Tag: Art

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The Violated Guest: Hospitality, Power, and the Politics of Belonging in The Iliad

You’re probably surprised to find us so inhospitable,” said the
man, “but hospitality isn’t a custom here, and we don’t need any
visitors.”

-The Castle, Franz Kafka

In my reading of Emily Wilson’s Iliad, xenia emerges as both sacred hospitality and a fraught instrument of power, inviting a reconsideration of the conflict’s origins beyond the conventional narrative. Traditionally, Paris’s taking of Helen is cast as a flagrant breach of xenia, the guest-host relationship foundational to Homeric ethics. Yet, attentive engagement with the text suggests that the arrogance of Menelaus and Agamemnon—expressed in their language and actions—may have already fractured this code, perhaps even before Helen’s departure, whether voluntary or otherwise.

Xenia (Greek: ξενία [kse'ni.a]) is an ancient Greek concept of hospitality. It is almost always translated as 'guest-friendship' or 'ritualized friendship'. Xenia was an institutionalised relationship grounded in reciprocity, gift exchange, and moral obligation. Rooted in the word xenos (stranger) it encompassed both material support and normative rights, linking guest and host through mutual respect.

This fracturing of xenia recalls the complex relationship between hospitality and power explored by philosophers such as Jacques Derrida*, who questioned the possibility of unconditional hospitality within the constraints of sovereignty and law. Derrida observed that hospitality is never purely generous but always mediated by conditions like borders, identities, and political authority. This insight resonates with the Iliad’s depiction of xenia, where the sacred duty to welcome the stranger exists alongside a real impulse to control and exclude. In this sense, the breach attributed to Paris appears less as an isolated offense and more as a symptom of a broader failure within the Greek leadership to practise genuine hospitality. Menelaus and Agamemnon’s arrogance acts not as a safeguard of order but as an instrument of domination, complicating the moral certainty of the Greek cause.

* Jacques Derrida’s reflections on hospitality remain crucial amid ongoing refugee crises. He highlights a fundamental tension: the moral duty to welcome strangers conflicts with the need to maintain borders that protect the home. Hospitality requires laws to distinguish guests from threats, making it both an act of openness and controlled closure. This balance is never fully resolvable but must always guide ethical and political responses to displacement and migration. More on Derrida at wikipedia.

From a philosophical perspective, this ambiguity aligns with Aristotle’s concept of phronesis, or practical wisdom, which he considered essential to justice and effective governance. Neither Menelaus nor Agamemnon demonstrates this prudence. Their pride blinds them to the reciprocal duties that sustain social cohesion. Their focus on honour manifests as domination and retribution rather than balanced justice. This dynamic parallels Hannah Arendt’s reflections on the fragility of the public realm, where the collapse of mutual respect and responsibility leads to violence and alienation. The outbreak of war can therefore be seen as a tragic consequence of leadership that fails to embody virtues necessary for upholding xenia and, more broadly, the polis.

Furthermore, the question of Helen’s agency brings to mind Simone de Beauvoir’s analysis of the objectification of women in patriarchal societies. Helen’s portrayal as property rather than an autonomous subject reveals the limits of the ethical frameworks governing hospitality and honour. The violation of xenia in her case transcends guest-host betrayal and exposes gendered power relations that deny subjectivity. This complexity demands that we reconsider the roots of conflict in the Iliad as arising not only from personal transgressions but also from systemic injustice.

The Iliad presents Menelaus and Agamemnon as figures whose sense of entitlement verges on hubris. In Greek, Agamemnon’s epithet ἀρήϊος (arēios), “warlike” or “proud,” hints at his overbearing nature. His treatment of others, especially the lesser-ranked warriors, reveals a man for whom honour is inseparable from domination. Menelaus’s own conduct is marked by possessiveness and wrath, notably when he appeals to the Greeks to avenge his personal loss of Helen, framing the conflict in terms of his honour as a husband and king.

Noting the ritual sacrifices the Greeks must perform before setting sail for Troy, one perceives a subtle but telling indication that the gods’ favour is not assured, hinting at underlying tensions and possible guilt among the Greeks themselves. The necessity of these sacrifices suggests divine displeasure, an implicit acknowledgement that the Greeks may not be wholly innocent. This ritual moment opens a space for questioning the moral clarity of the Greeks’ cause, inviting reflection on whether their hubris and aggressive ambitions have already sown the seeds of conflict.

Philosophically, this recalls the ancient understanding that human actions are always subject to divine judgment, and that wars—even those framed as righteous—are rarely free from moral ambiguity. The Iliad thus offers a profound meditation on the limits of human pride and the consequences of violating sacred social bonds. The sacrifices foreshadow not only the calamities to come but also the possibility that the Greeks’ own arrogance and sense of entitlement have fractured the ethical foundation of their expedition, making the ensuing war less a response to a single violation and more a symptom of systemic breakdown.

This interpretation complicates the traditional victim-aggressor narrative by suggesting that the Greek leadership’s behaviour, including their claim to honour through domination, may have destabilized the delicate balance of xenia even before Helen’s departure. It invites us to see the war as the tragic outcome of a fractured social order where divine, ethical, and human considerations intersect, challenging the simplicity of blame and exposing the complex origins of violence in the poem.

This arrogance, I argue, destabilizes the very foundation of xenia. The sacred mutual respect between host and guest, governed by θεοί (theoi)—the gods who enforce these bonds—is undermined by the rulers’ domineering attitudes. If xenia depends on reciprocity and restraint, Menelaus and Agamemnon’s behaviour signals a breakdown of these conditions. Such a rupture may have made Helen’s departure inevitable or at least understandable, not simply as a consequence of Paris’s transgression but as a reaction to an oppressive and fractious social order.

The idea that xenia hinges on mutual respect and divine sanction highlights how fragile the social order truly is when those entrusted with upholding it act out of self-interest. The gods, as guardians of these sacred bonds, serve not only as enforcers but as reminders that human pride must be tempered by humility and justice. When Menelaus and Agamemnon assert their authority through domination rather than reciprocity, they risk not only alienating their allies but inviting divine disfavor—a peril that reverberates throughout the epic.

