.  Not one indifferent death

Not One Indifferent Death was an urban intervention carried
out in December 2018 on one of the walls of the entrance to the Provincial Court building in Rosario, Argentina. It was carried
out in conjunction with November

25. One of the expressive resources that became central
to the aesthetic density granted to the intervention was the use of white
masks. The action consisted of the
installation, on a wall, of as many
masks as there were femicides, transvesticides,
and deaths from clandestine abortions that occurred that year in Argentina.

The masks were glued on a black
cloth. Under each one, there
was an inscription detailing the victim’s first name
and surname, age, place of origin, the inscription “murdered,” the
date it happened, some information about how it happened,
whether there was a conviction for the crime, and the number of children. Posters
with feminist slogans linked
to gender-based violence were placed on the sides of the block formed by the
masks. On the floor, in front of the
masks, photographs of women were spread side by side under the powerful title “Disappeared in Democracy.” Along with each photo was a description of the victim’s first and last name, the date of disappearance, and the location (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Intervention Ni una muerte indiferente (Not
One Indifferent Death)
(Silvina D’Arrigo,
2018). Source: Silvina D’Arrigo personal
archive.

“Mujeres de Negro” is an
international group originally organized in 1987 in Jerusalem by Palestinian
and Israeli women. In the context of
the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, they decided to go out
to protest dressed in black and
betting on carrying out such action in silence.

The central purpose of this movement lies in the continuous
denouncement of the violence that is
exercised from the different spaces
of power (governmental, state, nationalist, cultural, religious, or family)
against population groups, or people,
or cultures who are in a situation of “no power.” In each and every
one of these spaces, and not coincidentally,
women are the priority and majority victims of all types of violence: murder,
rape, mutilation, physical and/or psychological abuse, trafficking of their bodies
and organs, extreme
poverty, denial of their being
and being (of their
needs and desires, of their words and
deeds) (Mujeres de Negro Rosario, n.d.).

“Mujeres de Negro
Rosario” works and acts, since 2012, with the purpose of bringing public
attention to femicides, transvesticides, and deaths from clandestine abortions, but
also focusing on providing information and
accompanying consultations and requests for help that come to them in the face
of acts of violence.

The organization’s actions of
denunciation are carried out in public spaces. They are characterized by choosing
the color black
to signal mourning
and remaining silent
“because there are no words to explain
all the horrors suffered by women in the world and in denunciation of the absence of women’s voice in history” (Mujeres de Negro Rosario,
n.d.). In Rosario,
they began by making interventions at the intersection of Oroño and Córdoba streets,
to later move to Moreno and Córdoba, since it is a point that condenses
certain symbolism that refers to violence in the city since there is the Museum of Memory (former
headquarters of the II Army Corps Command)
and the Rosario
Headquarters of the Government of Santa Fe, former Police
Headquarters where a clandestine detention center operated during State
terrorism.

It
is pertinent to note that the action detailed here has been sustained in previous years and even repeated in the following years. In all instances, it was carried
out with some variations in terms of expressive resources. The constant element turned out to be the placement of posters
with the inscription of the victims of gender
violence.

3.
Violence and image

We must begin by situating the
reflections that we propose within the field of visual studies, with the purpose
of contributing to the analysis of the street intervention mentioned,
understood as an aesthetic-political practice producer
of cultural, social,
and political meanings,
being thus that in all this, visuality
has a prominent role. In
this way, we begin by taking up again the notion of “scopic regime” to inquire into the framework that culturally conditions the organization of
the visibilities of our time. Mondzain (2016, 9) situates the year 2000, the hegemonic triumph of the calendar of
the Christian West, as the synthesis of the reign of the image. The image appears as a preponderant visual device in capitalism, an
“uncontested domination of the visible
and of spectacles with total
legitimacy.”

Now, we understand that “seeing” is the
result of a cultural production inserted in a symbolically determined framework;
that is to say, it is only possible in a “framework of precognitions that
culturally condition the organization
of the order of visibilities in which we move” (Brea, 2005, 11). This,
which composes the notion of “scopic episteme,” accounts for the task of
de-universalizing that the notion of “acts of seeing” implies: to give historical time to the visual act.
According to this author, the scopic regime that is
defined in our time is characteristic
of the process of globalization, of a global culture with a predominance of the
visual.

