One of Us?: Complicity and Critique After the Christchurch Massacre. 1: Introductions

MFTWA

This episode introduces 'One of Us?' an event held to reflect on the Christchurch Massacre. For video from the event, including poetry and the opening ceremony, please visit the Deathscapes engagements page.

Who are "we"? who is "one of us"? Who are we part of? Whose humanity do we recognise as akin to ours?

In the wake of the Christchurch massacre, Easter bombings in Sri Lanka, and recent attacks on US synagogues, we continue to face questions of them and us as national and global tensions play out in new configurations of violence and terror.

This symposium - jointly organised by the School of Media, Creative Arts and Social Inquiry, Curtin University & The Museum of Freedom and Tolerance - considered the fraught term one of us, exploring questions of the normalization of racism, everyday Islamophobia, and the connections between various forms of othering - us and them - in Australia and elsewhere.
Artwork for the episode is by the talented Yi Xiao Chen @jyxchen, featuring the work of master calligrapher Zhang Di Hua and Osama Mah. The flowers are painted with the words Freedom and Tolerance and were part of a garden of healing, projected on the Perth Cultural Centre screen in tribute to the victims of the Christchurch Massacre, on the evening of the symposium.