This breach extends beyond mere political or military strategy; it exposes the ethical limits of power within the heroic code. The rupture in xenia thus becomes a mirror reflecting deeper societal fractures, where honour is too often conflated with control and possession. The resulting tensions illuminate how fragile the ties of loyalty and hospitality are, especially when compounded by the weight of personal grievance and patriarchal dominance. In this context, Helen’s fate is less an isolated episode of betrayal and more a symptom of systemic failure—a consequence of a social fabric strained by arrogance and fractured hospitality.

Helen herself, positioned within a patriarchal framework, is rendered almost as οἰκέτις (oiketis), a household servant or property, thereby calling into question her agency. Whether she left of her own accord or was taken forcibly, the conditions shaping her departure emerge from a broader failure of xenia rooted in the arrogance and self-interest of those who claim to uphold it.

This reading aligns with Homeric philosophy wherein justice is intimately tied to εὐνομία (eunomia), good order, sustained by ethical relationships like xenia. The war’s eruption, then, is a tragic manifestation of the consequences when pride and power override these obligations.

Moreover, this interpretation resonates with contemporary political realities. Modern states often project ideals of openness while practicing exclusion and control, reflecting an ancient tension between hospitality’s ideal and its political reality. The Iliad exposes this tension, showing how claims to honour and order frequently mask mechanisms of exclusion.

This tension between the ideal and the practice of hospitality has long been a site of political and ethical anxiety. In ancient epic, as in modern geopolitics, the stranger often serves as both a test of virtue and a projection surface for anxiety about sovereignty, belonging, and threat. The Greek concept of xenia is not simply about generosity; it is also about the maintenance of status and the regulation of hierarchy. The guest must be treated with honour, yes, but also must not upset the established order of the host. In this way, hospitality reveals itself not as a neutral ethical good, but as a framework for establishing power relations under the guise of moral obligation.

Michel Foucault’s observations on the diffuse and disciplinary nature of power help clarify this reading. The host’s role, much like the sovereign’s, is not merely to offer welcome but to determine the terms on which that welcome occurs. This determination is political: it draws boundaries between who belongs and who must remain other. Within this framework, Menelaus and Agamemnon’s failure is not only in their pride, but in their assumption that their authority grants them a monopoly on the ethical terms of xenia. They weaponise hospitality, transforming it from a sacred obligation into a system of entitlement that reinforces their dominance.

Seen in this light, Paris’s violation may not represent the origin of the war so much as its pretext. The true breakdown lies in the way hospitality has already been co-opted by the Greeks as a form of political control. The gods’ demands for sacrifice before the expedition to Troy can thus be read not merely as a call for piety, but as a divine rebuke. The Greek cause, built on the claim of avenging a breach in hospitality, is already compromised by internal contradictions. What they claim to defend, they have already hollowed out.

This reading also aligns with the insights of thinkers such as Emmanuel Levinas, who argued that the ethical relation begins with the face of the Other, and that true hospitality requires openness to the stranger as stranger—not as subject to assimilation or control. In The Iliad, however, the stranger is always already caught in a web of possessive claims and reciprocal expectations. Paris, Helen, even Achilles—all are at some point positioned as both insider and outsider, welcomed and rejected, honoured and dishonoured. The poem’s structure is shaped by this unresolved dialectic between inclusion and exclusion, belonging and alienation.

If hospitality in Homeric terms is sacred, it is also perilous. It binds hosts and guests in fragile interdependence that can all too easily be ruptured by pride, possession, or fear. The violence of The Iliad may be read as the inevitable result of this fragility—an unraveling of social bonds that, once broken, cannot be easily repaired. The cost of such rupture is not only war but the loss of the ethical world that hospitality once promised to sustain.

Finally, in my reading of Wilson’s Iliad, the figures of Menelaus and Agamemnon come to embody the complexity of power’s role in the erosion of social bonds. Their arrogance does not simply mirror individual failings but signals a deeper, systemic disintegration of ethical obligations. Their conduct may well precede and provoke the chain of events so often attributed solely to Paris’s violation of xenia. What appears on the surface as a narrative of reactive justice begins, under closer scrutiny, to reveal itself as a story already compromised by pride, coercion, and a hollowing out of the very traditions the Greeks claim to defend. Agamemnon’s treatment of Achilles, his disregard for prophetic restraint, and his readiness to sacrifice his daughter are not incidental; they are emblematic of a sovereign power that mistakes command for moral authority. Menelaus likewise presents the war as a recovery of honour, but one suspects his sense of loss is tied more to control and possession than to any substantive ethical breach.

This reading of the Iliad, shaped by Wilson’s precision and restraint, destabilises the traditional victim-aggressor dichotomy that frames much of the epic’s reception. It offers a vision of conflict rooted not in a singular act of betrayal but in the slow corrosion of ethical responsibilities, especially those embedded in the sacred institution of xenia. What begins as a dispute over one woman’s departure unfolds into a meditation on the failure of reciprocity, the ease with which honour becomes entitlement, and hospitality’s transformation into a rationale for domination. Menelaus and Agamemnon are not merely victims seeking redress; they are active participants in the erosion of the very social order they claim to avenge.

This interpretation reveals the poem’s striking relevance to contemporary political conditions. The fragility of the social fabric, especially where hospitality is concerned, becomes a central issue. In my reading, the Iliad not only portrays the collapse of communal bonds but also warns of the consequences when the ethical obligation to honour the stranger is replaced by suspicion, conditional acceptance, or outright hostility. The ancient practice of xenia bears troubling parallels to modern systems of immigration, asylum, and border control. Like Menelaus and Agamemnon, modern states often claim to offer welcome while practising exclusion. Refugees and displaced people today frequently occupy a liminal state—neither fully included nor entirely excluded—shaped by policies that control their presence, voice, and movement. In many ways, they remain guests whose welcome is provisional and contingent upon submission to a host who can withdraw hospitality at any moment.

