“Broken images”: how can fragmented visuals speak about violence?
Brief Introduction
In Sightings, Xinyue Liu introduces the concept of the “ghost image.” Rather than simply referring to low-resolution, blurry, or damaged visuals, the term describes a form of visual existence that is forced into invisibility. These images are not unclear because of technical failure, but because certain lives themselves are excluded from dominant systems of visibility. As a result, they can only appear in fragmented, unstable, almost ghost-like forms.
Liu draws on Judith Butler’s idea of “ungrievability” to discuss how some lives are socially constructed as unworthy of public mourning — including state enemies, queer communities, and non-human species. By denying these lives the right to be seen, remembered, or publicly grieved, violence becomes normalised and allowed to continue.
In Liu’s writing, these excluded subjects do not truly disappear. Instead, like extinct animals, they continue to haunt gaps in time and spaces beyond the camera’s ability to fully capture them. They no longer exist as complete or recognisable images, but remain as fragments, blurry outlines, and low-resolution traces that slowly transform into myths, dreams, and collective memory. Liu therefore argues that images are not neutral recording devices, but rather a “closed field of force.” Every photographic capture contains a small form of death: the subject is transformed into something ghostly at the moment it is documented. Missing, incomplete, or unreadable images do not indicate absence. On the contrary, they become evidence of violence itself.
Evidence in the article
For me, the most important aspect of Liu’s text is not only the idea of the “ghost image,” but also the way the article formally performs this concept. Rather than following a clear and linear academic structure, the writing constantly shifts between ecology, extinction, photography, mythology, personal experience, and media reports. This fragmented structure turns reading itself into a process of chasing ghosts. The reader never receives a fully stable or clearly defined object, but instead gradually understands the argument through cycles of recognition, loss, and uncertainty.
Understanding of graphic communication design
At the same time, the blurry, pixelated, and distant images throughout the article refuse to provide the viewer with a position of “clear seeing.” Images no longer function as proof of reality, but instead as traces of something disappearing. This fundamentally changed my understanding of graphic communication design. Previously, I often understood communication design as a tool for making information clearer and more efficient to consume. However, Liu’s text made me realise that communication does not always depend on clarity. Blur, absence, low resolution, fragmentation, and even unreadability can themselves become political visual languages. Images do not simply represent reality; they also expose structures of power through what they fail or refuse to show.
This idea strongly reminds me of the ways people circulated information in China during the COVID-19 pandemic under conditions of heavy censorship. Information related to lockdowns, deaths, protests, and state violence would often quickly disappear into “#404” pages. In the article
An Informal and Incomplete Journey, the writer mentions that as the disappearance of content became a normal part of online life, people developed increasingly creative methods of communication: vertical text, reversed text, pinyin abbreviations, emojis, Morse code, Braille, and even fictional languages such as Elvish or Klingon. Around the rule of “mentioning without directly saying,” a collective underground grammar gradually emerged. Information did not stop circulating because of censorship; instead, it was forced to constantly transform its own form.
Within this process, “blankness” became an especially important visual language. At first, people joked about whether completely empty posts might bypass censorship systems. However, blankness itself gradually turned into a public symbol. After the Urumqi fire, many people recognised that the tragedy was not simply an accident, but also the result of political failure and extreme lockdown management. Discussions and memorials quickly disappeared online, and even the street sign of “Urumqi Middle Road” was reportedly removed. Under these conditions, a student from Nanjing University of the Arts stood in public holding a completely blank sheet of paper. Soon afterwards, more and more people began holding white paper or posting blank images online. Blankness, therefore, no longer meant “nothing”; instead, it represented something everyone understood but could no longer directly articulate.
Liu’s discussion of “ghost images” and “ungrievability” made me realise that sometimes the most powerful images are not those that are fully visible, but those that cannot appear while still being collectively sensed. What interests me is not the direct representation of violence itself, but the ways information is forced to mutate visually in order to survive under censorship. For me, this is not only a political issue, but also a question of graphic communication design: when direct expression becomes dangerous, can design itself become a mechanism of escape?
How to develop my project
Because of this, I chose not to directly represent specific victims or violent events in my own project. Many works dealing with similar themes rely on interviews, documentary images, or emotional storytelling to immerse audiences in the suffering of victims. While these approaches can be powerful, I did not want the project to remain at the level of consuming individual trauma. Instead, I became more interested in the seemingly small and sometimes humorous acts of communication that reveal the presence of a much larger censorship system.
I therefore began focusing on a more subtle subject: names. Within the Chinese internet context, people rarely directly mention certain political figures. Instead, they constantly invent new substitutes, metaphors, and visual stand-ins. Over time, these substitutes have formed a collective underground language system filled with humour and shared recognition. For those familiar with this context, a pinyin abbreviation, a colour, an animal, an emoji, or even a completely unrelated object can immediately suggest a hidden reference. More importantly, different substitutes carry different emotional tones — some are sarcastic, some playful, and some almost absurd.
I realised that when a name itself becomes impossible to write, graphic communication design shifts from “expressing content” towards designing associations. I therefore began categorising these substitutes, ranging from direct references such as calligraphy and initials, to indirectly related images that evade algorithmic recognition, and eventually to objects that appear almost entirely unrelated.
Through the publication, I wanted to create a reading experience of “continuous deletion.” As the reader progresses through the book, images gradually become more blurred, damaged, distorted, or entirely blank. The amount of red across the pages also slowly increases, symbolising censorship progressively invading online space until the pages become unreadable and finally collapse.
Formally, I disguised the publication as a fan-art book, appearing on the surface like a supporter’s object of admiration. Phrases such as “he is the best” appear throughout the text. At the same time, to help non-Chinese readers understand the meanings behind some of these coded references, I produced a smaller instruction-style booklet explaining certain terms. However, in order to avoid direct system recognition, I also inserted unrelated or contradictory sentences such as “that’s not true.” This approach comes from a common anti-surveillance strategy online: mixing irrelevant information into content in order to disrupt algorithmic interpretation.
Finally, I chose to present the project through physical publications, small cards, and a keychain-style instruction booklet. Although the project discusses internet communication and censorship, I did not want the work itself to continue depending on online circulation. Physical forms are harder to monitor or erase instantly, and they also remind me of the portable political publications distributed during the Mao era, where ideology was condensed into small, easily circulated reading objects.
Through this project, I gradually realised that graphic communication design is not always about making information clearer. Sometimes, it can instead reveal why certain things cannot be directly spoken, and how people continuously invent new visual languages in response to systems of control.
Reference list
1. Liu, X. (2023). Sightings – Journal #141. [online] E-flux.com. Available at: https://www.e-flux.com/journal/141/578716/sightings.
2. Weng, X. (2020). An Informal and Incomplete Journey – Journal #108. [online] E-flux.com. Available at: https://www.e-flux.com/journal/108/326261/an-informal-and-incomplete-journey
Leave a Reply