77: Approaching Human Disappearance Through Art with Chantal Meza & Brad Evans

In this fascinating and deeply insightful podcast, Chantal and Brad reflect on the meaning of disappearance. Chantal comes from Mexico where over 100,000 people have disappeared through violence and kidnapping. Human disappearance leaves a hole, an empty space, a void to which our human response is often one of confusion, desperation, pain, loss, anger and even guilt. 

Chantal is an artist working with abstract art, she is self-taught and learnt her craft from her artisanal family and the small Mexican community she grew up in. Chantal and Brad discuss how art, and abstract art in particular can speak to us when language fails us. In this wide-ranging discussion, Brad shares his philosophical insights into violence and disappearance in particular, saying that it is not easy to disappear somebody, and to disappear thousands takes a huge organisational effort, and asks what lies behind this?  

Brad also discusses the Rhonda valley and the disappearance of jobs, of community, of a vibrant culture after the coal mines were shut without anything to replace the jobs; in his most recent book, he describes how these communities have disappeared from the view of wider society in the UK. Disappearance of humans is one thing, another form of disappearance that is finally entering our collective awareness is the disappearance of nature and the loss of biodiversity; how do we make sense of that? 

Each of us has a relationship to disappearance, for some, it is a cultural phenomenon shared by collective people due to drug cartels, war or state terrorism that leads to many being disappeared. For others, it can be a personal story. We hope this podcast stirs your thinking and raises awareness of the meaning of disappearance in our current world.

Bio

Chantal Meza is an abstract painter living and working in the United Kingdom. Her work has been featured in exhibitions, auctions and biennials in prominent Museums and Galleries in Mexico, the United Kingdom, Paraguay and Germany. She has delivered international lectures and workshops at reputable universities such as Harvard University, École Normale Superiéure, Goethe Univeristät, and Goldsmiths University among others, as well as being commissioned publicly and privately. Her work has received the support of grants, public recognition and awards of prominent institutions in the cultural sector. More recently, her first edited volume “State of Disappearance” was published by McGill Queens University Press. 

Professor Brad Evans is a political philosopher, critical theorist, and writer, who specializes in the problem of violence. He is the author of over 20 books and edited volumes, including most recently State of Disappearance (with Chantal Meza, McGill Queens University Press: 2023) & Ecce Humanitas: Beholding the Pain of Humanity (Columbia University Press, 2020). He previously led a dedicated columns/series on violence in both the New York Times and the Los Angeles Review of Books. Brad currently serves as Chair of Political Violence and Aesthetics at the University of Bath, United Kingdom, where is he the founder and director of the Centre for the Study of Violence. His latest book How Black Was My Valley: Poverty and Abandonment in a Post-Industrial Heartland will soon be published by Repeater/Penguin Random House in April 2024.