Description
How do representations of and for peace shape our knowledge and practice of peacebuilding? Following the aesthetic turn in International Relations, there has been increasing interest at the intersections of peacebuilding and the arts. In this context, scholars have interrogated the possibilities of a peace aesthetics: one that is able to represent, shape and form, and crucially, expand what is thought, said and felt about peace and peacebuilding (Möller 2019). Moving from this, scholars have explored the ways that the arts contribute to alternative forms of socio-political commentary and space creation within conflict-affected spaces. Engaging across a number of globally-situated sites of peace and conflict knowledge, this panel will examine the aesthetics of peace, peace-making and peacebuilding through exhibitions, festivals, walls, and in digital spaces. In this context, we ask whose peace is on display? What are the various strategies of representation? Which actors are represented or excluded? How might we study an aesthetics of peace? Why is peace is put on display, and to what effect?
