Affecting the Conflict: Mediations of the Colombian War in Contemporary Art and Film

This book focuses on the art and films produced between the years 2002 and 2017 in relation to the Colombian armed conflict. It asks the following questions: How have contemporary art and film addressed the Colombian conflict? What are the contributions of these forms of visual culture to the memorialization of the armed conflict and the overcoming of its negative legacies? The main goal is to understand the ways in which contemporary art and film contribute to the historical and social transformations that Colombian society needs to undertake if it is to move beyond the violence and trauma of an internal war that has gone on for over fifty years and produced at least six million victims. The main claim is that the artworks and films in question mediate the conflict rather than represent it. In other words, they bridge the distance between their urban audiences and the predominantly rural conflict. Paying heed to the “affective turn” of the humanities and social sciences, the book also claims that this mediation consists, first and foremost, an affective engagement with the conflict’s history, events, and victims. This affective engagement counters the apathy toward and removal from the conflict that has predominated in Colombian urban sectors. Thus, the singularity of this book lies in the fact that it studies a topic that has not been adequately addressed within English-speaking academia, as well as in its cross-media and interdisciplinary scope. Moreover, it is noteworthy for the originality of its approach and, especially, its attention to affect.

List of Figures
Foreword
Ana María Reyes
Boston University
Preface
Introduction
Chapter One
Sublime Affects
Chapter Two
Practical Aesthetics
Chapter Three
Indexical Affects
Chapter Four
Cinematic Fictions
Chapter Five
Cinematic Powers
Conclusion
Notes
References
Index

Rubén Darío Yepes Muñoz is an Assistant Professor of Art History and Visual Culture at Georgia College and State University. He received his PhD from the University of Rochester in 2017. His dissertation, which addresses the mediation of the Colombian armed conflict in visual art and film, was first published in 2018 as 'Afectando el conflicto: Mediaciones de la guerra colombiana en el arte y el cine contemporáneo'. Current research focuses on the art created in Latin America in response to the contexts of crisis that developed across the region during the COVID-19 pandemic and the genealogy of Latin American Visual Studies. Ruben is the author of three other books: 'Estudios visuales desde América Latina: Una contribución a la consolidación del campo' (2024), 'María José Arjona: Lo que puede un cuerpo' (2015) and 'La política del arte: Cuatro casos de arte contemporáneo en Colombia' (2012). He is also the author of a number of peer-reviewed articles and book chapters published in Argentina, Canada, Colombia, Mexico, and the United States.

Colombian art, Colombian cinema, Art and Colombian Armed Conflict, Latin American art, Latin American film, Contemporary Art, Art and War, Visual Art and Affect