The spectacle of demonstration: visual representation of political imagination during the coronavirus crisis

Abstract

ABSTRACT The coronavirus crisis revealed the vulnerability of shared space especially as a space for civic actions. The media, during lockdown and social distancing, become the main channel for maintaining social connections. The present article deals with demonstrations in Israel during the spring and summer of 2020 which sought to overcome policies through visual mediation and the affordances of digital media. The first part focuses on Guy Debord theory as a means of understanding the alienation of people from their everyday life and meaningful political existence. While his forceful argument about the Spectacle was established on television, there are now evident changes as can be traced in the practices of social movements utilizing new media. Images, with enchanting power, were perceived as numbing distancing people from real life; now, they can also act as channels for the political imagination. In addition, the internet and digital culture in general may connect people to political action rather than dissociate them from it. The second part examines photographs from three different demonstrations and shows how political imagination was figured as spectacle and how visual rhetoric mediated the social movements' reasoning. The first is drawn from the Black Flags movement, established in the face of the chaotic conduct of Israel's former leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, in the wake of corruption allegations. The demonstration's drone documentation, providing imagery taken from above, shows public gatherings grid as a representation of civil order. The second picture is from a Zoom-based demonstration in which a Zoom meeting, an event that enabled under-represented people to participate from their home. The third is from the Balfour demonstrations – a reenactment performance that was staged for the camera as an Instagram image, fashioning an ideal portrait of the protestors and of an idealistic vision of the state. The article uses these examples to demonstrate how the political agendas of the social movements are consolidated via visual technologies.