THE DISAPPEARED WERE ALWAYS THERE
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by Chantal Meza
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Violence is not some abstract concept or mere theoretical problem. Ever timely and yet equally timeless, it represents a violation in the very conditions that constitute what it means to be human.
As a Mexican artist whose work has intimately dealt with the issues of disappearance and violence, Chantal’s work is also featured throughout the edition as well as her essay "The Disappeared where always there".
The Philosopher
UNITED KINGDOM
VIOLENT WAYS OF SEEING THE IMAGE
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by Chantal Meza
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On Violence is a bi-annual magazine produced by the Centre for the Study of Violence, based in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Bath. Dedicated to exploring in an accessible and educative way the multiple forms violence and its responses take across the world, the magazine brings together leading authorities, policy makers, critical thinkers, artists and cultural producers, centre affiliates and students.
On Violence
UNITED KINGDOM
THE MEMORY OF ART
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by Chantal Meza and Lemuella Brehun
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Memory an dart share reflections on experiences and events in ways that challenge us to creatively respond and even confront difficult personal and collective histories through expression. This article explores memory, its connection to art and how it can help address violence by evoking empathy and perspective through powerful visuals.
Bath Journal of Social Sciences
UNITED KINGDOM
STATE OF DISAPPEARANCE
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by Chantal Meza
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When one thinks about art, there always seem to be two contradictory statements in the room: "Art is violent" and "Art is not violent" . From my own experience I believe that creation has to do with violence most of the time before it exists as an art form. Cover and Featured Artwork for the Edition 1/22 Perpetrators of the German Journal Wissenschaft und Frieden (Science & Peace).
W&F Wissenschaft und Frieden
GERMANY
VIOLENCE & ABSTRACTION
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by Brad Evans & Chantal Meza
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Abstractions are everywhere. They fill the air. Abstractions can belong to the realm of the pure imagination. They can inspire wonderment. And yet they can also summon forth the most terrifying gods and empires of worldly destruction. Abstraction becomes apparent every single time an original thought is birthed. It is also apparent in the conceptual delivery of each and every philosophical claim. There are no metaphysical principles without the abstractions from which they emerge.
Symplokē
NEBRASKA
TECHNO-THEODICY
HOW TECHNOLOGY BECAME THE NEW RELIGION
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by Brad Evans & Chantal Meza
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This essay addresses the rise of what is understood to be a global techno-theodicy. Recognizing the pandemic of 2020 as representing the first crisis of the post-liberal order, it maps out the changing nature of religious power as it relates to the appropriation of the abstract, from earlier claims on the monotheistic God to the powers of salvation and redemption invested in technology today.
Theory & Event
UNITED STATES
A STUDY FOR A BOMB
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by Chantal Meza
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Forthcoming Special Issue: Annihilation Aesthetics, August, 2025.
Annihilation Aesthetics: On the Disappearances of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
This special issue of Thesis Eleven will be published in August 2025. Below includes a introduction to the volume accompanied by an artist’s statement by Chantal Meza whose artworks works will be featured in the issue.
Thesis Eleven
AUSTRALIA
THE WRITING OF DISAPPEARANCE
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by Chantal Meza
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This artist statement has been made available as an open source by De Gruyter Brill. It features on the State of Disappearance book printed by McGill University Press, Canada.
De Gruyter Brill
GERMANY
ART FROM THE FUTURE
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by Brad Evans & Chantal Meza
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What is the purpose of the imagination when society is dominated by throwaway images? How did we come to create such a luxurious condition for ourselves, putting imagination to such waste? What role should we give to art when the only art deemed worthy is the one technology is claiming to be the principal author of its production?
The Philosophical Salon
USA
BEYOND CONTROL
TECHNOLOGY,POST-FACIALITY& THE DANCE OF THE ABSTRACT
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by Brad Evans & Chantal Meza
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The Nomad doesn't physically move. Theirs is more an ontological positioning vis-a-vis the sedentary ambitions of the State and its captive political formations. Rather than moving across physical space, nomadism then is the liberation of thought from all forms of capture and containment.
Bloomsbury
LONDON
NARCISSUS IN THREE ACTS
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by Brad Evans & Chantal Meza
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This essay addresses the narcissism of techno-nihilism into which life is being thrown. Written by a political theorist and artist, it looks specifically at the way technology is colonizing the political and artistic imagination.
Review of Education, Pedagogy & Cultural Studies
UNITED KINGDOM
IMMERSIVE:A VIOLENT INTERRUPTION TO A VISUAL SILENCE
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by Brad Evans & Chantal Meza
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This essay addresses the violence of the digital world through its relationship to the visuality of noise and how it shapes the image of thought. Noting how deep and contemplative silence is integral to any creative and critical process, it fleshes out the ways the hyper-technologization of life is throwing us into an immersive abyss. This represents another indicator in the digital colonization of the human condition, through which the poetic is being completely appropriated by a technological vision for species being.
Washington University Review of Philosophy
UNITED STATES
MAKING PEACE WITH VIOLENCE
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by Brad Evans & Chantal Meza
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What’s in the proposition of making peace with violence? What is the making that’s being imagined? Whose vision of peace are we conforming with in the process of this production? Which modalities of violence are we considering of befriending in the final act of our peaceful making? Is such a condition desirable? Would it require the banishment of all conflict from the face of the earth?
nY Literature, Criticism & Entertainment
NETHERLANDS
HAVE WE FINALLY BECOME GHOSTS IN THE MACHINE?
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by Brad Evans & Chantal Meza
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The idea of humans being ghosted by colonising machines has a long philosophical history. From Gilbert Ryle’s earlier meditations on René Descartes and his concerns with the separation between the mind and the body, to Arthur Koestler’s subsequently inspired book titled The Ghosts in the Machine, in which he warned humanity about the way our desire for a certain transcendence has led to a particular fetishization with technology that was hurtling us towards oblivion, we have been rightly suspicious about the possibility of technological enslavement and how we may end up authors of our own extinction.