This book explores the central role of art and design in shaping risk perceptions and behaviours. Guidance, warnings, and protocols of risk management shape how possible futures are imagined and governed. How is this imperative to manage risk transforming contemporary visual language? Are its rhetorics of danger, reassurance, and rationality convincing us that we are preparedand at what cost? Through the analysis of artworks, warnings, pre-enactments, and data visualisations, the book examines the aesthetic dimension of risk as a diagnostic framework for articulating, narrating, and living with uncertainty. Bringing visual culture into dialogue with risk studies, it reimagines fairer, engaging, and trustworthy ways of communicating and preparing for risk.
Chapter 1: Introduction.
Chapter 2: What is Risk?.
Chapter 3:
Aesthetics of Risk.
Chapter 4: Risk in Contemporary Art.
Chapter 5: The
Construction of Safety.
Chapter 6: Between Fear and Reassurance.-
Chapter
7: A Manual for Every Disaster.
Chapter 8: How to Provoke an Accident.-
Chapter 9: Rehearsing Disasters.
Chapter 10: Charting Probabilities.-
Chapter 11: Computing Futures.
Chapter 12: Conclusion.
Francesca Laura Cavallo is Co-Investigator on the AHRC-funded project Scoring Warnings at the Royal College of Art, UK. An art historian, curator, and interdisciplinary researcher, she teaches across the Schools of Arts and Humanities and Communication. Her research explores how art intersects with the activation, management, and perception of risk, engaging critically with contemporary art, curatorial practice, and risk theory.