Along similar lines and based on the concept
of “visual economy,” Poole (2000, 16-17) proposed that, unlike the
Enlightenment and the Renaissance, the modern visual economy is
characterized by two main aspects, which emerged primarily toward the beginning of the 19th
century within the framework of changes experienced in the capitalist
economic system and the European political system. First, by the continuous
production and circulation of
images, understood as image objects in the context of a vision domain. And second, by an adaptation of the human-observer subject to a visual field
marked by mobility and fluidity.

Martin Jay (2003, 221-222) placed an
interesting question in this terrain: whether the scopic regimes operate in a totalizing way. He
will say that what shapes the visual culture of this era is not entirely
evident. The visual has had a prevailing character in Western
culture. While he recognizes that modernity is defined by the place of preeminence given to the sense of
sight, tied to the scientific revolution, it is possible to identify that this dominant visual
model has internal tensions and discomforts. This is what
leads the author to propose that, then,
the scopic regime
of modernity is not so much the definition of a dominant
visual model but rather a contested field composed of dissimilar visual
theories and practices
that can be thought of as a plurality of different scopic regimes, or sub-variants (Jay, 2003,
239-240).

For
the development of our analysis, we are interested in recovering this idea that the scopic regimes
do not exert such homogeneous coercion but that there is a possibility of derivations, points
of escape that can appear
within devices of normalization that are formed within each of them. Thus, “we
can learn to see virtues
of ocular experiences. We can learn to let go of the fiction
‘true’ vision and rejoice instead
the possibilities offered
by the scopic regimes that we have already
invented that, although difficult to imagine, will undoubtedly emerge in future” (Jay, 2003, 239-240).

We recover from the Poole mentioned above (2000, 15) the allusion to the concept of the “world of images” to think about the social nature of the act of seeing and representation. That is, acts occur in historically determined

social relations, and this has an impact
on the ways in which
we see and represent. But, at the same time,
seeing and representing have materiality, illuminating a certain way of intervening and creating the world. In this sense,
the cultural and political role played by images, their
production and circulation, should not be limited to the act of seeing as a unidirectional domination device. Therefore,
images’ construction is imbued in a network of power relations where tensions and
contradictions intervene.

This could be useful to think about
how, in the case of the intervention we intend to analyze, the mixture of different expressive resources is aimed
to compose a specific form of appearance that poses a dispute. The “Mujeres
de Negro” (Women in Black) collective intends to highlight a specific
theme: deaths due to gender violence. The goal is to create a field of images
that disrupt a specific order, to signify these deaths differently, embracing them as a public and political
issue. Based on the denunciation of the scheme that causes deaths to occur, other perimeters of apprehension
are proposed for these deaths, identifying them as femicides, transventicides,
and victims of clandestine abortions.

The
main question lies fundamentally in the order
of political visuality
and in which the constructed images are clothed,
more specifically, in the conditions that make possible another visibility. The
deaths are already manifest;
the bodies appear, they do so in bags of consortium, dismembered, buried, or burned alive. However, it is an apparition that is present
under a cloak of crimes of passion
or as isolated events. “Her husband killed her for
love” was what a judge sentenced for one of the
cases that appear in the intervention’s mural.

In this way, with the image inscribed in the field of the word, narratives are composed insofar as the aesthetic- political practices
observed have an impact on the way of making these deaths publicly present
in the street but also on the modes of discursivity, on the
floors of politicization that allow the meanings of these deaths to be expanded
and put in tension. The composition is produced between
the masks and the text that appears
below them (Figure 2), a sort
of epitaph that does not have the value
of a farewell but of an exercise of denunciation for a justice
that is never enough, that very often arrives late or never arrives at all. Each of the people mentioned under the white masks has a story. However, the masks can be any of the people exposed to the political condition of precarity that poses a differential
disposition to violence and death (Butler, 2010, 46).

Faced with the existence of a state
of precariousness for the development of a livable life for women and feminized identities, the product of a
condition of dispensability that is unequally distributed among people according
to gender –overlapping violence linked to sexuality, race,
and class– these poetics of mourning seek to discuss
the hegemonic “regimes of visibility,” proposing new frames of apprehension for those deaths
and those lives.

What these images can introduce into
the world leads us to consider them part of a practice that not only intends to produce images as
representations of a reality that we want to underline and denounce but also to use them, trying to deploy their meanings,
placing them in confrontation. On this basis, we can think of placing the violence
of images on the axis of representation and as part of the process of violence. If the link between modernity
and violence is inscribed visually,
we cannot fail to consider
that, in the case of gender violence,
there is a relevant visual
component.

