What is the motivation behind their approaches?
What type of research is required for each approach? Which ethical questions come up? What are underlying assumptions about
the impact of their artistic practices? How can the discourses of human rights and artistic practice be mutually and productively
understood, and how can they be practically interwoven?
This discussion will be moderated by Walter Suntinger,
Senior Lecturer and Academic Program Manager of the Vienna Master of Arts in Applied Human Rights at the University of Applied
Arts Vienna, and takes place as a part of the Understanding and Combatting Torture cluster of the Vienna Master and the Human
Resources exhibition at ENTRE Vienna, which opens on 31 March 2023.
SpeakersShazeera
Zawawi is a Malaysian-born artist and former Senior Adviser on Research and Innovation to the Association for Prevention of
Torture in Switzerland (APT) over the last 9 years. A lawyer by training, Zawawi has published and exhibited comics and cartoons
with the International Commission of Jurists in Thailand, Asia Legal Resource Centre’s Journal on Torture, the Organization
for Security and Cooperation’s Campaign on Countering Violent Extremism, and the International Fumetto Comics Festival. As
part of her work with the APT, Zawawi used comics and cartoons to document testimonies by torture victims, raise awareness
on the importance of torture prevention and strengthen authorities’ capacities to safeguard persons deprived of liberty. In
2019, Zawawi was part of Malaysia’s Cartoonist Against Torture coalition, launched by the National Human Rights Commission
of Malaysia (SUHAKAM), and during the pandemic, her work was exhibited in the first regional human rights cartoon exhibition
at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Shazeera is also part of the Tableau data community where she was appointed
as one of the global Tableau Ambassador in 2022 for her efforts in combining art and data in visual storytelling. She currently
works as a data analyst in the corporate sector.
Steven Cottingham is a visual artist based in Vancouver. Cottingham’s
work engages with “virtual realism” and the politics of visualization to investigate how speculative activity affects our
perception of reality. Encompassing surveillance algorithms that gather predictive data, hindsight evidence deployed in courts
of law, and the blurred overlap of photographic and photoreal imagery, his research historicizes systems of control. Cottingham
has exhibited internationally at Artists Space (New York, 2022), Milan Machinma Festival (Milan 2022), Natalia Hug Galerie
(Cologne, 2022), The Polygon Gallery (North Vancouver, 2021), The Museum of Capitalism (Oakland, 2017), among others, and
from 2021 to 2022 he participated in the Whitney Independent Study Program in New York. Cottingham’s first solo exhibition
in Austria will open at ENTRE Vienna on 31 March 2023.
ModeratorWalter Suntinger is
an independent human rights consultant with a background in (international) law and systemic change management. Suntinger’s
main working areas are: monitoring places of detention, human rights reform, training in the police and the criminal justice
system, and consulting activities for business. Suntinger’s academic work focuses on torture, asylum law, monitoring, training,
systemic approaches to human rights, and his several practical tools include police training manuals and guidance documents
for preventive human rights monitoring. Suntinger was a member of the Austrian Human Rights Advisory Board from 1999 to 2012,
and a member of the visiting commission of the Austrian National Preventive Mechanism (NPM) from 2012 to 2015, of which Advisory
Board he is currently a part of.
appliedhumanrights.uni-ak.ac.atentrevienna.com
