ACTIVATING NARRATIVE, COMBATING TORTURE: VISUALIZING HUMAN RIGHTS — POTENTIALS AND CHALLENGES
Vienna Master of Arts in Applied Human Rights
Shazeera Zawawi,
Malaysian human rights lawyer turned cartoonist, meets Steven Cottingham, Canadian artist and machinima filmmaker, to discuss
visual strategies for addressing torture and ill treatment through graphic arts. Their practices are distinct, but they have
one thing in common: being committed to exploring visualization, its potentials, and challenges, for human rights change.
As a long term staff member of an NGO for torture prevention, Shazeera used cartoons for translating the findings of dry human
rights reports into something visual. Steven uses real-time computer graphics to show the features of carceral capitalism,
thus making visible structural conditions of human rights violations.
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.
Speakers
Shazeera 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.
Moderator
Walter
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.at
entrevienna.com 