This liminal state is not unlike the condition of Helen in the poem. In my reading, Helen is not simply the cause of war but a figure caught between belonging and alienation, between desire and blame. She is both central and marginal, visible yet voiceless, possessed but never possessing. Her situation evokes the structural position of those today who, though ostensibly “welcomed,” are treated as liabilities rather than members of a moral community. The Iliad, understood this way, is not only a meditation on ancient war but a tragic account of what happens when traditions of welcome are degraded into mechanisms of control.

Emily Anhalt’s Enraged is instructive in this regard. Her study of rage in Homeric epic reveals how deeply anger is connected to the experience of dishonour within a failing moral order. This rage is not limited to Achilles alone but reflects a broader social anger born from betrayal by systems that promise dignity yet deliver subjugation. In my reading of Wilson’s translation, such rage, muted in Helen, contained within the Greek ranks, and projected outward onto Troy, emerges as a symptom of ethical collapse. Rage becomes the residue of violated hospitality, of traditions that are claimed but no longer upheld.

Thus, The Iliad, far from being merely a chronicle of ancient heroism, becomes in this reading a study of political and moral fragility. Its significance lies not in the repetition of heroic forms but in exposing how power, when separated from ethical responsibility, corrodes the very institutions that define civilisation. Hospitality, when stripped of its mutual obligations, stops being a virtue and instead becomes a display of dominance. In such a context, conflict is not accidental but inevitable. My reading of Wilson’s translation, attentive to these tensions, suggests that the poem endures because it grasps something fundamental about the conditions under which communities either thrive or collapse. Ultimately, the tragedy is not only that war occurs but that it follows logically from the betrayal of the values one claims to defend.

Helmet from the Etruscan Museum Rome – Villa Giulia 📸 by me
Exekias Amphora, Achilles and Ajax Engaged in a Game, Greek Pottery from the Vatican Museum 📸 by me

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Cartoons as Conscience: The Political Art of Philip Guston and William Gropper

This essay situates Philip Guston’s late "grotesque" paintings within the tradition of political cartooning exemplified by William Gropper and inspired by Francisco Goya. It argues that Guston’s cartoon-like style is a deliberate, urgent form of moral and political critique—not a simple borrowing from popular comics—using satire and caricature to confront social and personal trauma.

When Philip Guston unveiled the paintings that would redefine his late career at the Marlborough Gallery in 1970, the art world was jolted by their raw, cartoonish figuration: hooded Klansmen, bloodied shoes, clocks, and cigarettes rendered with thick, clumsy brushstrokes and heavy outlines. Early responses often framed these works as a stylistic flirtation with popular culture cartoons, invoking influences such as Krazy Kat or underground comics. This reading, however, risks obscuring the deeper, more politically charged lineage from which Guston’s grotesque imagery arises—a lineage traceable not to entertainment cartoons, but to the radical activist cartoons of artists such as William Gropper and the broader tradition of social realism and political satire.

This political dimension of Guston’s late imagery is often overshadowed by formalist interpretations that emphasize its cartoonish appearance while neglecting its moral intent. Unlike popular comic strips designed primarily for entertainment, Guston’s grotesque figures serve as urgent symbols of historical and ongoing violence, racial terror, and personal complicity. This approach finds a clear antecedent in William Gropper’s activist cartoons, which similarly deploy caricature and grotesque distortion to lay bare the machinery of oppression. Both artists harness the visual language of “cartoons” not to amuse but to provoke critical reflection, aligning their work with a tradition of political satire that stretches back to Goya and beyond.

William Gropper, a generation senior to Guston and a committed social realist, produced a sustained body of work that fused biting political commentary with grotesque caricature. His Caprichos series, created between 1953 and 1956, directly referenced Goya’s iconic Los Caprichos etchings, translating the Spanish master’s moral indictments into a mid-twentieth-century American context of political activism, McCarthyism, and political repression. These works employ distorted hybrid figures and exaggerated forms not for humour’s sake but as powerful symbols of political resistance against the paranoia and repression of the McCarthy era. Gropper’s cartoons functioned not as mere entertainment but as urgent visual manifestos exposing systemic injustice and social hypocrisy.

William Gropper was blacklisted during the McCarthy era, a time when fear-mongering and political opportunism fueled a witch hunt against leftist artists and intellectuals. McCarthy’s campaign weaponized paranoia to enforce conformity and suppress dissent, effectively silencing voices like Gropper’s that challenged the status quo. This blacklisting was less about national security and more about maintaining ideological control through intimidation and censorship.

This intersection of grotesque imagery and political engagement characterizes both artists’ approach to figuration as a form of social critique. Where Guston’s late paintings shocked audiences with their crude, almost childlike simplicity, they shared with Gropper’s work a profound commitment to exposing systems of oppression through symbolic exaggeration and satirical distortion. Both artists deliberately embraced a visual vocabulary that destabilizes traditional notions of beauty and decorum, using caricature not as escapism but as a means to confront and unsettle. This common ground reveals that Guston’s “cartoonish” style is not a descent into frivolity but a strategic reclaiming of political cartooning’s power to articulate moral outrage and historical reckoning.

William Gropper, ‘Lincoln Observing Corrupt Politicians, Silver Shirts and the KKK,’ 1940. Photo from William Gropper: Artist of the People, the Phillips Collection in Washington DC..

Guston’s late paintings align formally and conceptually with this activist cartoon tradition. His return to figuration was no retreat into nostalgia or irony but a deliberate strategy to confront America’s unresolved legacies of racism, violence, and moral failure. The hooded figures that populate works such as The Studio (1969) and City Limits (1970) function as grotesque archetypes of evil and complicity. Guston’s thick brushwork, rough-edged forms, and lurid palette deny the viewer aesthetic comfort, demanding engagement with uncomfortable truths. While the flattened perspective and graphic contours recall comic strips, Guston’s purpose is not to entertain but to indict, much as Gropper’s caricatures do.

