ABSTRACT
Calais has been a space of fluctuating media interest and shifting visualities since the emergence of the Jungle in 2003. Earlier media coverage of the Jungle accompanied fewer visual depictions of their living conditions or daily existence beyond the threat they posed to their immediate environment. However, changing visuality from 2014 was marked by a surge in the number of images and in a diversification of imaging techniques that visually linked past and present, events in Calais with the Mediterranean. There was also a shift in the focus of attention whether it be living conditions, daily life and community or, by 2016, preparation for and the final apocalyptic destruction of Jungle II. The refugee as an object of suffering and trauma is the subject of an abject gaze where the corporeal body is both a non-entity and invisible. Both death and the accident are ascribed to it, as inhabitants in this ‘state of exception’. We examine these aesthetics of trauma and violence in the liminal space of Calais.
