Recent political conflicts signal an increased proliferation of image testimonies shared widely via Social Media. Although witnessing with and through images is not a phenomenon of the internet era, image practices and politics in Social Media as much as new technology have enabled individuals to record, upload, and share images directly via mobile devices, which makes nearly everyone a potential witness. In relation to their ability to give and to create evidence, the special efficacy of image testimonies seems to lie in their ability to affect, to move, or to mobilize. Witnessing, especially when unfolding in Social Media, needs to be defined as a collective and relational practice with the effect of forming communities, and provoking further image testimonies. What exactly is being testified by these various forms of witnessing can only be studied from multiple perspectives and necessitates complicating the “truth-claims” that are made.
Against this backdrop the symposium seeks to contribute to the ongoing debate on the topic of testimony and witnessing. Which different concepts of witnessing are at stake in image testimonies? What is the role of the spectator? How can we think of the relation between mediated forms of witnessing and the body? A guiding theme of the symposium is these images’ affective dynamics in order to shape a new approach on testimony theory.

PROGRAM

THURSDAY, July 13, 2017

17:00 – 17:30
Kerstin Schankweiler & Verena Straub (Berlin): Welcome and Introduction

17:30 – 18:15
Michal Givoni (Jaffa): Bearing Witness, Yet Again: Occupation Testimonies and Left-Wing Despair

18:15 – 20:00
Screening and Panel Discussion: Citizen with a Movie Camera (DOX BOX) and videos from Syria Mobile Film Festival.
Marianna Liosi (Berlin/Ferrara) in conversation with Guevara Namer (Berlin) and Amer Matar (Berlin)

FRIDAY, July 14, 2017

WITNESSING DESTRUCTION (Moderation: Mikala Hyldig Dal, Berlin)

10:00 – 10:45
Verena Straub (Berlin): “Living Martyrs” – Testifying What is to Come

10:45 – 11:30
Tom Bioly (Jena) & Christoph Günther (Halle): The Islamic State’s Iconoclasm and Iconography

11:30 – 12:00
Coffee Break

12:00 – 12:45
Tobias Wendl (Berlin): From Cape Town to Timbuktu: Iconoclastic Testimonies in the Age of Social Media

12:45 – 14:30
Lunch Break

AFFECTIVE WITNESSING (Moderation: Nur Yasemin Ural, Berlin)

14:30 – 15:15
Kerstin Schankweiler (Berlin): “Moroccan Lives Matter” – Practices and Politics of Affecting

15:15 – 16:00
Michael Richardson (Sydney): Drone’s-Eye View: Affective Witnessing and Technicities of Perception

16:00 – 16:45
Coffee Break

EPISTEMOLOGIES OF TESTIMONIES (Moderation: Dina Wahba, Berlin)

16:45 – 17:30
Sascha Simons (Bonn): A Witness for the Witness. On the Socio-Technical and Socioaesthetic Epistemology of Web Video Testimonies

17:30 – 18:15
Jonas Bens (Berlin): Affective Dimensions of Visual Testimony and Audio Evidence before the International Criminal Court
Break

19:00 – 20:30
Lecture Performance by Jasmina Metwaly (Berlin/Cairo)

SATURDAY, July 15, 2017

SOCIAL MEDIA PRACTICES (Moderation: Boaz Levin, Lüneburg/Berlin)

10:00 – 10:45
Simon Faulkner (Manchester): Palestinian Photojournalists, Facebook, and the Political Self as Witness

10:45 – 11:30
Penelope Papailias (Thessaly): Selfie Videos of Black Death: Live Mobile Witnessing and the Radical Gesture of Testimonial Self-Imaging

11:30 – 12:00
Coffee Break

12:00 – 12:45
Paul Frosh (Jerusalem): Screen Shot: Witnessing, Poetics and the Digital-Social Trace

12:45 – 13:15
Sibylle Schmidt (Berlin) & Philipp Wüschner (Berlin): Concluding Remarks

Veranstaltungsort: silent green Kulturquartier, Gerichtstraße 35, 13347 Berlin-Wedding

Conception and Organization:
Kerstin Schankweiler, Verena Straub, Tobias Wendl

Freie Universität Berlin
SFB 1171 "Affective Societies”
Project B01 “Affective Dynamics of Images in the Era of Social Media”
Habelschwerdter Allee 45
D-14195 Berlin
Phone: 0049 (0)30 838 55214

Contact: kerstin.schankweilerfu-berlin.de and verena.straubfu-berlin.de

http://www.sfb-affective-societies.de/teilprojekte/B/B01/Symposium/index.html