This alignment is not merely stylistic but profoundly ideological and deeply personal. Guston’s embrace of figuration serves as a means to wrestle not only with the historical and cultural traumas embedded in American society—particularly the persistence of racial violence and complicity—but also with his own personal and familial struggles, including his Jewish heritage and the weight of inherited trauma. Rejecting the detachment of abstract art, Guston, like Gropper, who used his art to confront the abuses of power during the McCarthy era, reclaims the visual language of caricature and satire as a vehicle for moral urgency. Their shared commitment to grotesque exaggeration is less about distortion for its own sake and more about amplifying the ethical dimensions of their subjects, forcing viewers into uncomfortable recognition of societal and personal ills.

The connection deepens through their shared invocation of Goya. Guston often cited Goya as a profound influence, praising the Spanish master’s capacity to merge personal anguish with social critique (Ashton, 1976). Gropper’s explicit homage through his Caprichos series situates him firmly within this lineage. Both artists inherit a visual vocabulary of the grotesque and the satirical, deploying it to expose political and moral corruption in their respective times.

This shared invocation of Goya underscores a mutual commitment to art as a form of urgent social testimony. Both Guston and Gropper channel Goya’s capacity to intertwine the intimate with the political, using grotesque and satirical imagery to confront human cruelty and systemic injustice. Their work transcends mere formal experimentation; it embodies a moral imperative to bear witness and to unsettle complacency. In doing so, they reclaim the figure and the cartoon as potent tools of resistance, breaking through the distance often imposed by modernist abstraction to engage viewers directly in ethical reflection.

The comparison between Guston and Gropper reveals a shared refusal of modernist abstraction’s detachment and formalism. Instead, they embrace a raw, accessible visual language that blends humour and horror, caricature and confession, in the service of political engagement. Guston’s late work, often dismissed as derivative of popular cartoons, emerges as a continuation and deepening of the radical activist cartooning exemplified by Gropper. This insight challenges reductive readings and restores the vital political function of Guston’s art.

By positioning Guston’s late paintings within the lineage of activist cartooning, we recognize that his stylistic shift was not a mere aesthetic choice but a deliberate political act. His use of crude, cartoonish forms channels a tradition of social critique that demands attention and discomfort, rather than passive consumption. This approach foregrounds the artist’s role as moral witness and provocateur, challenging the viewer to confront the insidious realities of racism, violence, and complicity. In doing so, Guston reclaims the power of the grotesque and the satirical as vital instruments in the ongoing struggle for justice.

Understanding Guston through this prism enriches our appreciation not only of his aesthetic innovations but also of the ethical urgency underpinning his late paintings. It situates him within a tradition of artists for whom cartoonish imagery is never neutral but a charged, confrontational tool—one that mobilizes distortion and satire to wake viewers from complacency. Both Guston and Gropper remind us that the grotesque cartoon can serve as a potent form of political art, capable of unmasking social evils with searing clarity.

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Liminal Visibility: Migration, Data, and the Politics of Boundaries

The first reading of Canada’s Bill C-2 signals a significant expansion of digital surveillance and data collection powers within immigration enforcement, including enhanced capabilities for electronic monitoring, biometric data use, and information sharing across agencies. These provisions illustrate how the state increasingly relies on computational systems to govern migration, embedding control within data infrastructures that produce visibility and legibility on its own terms. This legislative shift exemplifies the broader Data Turn—where algorithmic models and surveillance reshape who is recognized or excluded. Examining this through the lens of contemporary visual art reveals how artists expose and resist these mechanisms of control, offering critical counter-narratives that emphasize opacity, ambiguity, and the contested politics of representation in immigration regimes. This article stems from my reading of Canada’s Bill C-2 informed by Joy Rohde’s Armed with Expertise (that I just finished reading), connecting contemporary data-driven governance in immigration to its historical roots in Cold War expertise, and exploring how these dynamics shape the politics of visibility and liminality.

The Data Turn has reordered not just how states govern, but how they see. In systems of immigration control, policing, and security, governance now operates through data—through predictive models, biometric templates, and behavioral scores. These systems do not represent reality; they construct it, enacting a vision of the world in which subjects are rendered as variables and futures as risks. This logic, increasingly dominant across global institutions, marks a shift from rule by law to rule by model. And as it reconfigures power, it also reconfigures aesthetics.

This shift towards data-driven governance deeply affects how migratory subjects are categorized and controlled, often reducing complex human experiences to discrete data points subject to algorithmic prediction and intervention. The imposition of predictive models and biometric surveillance transforms migrants from individuals with agency into risks to be managed, their identities flattened into probabilistic profiles. This reordering not only reshapes bureaucratic practice but also redefines the conditions of visibility and invisibility, inclusion and exclusion. Those caught in liminal states—between legality and illegality, presence and absence—are particularly vulnerable to these regimes of measurement and control, which perpetuate uncertainty and precarity.

Visual artists have responded to this transformation not only by thematizing data regimes, but by dismantling the very mechanisms that render them invisible. They expose the apparatus behind the interface—the wires, scripts, ideologies—and stage counter-visions that assert opacity, indeterminacy, and refusal. In doing so, they challenge the way the Data Turn governs the liminal, especially those living in the suspended space of migration, statelessness, and bureaucratic indeterminacy.

This artistic intervention reframes vision itself—not as a neutral or purely descriptive act, but as a tool of power embedded within technological and bureaucratic systems. By peeling back layers of digital mediation, these artists reveal how contemporary surveillance and data infrastructures actively produce knowledge and enforce hierarchies. Their work highlights that visibility is not simply about being seen, but about how one is seen, categorized, and ultimately governed—a dynamic that is especially acute for those inhabiting the ambiguous spaces of migration and statelessness.

Artists like Trevor Paglen and Hito Steyerl foreground this shift from image to instrument. In their work, surveillance footage, facial recognition outputs, and satellite tracking systems are not just visual materials—they are operational weapons. Paglen’s images of classified military sites or undersea data cables reveal the landscape of surveillance that underpins contemporary geopolitics. Steyerl, in pieces like How Not to Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File, explores how machine vision abstracts, targets, and governs. In both cases, the act of seeing is no longer passive; it is a condition of being classified and controlled. The migrant, in such systems, is no longer a presence to be engaged but a deviation to be filtered—a datapoint, a heat signature, a probability.