Rita Segato (2017, 19) has proposed,
in this sense, the emergence
of new forms of war located in women’s bodies,
understood as violence
that operates expressively. Women’s bodies are the first colony to be conquered

and appropriated within
the political structure that constitutes patriarchy, as the most archaic and
permanent in human history. This body has a historical connection with its territorial significance; it has been constitutive in both
tribal and modern wars as part of the domain extensions to be annexed in the
conquest.

But here, it is not only a question of its appropriation as territories that can be subjected and annexed to the extensions of dominion but also of the search
to produce damage,
rapine, violation, and destruction therein.
The abuses and violence on women’s bodies and feminized
identities are not only intended
to vex materiality but in the
functionality of the exercise and maintenance of a pact of power, a pact and
mandate of masculinity that, in turn,
sustains, camouflage, and cultivates other forms of domination. To this end,
according to the thinker mentioned above,
the damage that occurs in the woman’s body is a functional and pedagogical cruelty;
that is, it appears as a message
or expression of the capacity
to dominate (Segato, 2017,
21).

Figure 2.
Intervention Ni una
muerte indiferente (Not
One Indifferent Death)
(Silvina D’Arrigo, 2018).
Source: Silvina D’Arrigo personal archive.

That damage that is produced communally through the wars toward
women’s bodies is what the urban action we are analyzing introduces into the public space.
Visibility of violence
that is not staged by representing the situations of explicit violence
suffered by the bodies. Violence
is reconstructed by placing as many masks
on a mural as the number of
women killed during that year. All these faces point to the front, staring at
the same point, and are inserted
in the hybridization of the personalization of each of the cases
with the indistinction that asks who will be
next. This is what war does, Sontag
(2003, 16) will say: tears, rends, eviscerates.

These forms of expressivity establish a dialogue
with other traditions of social street struggles. At this point, we can mention that masks can also have been expressive
resources that have characterized repertoires of certain social protests, which Argentina has to do
with militant traditions for human rights and against institutional violence. This allows us to understand how
the frameworks of meaning and conditions of appearance that arise in this intervention enter the
conversation with other activists and establish a genealogy with those that preceded
it.

Di
Filippo and Cristiá (2021, 98) have studied, among other cases, the use of masks in actions
carried out by the
International Association for the Defense of Artists Victims of Repression Worldwide
(AIDA) in Europe; the interventions carried out following the second
forced disappearance of Jorge Julio López; and the protests carried out for victims
of institutional violence
in democracy in Argentina. We will focus specifically on the first case. The masks used by AIDA, which were later also used during the April 25, 1985, march in Buenos Aires to commemorate the four hundred
and fiftieth rounds
of protests by the “Mothers of Plaza de Mayo,” were directly linked
to the figures of those detained and
disappeared as part of the systematic forced disappearance of persons
perpetrated by the
country’s last civil-military dictatorship. Depersonalized, standardized
white masks were used.

In the case of AIDA, it was done for
a march that took place in Switzerland and was intended to highlight to the international community the
Argentine artists who had disappeared and, through them, denounce the situation
of all disappearances. In this way of wearing the masks, there was a tension between
the standardized faces of the masks and the
individualization of each case through the accompanying signs with the
victims’ names.

In the case of the march in
commemoration of the Mothers’ rounds, masks with the same characteristics were also worn, but this time without
indicating the individualization of cases, given
that the focus
of the protest was on
denouncing the anonymity of the NN corpses. In addition to guaranteeing the
anonymity of those who wore the masks and embodied the claim, these masks served to universalize and extend beyond the individualized case a situation of disappearance that was affecting a whole social body and, in addition, allowed to introduce the question about
the empty space
of the bodies that did not appear.
The absence of faces, like the absence
of that body that is claimed:
“appearance with life.”

Based on this, it is possible
to analyze how the intervention Not One Indifferent Death enters into dialogue, insofar as it was also located in that space of tension between the bet on
having as many masks as deaths due to
gender violence -accompanied by posters that showed the situation of each
particular experience- and the depersonalization and standardization of the faces
as an exercise of denouncing a systematic situation of violence exercised on women’s bodies and
feminized identities, structural violence that extends beyond the particular cases. However, unlike the experiences of AIDA and the Mothers,
this was not done for cases of disappearance since the deaths denounced correspond to
bodies found.

