Chaos of Memories: art and archiving in the aftermath of violence (an interview with Mark Menjívar)
Your thinking is that if someone falls down then they’re not in a position to make those connections, whether in the moment or down the line, because they have to go on the defensive or they flatly reject these realizations. My question is, why not? I think about it in terms of disturbance. Bataille said that after a certain point there’s a need to call up disturbance, that no one is really touched emotionally unless there’s some disturbance involved. I think that’s mostly right. We have to disturb some people into action. Otherwise they’ll only revel in the deep-rooted obsession with the spectacle of violence and the numbness about how to actually address violence without bullets, cages, and needles.