Paglen and Steyerl’s work exposes the mechanisms through which visibility becomes a tool of control, transforming subjects into data points within vast systems of surveillance. Yet this logic of enforced legibility provokes a critical response: a turn toward opacity as a form of resistance. Where the state insists on clarity and categorization, artists embrace ambiguity and fragmentation, challenging the totalizing gaze and creating spaces where identity and presence refuse easy definition. This dialectic between exposure and concealment reflects the lived realities of migrants caught within regimes that demand transparency but offer exclusion.

If the state’s data infrastructures demand visibility and legibility, many artists respond with strategic opacity. Édouard Glissant’s philosophy of opacity—his insistence on the right not to be reduced—resonates powerfully here. In the works of Wangechi Mutu and Walid Raad, opacity takes material form: fragmentation, distortion, layering, and pseudofactuality unsettle any stable claim to truth or identity. These aesthetic strategies echo the experience of navigating migration regimes—systems that demand transparency from those who are systematically excluded from its protections. Opacity becomes a refusal of capture. It asserts a right to complexity in the face of an infrastructure that reduces lives to binary certainties.

I am guided here by the words of WG Sebald and the art of Gerhardt Richter and their use of things like dust and blur as integral to understanding of history and memory, in addition to the use of light and shadows in works of art immemorial and its relation to knowledge.

Building on this embrace of opacity, other artists turn their attention to archives—the sites where power not only records but also erases and shapes memory. By interrogating immigration documents, military footage, and bureaucratic data, these artists reveal how archives carry forward histories of violence and exclusion. Their work challenges the illusion of “raw” data, exposing it instead as deeply entangled with structures of power that continue to marginalize and render migrants invisible or precarious. In doing so, they create counter-archives that reclaim erased voices and insist on recognition beyond official narratives, mirroring the ongoing struggles of those living in legal and social liminality.

Other artists interrogate the archive: not just what is remembered, but how, by whom, and with what effects. The work of Forensic Architecture, Susan Schuppli, and Maria Thereza Alves reveals the afterlife of data—how immigration records, censuses, or military footage embed structural violence into bureaucratic memory. Their work testifies to how data is never “raw”: it is collected through regimes of power, and it carries that violence forward. These artists reanimate what official systems erase, constructing counter-archives that expose the silences, absences, and structural forgettings built into systems of documentation. This resonates deeply with the immigrant condition, in which legal presence is provisional and recognition is always deferred.

As archival artists uncover the hidden violences embedded in bureaucratic memory, another group of practitioners turns to the physical and infrastructural dimensions of data governance. By making visible the often-invisible hardware and networks that sustain digital control, these artists reveal how power operates not only through data but through material systems—servers, cables, and code—that shape everyday life. This exposure challenges the myth of a seamless digital realm, reminding us that governance is grounded in tangible, contested spaces where decisions about inclusion and exclusion are enacted.

Where the logic of governance is increasingly immaterial—hidden in code, servers, and proprietary systems—some artists work to make the infrastructure visible. James Bridle, in exploring what he terms the “New Aesthetic,” captures the eerie, semi-visible zone where machine perception intersects with urban life and planetary surveillance. Ingrid Burrington’s maps and guides to internet infrastructure render tangible the cables, server farms, and chokepoints that quietly govern digital existence. These works push back against the naturalization of the digital by showing it as a system of decisions, exclusions, and material constraints.

The “Data Turn” can be understood as a continuation of intellectual movements that critically examine the production and mediation of knowledge, much like the “Literary Turn” of the late twentieth century. The Literary Turn foregrounded language and narrative as active forces shaping historical meaning and subjectivity, challenging claims to objective or transparent truth. Similarly, the Data Turn interrogates the rise of data and computational systems as new epistemic tools that do not merely represent social realities but construct and govern them. This shift compels historians to reconsider the archives, sources, and methodologies that underpin their work, recognizing that data is embedded within power relations and ideological frameworks. Both turns reveal the contingency of knowledge and demand critical attention to the infrastructures through which it is produced and deployed.

By revealing the physical infrastructure behind digital governance, artists highlight how power operates through material systems that govern access and control. This focus on the tangible complements artistic engagements with the symbolic and bureaucratic forms that mediate migration. Together, these practices expose how both infrastructure and imagery function as aesthetic regimes—tools that shape and enforce legal and political inclusion, while also offering sites for creative rupture and alternative narratives.

Even the forms that mediate migration—passport photos, visa documents, biometric scans—are aesthetic regimes. They precede legal recognition; they shape it. Artists like Bouchra Khalili, in works like The Mapping Journey Project, appropriate these documentary forms not to affirm their authority, but to rupture them. Her work stages alternative cartographies of movement—ones based not on state control, but on narrative, memory, and resistance. In such works, the migrant is not a risk profile, but a storyteller.

By transforming state documentation into acts of storytelling and resistance, artists reclaim the migrant’s agency from reductive systems of classification. This reimagining challenges the prevailing logic of legibility, opening space for more nuanced understandings of identity and belonging beyond the constraints of bureaucratic control.

Across these practices, art offers not just critique but proposition. It creates space for reimagining how we understand legibility, personhood, and the infrastructures that shape both. In contrast to the Data Turn’s promise of seamless optimization, these works embrace what is incomplete, contradictory, and opaque. They remind us that data is not destiny, and that what cannot be captured might still be what matters most.

Together, these artistic interventions reveal that data regimes are not neutral frameworks but deeply embedded with values and power. By embracing ambiguity and incompleteness, they challenge dominant narratives of control and certainty, opening new possibilities for understanding identity and presence beyond bureaucratic constraints.