On the other hand, the resource of
individualization was used for the cases of the photos of the faces to identify the disappeared women in democracy. There, each sign with the case details was accompanied by a photo of the disappeared woman. The aim was to single out each victim
and make her present in public, demanding her appearance (Figure
3).

Figure 3. Another detail of the intervention Ni una muerte indiferente (Silvina D’Arrigo, 2018).

Source: Silvina D’Arrigo personal archive.

En la
utilización de las máscaras aparece la tensión entre
ocultamiento y exhibición. En la imagen cuenta aquello que se ve, lo que se construye en el terreno
de la visibilidad, pero también lo que se oculta. Incorporación y descarte. ¿Qué se le escapa
a la imagen? ¿Cuál es su deshecho? Esa máscara vacía, con la que se remite
a una individualidad y a la vez a nadie, se rellena con la cara de
todas las que pueden ser, porque sobre ese cuerpo individual hay un reclamo colectivo. A su vez, también hace alusión al cuerpo social
que se desgarra con cada una de esas muertes. Lo mismo puede pensarse para el caso de las fotografías de las desaparecidas en democracia; ese espacio
vacío que se llena con la foto de la desparecida contrasta
con la ausencia que presenta
su desaparición. Una
estrategia de representación sustitutiva (Grüner,
2008, 297) en la que se apuesta por una restitución a través de una fotografía del cuerpo que
permanece ausente.

En el juego dialéctico entre presencia y
ausencia que caracteriza a la tradición de lucha por los derechos humanos en nuestro país, existe
otra expresión política y pública vinculada que
también resulta pertinente mencionar
para nuestro análisis: los siluetazos. En el
espacio que deja la máscara despersonalizada, en ese territorio que no nombra, hay algo de la silueta que deja la figura vacía del cuerpo que falta. Tal como lo planteaba Amigo (2008, 208-209),
el antecedente de los siluetazos lo encontramos en la acción de AIDA, que describimos anteriormente; no solo por el recurso de las máscaras, sino porque en esa ocasión se utilizó una bandera en la que se pintaron pequeñas siluetas
humanas referidas a lxs detenidxs
desaparecidxs.

El siluetazo fue una
acción artístico-política realizada en el marco de la
tercera “Marcha de la Resistencia”, acontecida en el año 1983, y que consistió en la
representación del genocidio perpetrado por el terrorismo de Estado
a través de la reproducción de 30.000 siluetas
de detenidxs desaparecidxs. De nuevo Amigo
(2008, 209) planteaba
que, de esta manera, las siluetas hicieron presente la ausencia marcada por los
cuerpos desaparecidos. Esta
articulación ausencia-presencia es la que vislumbramos en las máscaras,
que apuestan a ese vacío para dejar
aparecer a las víctimas de violencia de género en la
tensión de la despersonalización de las máscaras e individualización de los letreros. Este doble juego es definido
por Grüner (2008,
297) como universal-singular, y a partir de él podemos pensar que cada una de las máscaras encarna una muerte particular, pero a la vez una cierta

universalidad, es decir, todas las muertas
por violencia de género. Ninguna
de las dos significaciones se subsume a la otra,
sino que expanden
el terreno a partir de su articulación y establecen un silencio que no es dicho hasta que
el espectador no lo reconstruye.

Las
máscaras y sus letreros se refieren a experiencias vitales concretas, y
la intervención quiere sacarle el polvo de los archivos
necrológicos, para establecer públicamente quiénes fueron y qué hizo el sistema judicial con ese crimen. Se construye, de esta manera,
un archivo público. No se trata sólo de denunciar un estado de cosas injusto,
pues también se pretende reintroducir los cuerpos muertos,
las asesinadas y sus historias, en el espacio
público. Y a
través de ello se quiere interpelar al accionar judicial, torciendo el
marco de significaciones.

Nos interesa
retomar aquí la noción de “gesto de archivo” que Masotta (2016, 8) construye, para referirse a la acción de empuñar fotos de detenidxs desaparecidxs o llevarlas colocadas
en pancartas por parte de “Madres de Plaza de Mayo”, familiares de desaparecidxs y manifestantes que formaron parte de las rondas y movilizaciones de derechos humanos. Fotos que antes
conformaban un archivo privado o familiar son ahora trasladadas a la plaza pública, y ese gesto singular
compuesto por retratos individuales construye una experiencia colectiva de reclamo
social.

