Les images à l’épreuve du terrain (Images in the Field)

In relation to the work of Susan Meiselas, associations and NGOs including the Centre Hubertine Auclert, the Centre Audiovisuel Simone de Beauvoir, the Centre Primo Levi, FIT, PEROU and the Fondation Institut Kurde in Paris, are invited to the exhibition space at Jeu de Paume to share with visitors their experiences in the field and discuss their action to counter violence against women and assist migrants and refugees. How do images fit into their ideas and activity generally?

In the aftermath of political violence: surviving, living and recovering a hidden side…
Jeu de Paume is inviting the Centre Primo Levi to present its pioneering work with refugees and asylum seekers. The intervention by the Centre’s psychologist, Béatrice Patsalides Hofmann, will discuss her therapeutic practices and the question of the control of the gaze and the image as an instrument of torture.
In the world of torturers, where the enemy must become totally visible in order to be totally dominated, the jailer’s “panoptical” vision becomes an instrument of torture. It is used to cancel the hidden self, to kill the individual’s most secret, personal existence. The question of the image is of interest to us in therapeutic practice with victims of persecution and political violence precisely in its link with the invisible, with the un-image-inable. The image – image of the body, self-image, imaginary support of the subject – speaks to us from the place where it has been attacked, broken, shaken, fragmented, sullied by torture. With our patients, resisting captivation by the fascinum of horror and working to restore the individual subject’s hidden side, against the feeling that his or her violated body is totally transparent, becomes an essential therapeutic and ethical act.

The Centre Primo Levi

It is thought that over 140,000 victims of torture and political violence are now living on French soul. These are men, women and children enduring great physical and psychological suffering, both from the multiple traumas inflicted by the unimaginable violence visited on them in their home country, but also from the process of exile and the conditions of extreme precariousness in which they are living on our territory.

Set up in 1995 by Amnesty International, Doctors of the World, ACAT, Juristes sans frontières and Trêves, the Centre Primo Levi is the only structure in the Île-de-France region to offer both medico-psychological care and social and legal assistance to people faced with great suffering. Parallel to its clinical action, the association trains outside professional involved with this population and runs consciousness-raising and advocacy campaigns at all level of society in favour of asylum seekers and political refugees who have been victims of extreme violence.

www.primolevi.org

Discussion in the rooms of the “Susan Meiselas” exhibition with representatives of the Centre Primo Levi, Tuesday 6 March 2018 from 7 to 9 pm.
Admission free on presentation of that day’s exhibition ticket.
Information: infoauditorium@jeudepaume.org