For scholars working at the intersection of immigration, data, and liminality, this aesthetic terrain is not peripheral—it is central. Art shows us that the Data Turn is not merely technical; it is philosophical. It carries assumptions about what kinds of life count, what futures are permissible, and how uncertainty should be managed. Visual practices, especially those rooted in the experience of liminality, offer a different grammar of visibility—one attuned not to classification, but to ambiguity; not to risk, but to relation.

photo of me, by me, from an art exhibition of the surveillance state in Montreal
this was from a room that tracked me taking photos of it taking photos of me

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Crowned in Ruin: Resonances Between Kurosawa’s Ran and Anthony Hopkins as King Lear (2018)

This post builds on a few earlier posts in the same vein, Cassian Andor and the Shakespearean Tragic: Macbeth in a Galaxy Far, Far Away and Shared Shadows: Samurai and Scottish Kings comparing recent interpretations of Shaekespeare's works. Each of those posts considered how Shakespearean motifs migrate across aesthetic and cultural regimes, illustrating the persistence of his tragic structures as they are recontextualized—from the ritualized violence and visual codes of feudal Japan to the allegorical architectures of the Star Wars universe. @DM - Thanks again for the suggestion!

Across cultures and media forms, King Lear, like MacBeth, resists containment, defying easy categorization or fixed interpretation. Its tragic scope—centred on the violent disintegration of power, family, and selfhood—possesses a universality that transcends time, place, and medium, enabling it to translate with remarkable force into radically different aesthetic and cultural settings. This is not simply a matter of thematic portability, but of profound structural and psychological resonance: the fissures in authority, the betrayal of kinship, and the unraveling of identity under existential pressures are motifs that persistently echo across civilizations and epochs. When Akira Kurosawa’s Ran is placed in dialogue with Richard Eyre’s 2018 film adaptation starring Anthony Hopkins, what emerges is not a straightforward comparative exercise but rather a meditation on how cinematic form and cultural context serve as vehicles to channel and transform the play’s eschatological despair. Both works adapt Lear not by slavishly preserving Shakespeare’s text or its Elizabethan idioms, but by distilling and preserving its structural truths: the implosion of sovereign power, the fragility and fracture of family bonds, and the ravaging of selfhood through time, betrayal, and grief. The critical question ceases to be about fidelity to text and instead focuses on how each adaptation exploits its medium—film’s visual grammar, narrative economy, and sensory impact—and responds to its own historical moment to crystallize a shared metaphysical crisis that remains powerfully relevant.

Kurosawa’s Ran is steeped in the imagery, ritual, and disciplined austerity of Noh theatre and the monumental landscapes of feudal Japan, offering a reimagining of Lear through the figure of Hidetora Ichimonji, an aging warlord whose attempt to divide his domain between his sons triggers a cascade of civil war, chaos, and existential ruin. Noh’s emphasis on stillness, subtle gestures, and the use of masks to express internal states resonates profoundly with Kurosawa’s cinematic approach to Lear. Rather than relying on dialogue to convey psychological complexity, Ran conveys the ineffable through composition and the choreography of bodies within space—faces frozen in painted expressions of torment, eyes that communicate despair through a stillness that contrasts sharply with the violent chaos surrounding them. This ritualized embodiment of suffering heightens the sense that the characters are not merely individuals but archetypes caught in the inexorable machinery of fate. The slow, deliberate pacing and the stylized blocking in Ran echo Noh’s meditative rhythms, inviting viewers into a contemplative space where tragedy is not simply witnessed but intuited at a spiritual level.

This film is a work not of language or speech but of silence and visual poetry: moments of stillness punctuated by haunting gazes exchanged across blood-soaked battlefields, the sight of fallen bodies scattered across hills painted with a surreal red, and faces contorted into stylized masks of suffering and rage. Kurosawa deliberately evacuates Shakespeare’s rich verbal tapestry, replacing it with an intense focus on composition, movement, and the symbolic use of colour and space. The succession crisis, the brutality of civil war, and the devastating natural disasters that punctuate the narrative become more than mere plot elements; they are staged as elemental forces working against human order, as if the natural world itself revolts against the arrogance and folly of man. This is Lear refracted through a cosmology governed not by Christian providence or justice but by the inexorable logic of karma and cosmic balance. The film’s sense of time is cyclical and cosmic rather than linear: history is not a progression but a repeating pattern, where violence begets more violence and human folly is met not with divine retribution but with the cold, indifferent consequences of fate. The film’s epic scale and ritualized style invite viewers to perceive the tragedy as part of a universal, cyclical human condition, where individual and political collapse mirror the vast, relentless rhythms of the cosmos.

Moreover, Kurosawa’s masterful use of sky imagery throughout Ran amplifies the film’s cosmic and metaphysical dimensions. The vastness of the sky—whether storm-darkened, brooding with portent, or piercingly clear—serves as a mutable canvas reflecting the inner turmoil and external chaos that engulf Hidetora and his world. In key sequences, the sky appears almost as a silent, omnipresent witness to human folly and suffering, its shifting colours and moods marking the rise and fall of power and sanity. Storm clouds gathering above battlefields echo the gathering doom, while moments of eerie stillness under open blue skies accentuate the loneliness and vulnerability of the fallen warlord. This sky imagery resonates with the cyclical view of history embedded in the film: the heavens do not intervene with divine justice but remain indifferent, a vast and empty space that dwarfs human struggles and amplifies their tragic futility. The sky thus becomes a symbol of the cosmic order—or disorder—that underlies the mortal world, a reminder that human agency is caught within forces far greater than itself.

In this way, Kurosawa’s visual and thematic choices transform Lear from a tragedy of a singular monarch into an epic meditation on the impermanence of power and the fragile intersection of human will with destiny. The Noh-inspired stillness punctuating the chaos underscores a fatalistic acceptance, as characters enact their roles within a predetermined cosmic drama. This ritualized aesthetic deepens the film’s meditation on time—not as a linear march but as a swirling continuum where past violence informs present suffering, and where Hidetora’s downfall is but one turn in an endless cycle of rise and ruin.

