Arts & International Affairs: Volume 2, Issue 1 | Page 39

his work is vital: it can serve as an intermediary between moral witnesses
and the moral community, present and future, enabling the members of this
community to move along the trajectory from “what it is like” to “what it
feels like” which, however, is unattainable for those who did not personally
participate in the wars.
Conclusion
Artists—in contrast to photojournalists—often arrive on location only
after an event or they might prefer altogether to avoid the location where
something, usually something tragic, happened. They—and their works of
art—nevertheless qualify (i.e., they are socially-discursively constructed)
as witnesses not only of the aftermath of this event (which would be in
accordance with the conventional understanding of being a witness) but
also of the original event. It affects our, the recipients’, understanding of
what happened. Art does not necessarily produce new knowledge in an
academic, scholarly sense but it “articulates a vision of the world that is
insightful and consequential” (Danchev ����:�). Recipients of works of art
also become witnesses, distant witnesses, remote in space and time, not only
of the work of art and that which it depicts but also of the original event
referenced in the artwork, an event without which the artwork would not
exist. Thus, testimony can be transferred from one person to another—from
an artist to a spectator; this transfer transforms the beholder of an artwork
into a witness of the original event referenced in the artwork.
Furthermore, such an artist as Manuel Botelho, without being himself a
moral witness as defined by Margalit, can be an intermediary between the
moral witness and the moral community, present and future, helping the
members of this community to make the move from what it is like to what it
feels like. Texts from original letters embedded in the artworks do not only
increase the artworks’ having-been-there-ness but also link their future use
to what Rothberg (����:���) calls “re-forming” of what qualifies as public and
political. Such re-forming can be seen as an ingredient of the moral-political
tasks of the witness when giving testimony for future use, in particular in
political circumstances that favor silence—“Why the hell doesn’t anyone
talk about this?” (Antunes ����:��)—rather than engagement. �� Finally, even
��
For example, the first major exhibition in Portugal dedicated to retornados (Portuguese people
who returned from the colonies to Portugal after the independence wars) took place more than ��
years after these wars (RETORNAR: Traços de Memória, Galeria Av. da Índia, Lisbon, November
�, ����–February ��, ����). Likewise, it took almost �� years to transform the former Aljube prison
in Lisbon into a museum. In its original condition, the former prison, operated during the Estado
novo by the political police, was open to the public in ���� at the occasion of the exhibition
Aljube—a voz das vítimas.
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