Radical Softness: Artistic methodology of encountering the "other"

Today’s media landscape is a constant stream of images—of people represented by images, symbols and signs. This article takes its point of departure in proposing that film activism and artivism render another picture. We introduce visuality through Emmanuel Lévinas’s understanding of the “Other”, discussing it in terms of how faciality operates both within the media machines of the nation-state and current affective politics, and as an ethico-aesthetic alternative in film activism. Through a reading of two recent films from the art collectives Other Story and Jamboy, we suggest another vision in terms of how (film) images are produced and by whom, and terms of an aesthetic that does not delimit and categorize the face, but opens it up for an encounter. In a world where migration is a norm rather than an exception, this article explores how artistic practices enable a human encounter with the Other. Hence, this article suggests how film and art activism have the ability to transgress the borderline mentalities and conflictual distancing practice in the current media and politics through a collective practice, and the aesthetics of indeterminacy and polyvocality.