In stark contrast, Eyre’s 2018 King Lear thrusts the drama into a recognizably contemporary and militarized state—a Britain that is vaguely 21st century, marked by post-democratic malaise and institutional coldness. This modern setting is not simply a backdrop but an active commentary: Lear here is not a tragic monarch steeped in dynastic tradition, but an autocrat unmoored from institutional constraints or moral accountability, whose hubris precipitates a breakdown resonant with the decline of modern empires and the fragility of late-stage political order. Anthony Hopkins’s Lear is portrayed with a brutal clarity, embodying a figure more brittle than mad, more cruel than noble, a man whose decline is accelerated by a society that demands strength and punishes weakness or ambiguity without mercy. The adaptation distills Shakespeare’s sprawling text to its rawest emotional and political conflicts, tightening the narrative noose so that the tension and despair are borne primarily through the actors’ performances rather than linguistic flourish. Here, the tragedy is stripped of cosmic or metaphysical grandeur and recast as systemic and institutional: it is the failure of governance, the erosion of familial loyalty, and the collapse of genuine care within a hypermodern, bureaucratic, and alienated social order that drive the narrative. Madness in this version is psychological trauma writ large, a fragmented internal collapse in a world that has become inhospitable to vulnerability, a bleak portrait of mental disintegration framed by cold, oppressive spaces that amplify isolation.

Yet, despite these vastly different aesthetics and cultural idioms, both Ran and Eyre’s King Lear converge around a powerful, shared image: the body stripped bare and exposed—on the storm-swept heath, amid the ruins of once-powerful realms, in madness, silence, and desolation. In Ran, Hidetora’s corporeal decline is rendered as a slow, mournful journey across desolate fields ravaged by storms and bloodshed, his mind shattered by the horrors unleashed in his name. His body becomes a visual embodiment of shame, madness, and the ultimate futility of worldly power, framed through ritualized imagery and the stylized masks of classical Japanese theatre. In Eyre’s adaptation, Hopkins’s Lear similarly staggers through urban wastelands and confining, prison-like interiors, his psyche collapsing under the cumulative weight of regret, betrayal, and lost authority. Both men are undone by the very power they once wielded—victims of a violent logic of their own making. Their children—whether daughters as in Shakespeare and Eyre, or sons as in Ran—echo this collapse structurally and thematically: filial relationships degrade into transactional calculations, virtue is met with indifference or cruelty, and kindness where it surfaces is either futile or extinguished. The family becomes a site where political and emotional structures alike unravel, embodying the deep fractures within human society and identity.

Though these adaptations differ markedly in their gestures, they resonate profoundly in tone and affect. Both reject Shakespeare’s verbal poetry in favour of registers suited to their respective media and cultures: Kurosawa’s painterly frames and ritualized blocking recall the precision and symbolism of Japanese theatre, while Eyre’s claustrophobic mise-en-scène and psychological realism immerse the viewer in a contemporary world stripped to its emotional essentials. Both invite audiences not to decode or intellectualize Shakespeare’s text, but to viscerally experience what happens when the scaffolding of meaning—family, order, sovereignty—collapses into chaos. The storm that rages in both works is more than a plot device; it is a metaphysical force, a symbol of the loss of place and belonging in a world turned hostile and indifferent. This elemental turmoil conveys a profound crisis of being, where the human self is uprooted from the structures that once gave it identity and security.

Just as Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood and the Donmar Warehouse’s Macbeth illuminated each other through resonance rather than direct comparison, so too do Ran and Eyre’s King Lear engage in a shared dialogue across cultural and temporal divides. Together, they create a sensorium of decay and desolation, drawing from culturally distinct but emotionally proximate traditions. One unfolds through the epic fatalism of Japanese historical drama, where ritual and cosmic cycles shape human destiny; the other, through the claustrophobic intimacy of modern political collapse, exposing the fragility of late capitalist governance and family life. Yet despite these formal and cultural differences, both leave us with the same haunting sense: that the human heart, once severed from love, responsibility, and the ethical bonds that sustain it, cannot endure the corrosive weight of its own power.

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Narrative Laundering: The Hidden Art of Shaping Belief

From The Economist: Russia is particularly keen on this kind of “narrative laundering”, in the words of Victor Ilie of Snoop, a news site in Romania. 

In Canada’s recent federal election, the battlefield was not confined to physical spaces or traditional media but unfolded dramatically within the digital realm. Here, foreign actors deployed a subtle yet potent form of information warfare, crafting narratives that blurred truth and fiction with deliberate precision. These stories did not announce themselves with grand fanfare; instead, they seeped quietly through trusted networks, their origins masked, their intentions concealed. Each narrative was layered and rewritten, shaped not only by its creators but by the very algorithms that govern digital spaces.

This contemporary form of narrative laundering, where information is continuously repurposed and sanitized to appear credible, exposes the vulnerabilities of our democratic processes in an age dominated by digital flows. Algorithms—those invisible arbiters of attention—act not merely as neutral conduits but as active amplifiers, selectively promoting content that engages, divides, or provokes. In doing so, they transform these crafted stories into echo chambers of influence, deepening existing social fractures while eroding trust in institutions meant to uphold collective governance.

The design of digital platforms, driven by profit and engagement incentives, turns influence into a form of subtle accumulation—where power grows not through direct confrontation but through constant, invisible shaping of attention and belief. This quiet manipulation feeds on data, harvesting behavioral patterns to refine and target narratives that shift perceptions and identities over time. The recent Canadian election exposes how this relentless layering of curated content can erode democracy, not by force, but through the gradual distortion of collective reality—an insidious accumulation of influence embedded in the architecture of the digital economy.

This moment demands a reckoning with the interplay between narrative, technology, and power. It calls us to consider not only the content of stories but the systems that enable their spread and transformation. To engage critically with digital narratives is to participate in a form of cultural vigilance—recognizing the layers beneath the surface, the coded incentives that shape what we see, and the ethical stakes of storytelling in an algorithmic age.

Storytelling is an act of resistance, a deliberate effort to reclaim truth amid the noise. It challenges us to move beyond passive consumption and to cultivate an active, critical literacy that can navigate complexity without succumbing to cynicism. As the lines between fact and fabrication blur, our collective task is to safeguard the democratic project by illuminating the mechanisms of influence, fostering resilience, and insisting on narratives that honour nuance, transparency, and human connection.

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B&W photography and the benefits of looking up!

In black and white, architecture transforms into pure form—sharp lines and intricate textures stand out, while windows become portals to another world. The absence of colour forces the eye to focus on structure, light, and shadow, revealing the timeless beauty of built environments.