De manera
similar, podemos ver cómo en la intervención Ni una muerte indiferente se construye un archivo público y colectivo compuesto por una acumulación de imágenes y de datos, a través de una acción de archivo que realizan tanto familiares de las muertas y desaparecidas como de quienes componen
la organización “Mujeres de Negro”. Datos que se buscan y seleccionan de medios de comunicación, y fotos que aportan tanto familiares como las redes
sociales. El espacio
público se ocupa
con esa acción que se constituye como un gesto
de archivo y que se inscribe, asimismo,
como una intención de constituir una memoria social y colectiva. Ante el horror y el dolor de las muertes y las desapariciones, allí donde el pensamiento parece detenerse, es donde se hace necesaria una memoria (Didi-Huberman,
2003, 56).

En este punto
resulta oportuno recuperar el planteo de Feld (2015,
689), en torno al vínculo que
es posible establecer entre
imagen y testimonio. La autora lo analiza en la Argentina posdictatorial, en los primeros
meses de la transición
democrática. Allí se da una relación entre ambos elementos
que, en primer lugar, da forma al rol de las imágenes y los testimonios como agentes de prueba y veridicción y, en segundo lugar,
como soportes del recuerdo.

Interesa retomar esto porque, a partir de este planteo, es posible pensar que en la construcción de este archivo a cielo abierto que conforma la
intervención que analizamos, anida un intento de construcción de
una cierta verdad sobre las muertes
que se denuncia. Aparece una composición a través de las
máscaras, los letreros y las
fotos de las desaparecidas, que pone en juego la construcción de una
determinada significación sobre esas muertes. Se trata de enmarcarlas como femicidios, como travesticidios, como parte de una trama estructural de violencia de género que interpela directamente al poder judicial,
sobre todo si tenemos en cuenta que la acción se realiza en el edificio de Tribunales.

Siguiendo a Feld (2015, 703), cabe mencionar
que en cada una de las reediciones que tuvo la intervención es posible establecer que se suceden
nuevas condiciones de enunciación que permiten agregar
o desmontar capas

de
visibilidad. Esto es, tanto en el montaje
de 2018, como en su réplica del año siguiente o la reproducción en el marco de la muestra del museo, es posible
pensar la construcción y la
circulación de estas imágenes como una intervención en el terreno de la memoria,
en la producción de una memoria colectiva en torno a estas muertes.

Esto sucede por
medio de la construcción de una estética luctuosa (Bertolaccini, 2021, 29-30), en tanto se remite a expresiones dolientes, se elige el color negro como marca fundamental, se ensaya una intervención que recrea un duelo colectivo
y público con la disposición de cada una de las máscaras con su letrero que puede emular una suerte de lápida y se elige
el silencio como parte de la apuesta
del colectivo para todas sus intervenciones.

Sin embargo,
ya lo mencionábamos más arriba,
no se apuesta por escenificar el horror que se denuncia.
Las marcas de la violencia que
se dejan ver no están configuradas para mostrar una violencia
explícita, sino para hacerla aparecer
de otra manera.
Inclusive, las fotos seleccionadas para denunciar la desaparición de mujeres no remiten a una situación luctuosa, sino que, sacadas de archivos fotográficos familiares, se muestra
a las víctimas en lo
que serían diversas situaciones de la vida cotidiana.

4.  Conclusions

In this article, we have proposed an
analysis of the images in the intervention Not
One Indifferent Death carried out
by the collective “Mujeres de Negro Rosario.” We reflected on the
intervention as a practice that produces
cultural, political, and social meanings. That is why we focused on the
compositions of the forms of appearance
involved in the intervention and on the set of expressive tools used, focusing
on the production of meanings, images,
and narratives. We highlight the white masks
as the expressive resource that became central
for the aesthetic density given the intervention.

It is possible to argue that the
aesthetic and political practices observed have an impact on the way of making present, in the streets,
the deaths caused
by gender violence,
but also on the ways of politicization that allow the expansion
and put in tension their meanings. In this sense, we express that this street intervention produces a field of images
that seek to interrupt a certain ordering
of the deaths addressed to signify them differently. From the
construction of these deaths as a public and political problem, the regimes of
visibility are discussed, and new frames
of apprehension are proposed: they are signified, then, as femicides, transvesticides, and victims of clandestine abortions.

