“The reddened stage, designed to create the experience of sensory deprivation, introduces the last scene.” Nancy Bussières’s description of the final tableau in the play White Out resonates with me, evoking other images that conjure up a similar experience of overexposure. The bright red boldly employed by the L’eau du bain collective to saturate the eye and distort the senses brings to mind images I’ve seen hundreds of times—images that scroll constantly across our screens, without cease and everywhere: of war and of plumes of black and red smoke rising over Gaza, Beirut, Tehran, and Kyiv. Amplified beyond its geographical boundaries, the light from explosions captured by residents and resisters in war zones imprints itself on my retinas and blocks my gaze. For although these images illuminate truths on the ground by forcing me to witness them, they also tend to transform suffering into spectacle and stifle my ability to find my way through the media haze and the present moment.

I’m not alone in experiencing such saturation. It is part of what some commentators have designated the golden age of “brutal voyeurism.”¹ The consumption and sharing of images of graphic violence, though a necessary tool for mobilization, can also blunt our sensitivity to what they communicate in terms of urgency and distress. This has led many researchers and artists to question the viability of such a regime of visibility. How can we witness these things without becoming bitter and perpetuating the violence, toward ourselves and toward others?² And in

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