Looking up at the National Art Gallery in Ottawa, the stark contrasts of its glass and stone façade come to life in black and white. The sharp edges and sweeping curves of the architecture create a powerful dialogue between light and shadow, revealing the gallery’s majestic presence.

Looking up at the Maman statue outside the National Art Gallery in Ottawa, its towering, spider-like form becomes an intense study in contrast. The black and white frame emphasizes the intricate details of its legs and body, casting dramatic shadows that evoke both awe and vulnerability.

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Beholding the Man: The Power and Pain of Ecce Homo

Ecce Homo by Caravaggio (?) at the Prado. I can hear the security guard now!

On my recent trip to Madrid, I had the chance to see the newly unveiled Ecce Homo at the Prado, a painting believed to be by Caravaggio. However, I find myself skeptical about its attribution. The dating places it in his later period in Naples, but stylistically, it resonates more with his earlier works, if at all. The strong use of light and shadow is reminiscent of Caravaggisti more than Merisi’s, and the way figures are treated, suggest echoes of his youth rather than his mature style. This disconnect raises questions about the complexities of dating and attributing art, especially works from such a turbulent time in Caravaggio’s career.

Ecce Homo—”Behold the Man.” A phrase uttered by Pilate, but in painting, it’s more than just a biblical moment. It’s an image of suffering, exposure, and recognition—or lack thereof. There’s something uncomfortable about these depictions: Christ, beaten and humiliated, made a spectacle before the crowd. He is both king and victim, sacred yet mocked. Artists have returned to this moment for centuries, not just to retell the Passion story but to wrestle with deeper questions about power, vulnerability, and what it means to really see another person.

The phrase Ecce Homo—“Behold the Man”—captures a profound theological paradox within the Passion narrative. Pilate’s words (John 19:5) seem to present Jesus both as the King of the Jews and as a humiliated criminal, crowned with thorns rather than a royal diadem. The inscription above Christ’s head on the cross (John 19:19), “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews,” amplifies this irony. While Pilate’s statement could be seen more as a political gesture in the context of Roman authority and a question of Jesus’ messianic claims, the truth embedded in this moment transcends his intentions: Christ’s kingship is revealed through sacrifice, not earthly power. This tension invites deeper reflection on how we understand divine kingship—not as dominance, but as a vulnerability that paradoxically holds all power.

In Western Catholic painting, Ecce Homo serves as a profound visual commentary on the tension between Christ’s divine kingship and his earthly humiliation. Artists such as Caravaggio, Titian, and Rembrandt have captured the scene with an intensity that underscores this paradox. Christ, bound and crowned with thorns, is portrayed not just as a suffering man but as the focal point of redemption. In these works, the duality of his nature—both human and divine—becomes palpable, encouraging the viewer to confront their understanding of kingship, suffering, and salvation through the lens of Christ’s sacrifice.

The Ecce Homo theme, originating in early Christianity, traces a complex philosophical journey through humanism and beyond. In the Renaissance, it highlighted suffering as central to human dignity, a paradox of vulnerability and strength. This duality of human frailty and resilience persists in philosophical thought, provoking reflection on the nature of suffering, redemption, and the complexities of the human condition. The theme continues to influence thinkers, encouraging deeper exploration into how suffering shapes both individual and collective existence.

This tension in Ecce Homo is revealed through the way artists have engaged with the subject, using “picturing” as a tool to convey both divine kingship and human suffering. In the Renaissance, artists like Titian or Bosch often depicted Christ’s suffering with an air of quiet dignity, where his gaze, whether meeting ours or turning inward, suggests both presence and contemplation. In contrast, Caravaggio and the Baroque artists push the emotional intensity of the scene further, employing stark contrasts of light and shadow to amplify the rawness of Christ’s ordeal. These depictions do not merely visualize suffering; they invite the viewer to feel the violence, to hear the mocking crowd, to experience the visceral reality of Christ’s vulnerability. This technique shifts the act of “picturing” into a more embodied experience, bridging the divide between observer and the scene, compelling the viewer to confront the deeply human, yet paradoxically sacred, nature of the moment.

Nietzsche, of course, couldn’t resist borrowing the phrase, twisting it for his own purposes. His Ecce Homo wasn’t about suffering at all, but self-affirmation. A way of saying, “Here I am, on my own terms.” In a way, that’s the opposite of the Ecce Homo in painting, where Christ is stripped of control, turned into an object for others to judge. But maybe that contrast is the point. The paintings ask something of us—not just to look, but to decide what we see.

While the Lost Caravaggio: The Ecce Homo Unveiled exhibition at the Prado presents a newly discovered painting, I remain skeptical of its attribution to Caravaggio. Regardless of its origins, the theme of Ecce Homo remains a profound reflection on Christ’s suffering and kingship, deeply intertwined with theological exploration. This rediscovery encourages a broader dialogue about how this moment of humiliation, vulnerability, and sacrifice has been visualized across centuries. For more information, visit the Prado’s website.

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Spain – a few from Barcelona

I just returned from a pretty awesome trip to Spain, ostensibly to see the “Caravaggio” at the Prado in Madrid. More to come on that. My sleep schedule is off so I decided to import all of my camera photos and start editing a few. I will post food in a separate post but Caelis was fantastic as were several local small restos near my hotel in the Eixample district, just north of the old Gothic quarter. I also included some pics from MOCA where Banksy, Basquiat and Kusama can be found, quite the treat! The Sagrada Familia was fantastic although incredibly busy with crowds. I couldn’t imagine it in the summer tourist season. I liked the Picasso gallery but, TBH, I found its selection to be limited to his Blue period. The various “views” of Velasquez’s Las Meninas at the Prado were, however, sublime. The architecture of the city is amazing, not just the churches but also the various buildings that you see just wandering down the streets. The Gaudi buildings were pretty spectacular too.

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Fluidic

I remember seeing a very innovative art piece showing reflections of water drops projected onto the walls that surrounded the viewer in an installation piece from a South Korean artist while in Toronto well over a decade ago. The technology certainly has improved! Check out this very interesting interactive visual art installation in Milan here.