Likewise, we have analyzed how the
link between violence and image in the intervention studied is not only established by the gender violence
denounced therein but also by the expressive component with which violence
operates on women’s bodies and sex-gender diversities. An expressiveness that aims at a pedagogical and disciplining functionality. The damage produced
on these bodies is what the urban intervention introduces in the public space. Although it does so through the
construction of a mournful aesthetic with
marks that refer to mournful
expressions, it does not bet on an explicit staging
of the violence and the horror that is denounced.

Likewise, we have reflected on how this inscription in the public
space allows the construction of a public archive.
Through the use of images and data
collected by the relatives and members of the organization “Mujeres de
Negro” the murdered and disappeared women, together, are
introduced into the public space. Through this, a

collective experience of social claim is built,
which seeks to question the judicial action and social group to twist the hegemonic framework of meanings.

In each
of these aesthetic and political decisions, there is a danger, warned by Didi- Huberman (2015, 711), of aestheticizing images,
in the sense of losing
their capacity to trace, of witnessing horror.
The author speaks
of the idea of saturated memory, to think of a memory that has lost its
effectiveness and capacity to become legible,
which is when it becomes
an abstraction that no longer
refers to the historical singularities it pretends to put in relation.

We must
end with Susan Sontag (2003, 97), who launches a tremendous question that remains
resonant: can we get used to seeing horror?

Bibliographic references

Amigo, R. (2008).
Aparición con vida: las siluetas
de
los detenidos-desaparecidos. En A.
Longoni &
G. Bruzzone (Eds.). El Siluetazo

(pp. 203-252). Buenos Aires: Adriana Hidalgo Editora.

Bertolaccini, L. (2021). Desde el corazón de la marea. Estética y política en protestas sociales del movimiento feminista en Rosario.

Rosario: UNR Editora.

Brea, J. L. (Coord.) (2005). Estudios visuales. La epistemología de la visualidad en la era de la globalización. Madrid: Akal. Butler, J. (2010). Marcos de guerra. Las vidas lloradas.
Buenos Aires: Paidós.

Didi-Huberman, G.
(2003). Imágenes pese a todo.
Memoria visual del holocausto. Buenos Aires: Paidós. Didi-Huberman, G. (2015). Remontajes del tiempo padecido. El ojo de la historia 2. Buenos Aires: Biblios.

Di Filippo, M., & Cristiá,
M. (2021). Máscaras políticas.
Visualidades manifestantes: desde los desaparecidos en dictadura a la violencia
institucional en democracia. Ñawi. Arte,
diseño, comunicación, 5 (1), 97-115. https://doi.org/10.37785/nw.v5n1.a5

Feld, C. (2015). Imagen y testimonio frente
a la desaparición forzada de personas en la Argentina de la transición. Kamchatka, 6, 687-715. https://doi.org/10.7203/KAM.6.7508

Grüner, E. (2008). La invisibilidad estratégica, o la redención política de
los
vivos. En A. Longoni & G. Bruzzone (Eds.). El Siluetazo

(pp. 285-308). Buenos Aires:
Adriana Hidalgo Editora.

Jay, M. (2003). Campos de fuerza. Entre la historia intelectual y la crítica cultural. Buenos Aires: Paidós.

Masotta, C.
(2016). El
gesto y el
archivo: la
fotografía y la anamnesis argentina. Revista Photo & Documento, 1, 1-13.

Mondzain, M. (2016). ¿Pueden
matar las imágenes? El imperio de lo visible y la educación de la
mirada después del 11-S. Buenos Aires: Capital Intelectual.

Mujeres de Negro Rosario (s.f). Información.
Página de Facebook. Recuperado de https://www.facebook.com/ MujeresdeNegroRosario/about

Poole, D. (2000). Visión,
raza y modernidad. Una economía visual del mundo andino de
imágenes. Lima: Casa de Estudios del Socialismo.

Segato, R. (2017). La guerra contra las mujeres. Buenos Aires: Traficantes de Sueños y Tinta Limón. Sontag, S.
(2003). Ante el dolor de los demás.
Buenos Aires: Alfaguara.

Curricular Overview

Luciana M. Bertolaccini has a degree in Political Science
from the National University of Rosario in Argentina and is a doctoral candidate in Social Sciences at the
University of Buenos Aires (with a scholarship from the National Council for
Scientific and Technical Research).
Her research focuses on aesthetic-political practices linked to social protests
and feminist activism. She teaches at the Faculty
of Political Science
and International Relations of the National
University of Rosario
(UNR). She belongs
to the Aesthetics and Politics Group of studies and to the Center for
Feminist Research and Gender Studies of the UNR.