Arts & International Affairs: Vol. 4, No. 3, Spring 2020 | Page 40

THE RIGHT(S) TO REMAIN for by Boochani) (Zable 2019); and, also as an established method for the articulation of trauma (see Bennett 2005). Remain is one of the only available avenues open to the men on Manus Island to share their stories and to communicate the harm caused by national policy and practices. As such, the artistic representation of Remain becomes a crucial form of political representation; political representation which would not otherwise be possible. Remain enables the men’s claims for freedom�both from detention and harm�to be made and received. It takes on heightened importance that this form of political representation occurs inside Australia. The exhibition of Remain within the country not only emphasises the absence of these men from Australian territory but helps to insert and circulate the human cost of mandatory detention and offshore processing into the nation’s political imagination. 2 The artwork provides an opportunity for the Australian population, civil society, and government most especially; to better understand the experiences of the men on Manus Island and the harm enacted by, and which results from mandatory detention and offshore processing. The hope is that the artwork might also spur the government to address and repair the trauma resulting from the legal and bureaucratic frameworks imposed on these men (as well as people detained in other centres), and ultimately to effect change to Australia’s immigration system in alternative and meaningful ways. For it remains the responsibility of all who view the artwork not to look away any longer. Acknowledgements The author thanks Hoda Afshar for permission to include stills from Remain in this piece. Many thanks to Jill Bennett and Andrea Durbach for their comments on parts of an early iteration of this piece. The author also thanks J.P. Singh and Evangelos Chrysagis for their feedback on this piece. This piece draws on ideas published in Eliza Garnsey (2019) On Representation(s): Art, Violence, and the Political Imaginary of South Africa. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 22/5:598-617, by permission of Taylor & Francis. References Afshar, Hoda. (2018) Remain Stills from the Video. (Accessed 1 September 2019). 2 For instance, the video work Remain has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art and at the University of Queensland Art Museum. 37