Historically, disasters are recognized as destructive events that have already occurred or are feared to be imminent, and are a looming threat to the public. Since the mid-1970s, geographers, anthropologists, and sociologists who research disasters have made the case that disasters are by no means natural events, but instead are processes engendered over long periods by human practices that enhance the materially destructive and socially disruptive capacities of geophysical and hydro-meteorological phenomena, technological malfunctions, and epidemics.
In her 2003 essay, "Regarding the Pain of Others," Susan Sontag wrote “compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers ... If one feels that there is nothing ʻweʼ can do -- but who is that ʻweʼ? -- and nothing ʻtheyʼ can do either -- and who are ʻtheyʼ? -- then one starts to get bored, cynical, apathetic.”
Today, images of disaster are instantly delivered to our phones, turning catastrophe to a grotesque global spectacle.
From Goya’s “The disasters of war” and Picasso’s “Guernica”, to Eliasson’s “Ice Watch” and Büchel's "Barca Nostra (Our Boat)”, artists have tried to make sense of catastrophic experiences. The question is whether artworks inspire a sense of how catastrophe might be overcome; whether seeing others' suffering will rouse us to the indignation and action, or instead desensitise us, reinforcing our indifference.