Rimbaud spoke of the artist as one who sees, which is the ability to be influenced, to be touched. It has been said that we have lost faith in this world because we are no longer touched by the events that happen to us, love, death, laughter, shame, as if they do not really concern us. This is why the world has come to look like a bad movie.
To stare the crisis in the eyes and gain new eyes, perhaps that is the fate of the witness? Wasn't that what happened in De Sica's Bicycle Thief when we began to see the world through the child's eyes? Is it not through this 'sight' that we begin to affirm the manifold encounters of this world, where we sense other possible ways of being able to live, other ways of 'seeing'? The book takes a closer look at literature as witness, the camera as witness, the wanderer as witness, the icon as witness and the monument as witness. The book treats authors such as Primo Levi, Spinoza, Malamud, Blanchot, Wittgenstein, Camus, Melville, Conrad, Ekelöf, Deleuze and Benjamin as well as film, video art and icon art.
