IMAGES AS AGENTS IN DIGITAL PUBLIC SPHERES
ISA-PHD-Workshop

3rd International Workshop on Visual Research for Doctoral Students.
Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, Department for Cultural Analysis. Visual Culture Section (Prof. Anna Schober), in cooperation with the
International Sociological Association’s Research Committee/ RC 57 Visual Sociology

The workshop addresses students interested in conducting empirical and theoretical research in the fields of visual sociology and visual culture studies, digital media and contemporary public spheres. Subsequent to the second workshop at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan), UK, in 2017, which focused on the politics of visibility, this event will focus on questions concerned with visual practices in digital public spheres. A second focus is on methods suited to bridging sociological and visual research in the digital age. The workshop calls for interdisciplinary approaches in the field of cultural, social and media sciences.

SCHEDULE

27.06.2019, Stiftungssaal | Room O.0.01

13:00-13:45 Coffee/Registration

13:45-14:00 Welcome of the Dean of the Faculty (Alexander Onysko)
Introduction (Anna Schober-de Graaf)

14:00-15:00 Keynote: "Photography, Form, and What Matters",
Robert Hariman

15:00-15:15 Coffee Break

15:15-16:15 Slot 1: Visual activism / Political image making
(Xénia Farkas, Sugandha Seghal, Ragıp Zık)

16:15-17:00 Comments and Discussion
(Gary Bratchford, Yvonne Volkart)

17:00-17:15 Coffee Break

17:15-18:15 Slot 2: Hyperimage / Hyper-Screen
(Bérangère Amblard, Isabel Hartwig, Gerrit Höfferer)

18:15-19:00 Comments and Discussion
(Sebastian Mühl, Marc Ries)

------

28.06.2019, Stiftungssaal | Room O.0.01

08:45-09:00 Coffee

09:00-10:00 Slot 3: Image technologies / Pictures as Witnesses
(Erec Gellautz, Ioan-Daniel Mihalcea, Lisa Stuckey)

10:00-10:45 Comments and Discussion
(Roswitha Breckner, Robert Hariman)

10:45-11:00 Coffee Break

11:00-12:00 Keynote: "For an Ecology of Care beyond the
Wasteocene", Yvonne Volkart

12:00-13:00 Lunch

13:00-14:00 Slot 4: Historiographies / Archival practices
(Faime Alpagu, Margherita Foresti, Sapir Huberman)

14:00-14:45 Comments and Discussion
(Marc Ries, Anna Schober-de Graaf)

14:45-15:00 Coffee Break

15:00-16:00 Slot 5: Visual media and Society/ Questions of Ethics
(Orsolya Bajusz, Stefanie Bauer, Cezara Nicola)

16:00-16:45 Comments and Discussion
(Roswitha Breckner, Yvonne Volkart)

16:45-17:00 Closing remarks (Anna Schober-de Graaf)

------

KEYNOTES

Robert Hariman (Professor of rhetoric and public culture in the department of communication studies at Northwestern University)

"Photography, Form, and What Matters"

A paradigm shift is underway in the habitus of photography. That shift moves beyond the critical discourse that was launched in the mid-twentieth century by John Alan Sekula, Susan Sontag, and others. Although providing a powerful critique of media dependency, that project has been increasingly neutralized in the context of a globalized digital environment. Digital technologies have highlighted what always were deep problems and serious omissions in the critical paradigm, while also providing new resources for thinking about visual culture.

The paradigm shift includes reconsideration of the relationship between the referential and aesthetic principles of image composition. Their intersection was the key to photography’s medium specificity, but the discourse on photography came to be grounded in indexicality and highly suspicious of aesthetic inflection. The aesthetic “problem” became particularly acute in respect to photography’s political efficacy, and “formalism” was singled out as a threat to good journalism and social critique.

In place of this standoff, scholars working on media aesthetics, new materialisms, and the post-human are recuperating visual form as a means for thinking and communicating about the deep problems of the 21st century. To that end, this talk will trace some connections between digital media and the early history of photography while looking ahead toward a horizon of ecological catastrophe.

------

Yvonne Volkart (Lecturer for art and media theory at the Academy of Art and Design FHNW Basel)

"For an Ecology of Care beyond the Wasteocene"

We live in the Wasteocene – the digital age in which raw materials; human and animal bodies; plants and labor are increasingly depleted, devalued, and turned into waste. If we want to overcome this “-cene” of wasting, we need to establish a culture of care, an aesthetics of becoming (Other). We need to invent and deliver other images, images that perform relations towards the other in the making.

Assuming that there is no escaping technology in the Wasteocene, the belief in technologies as agents of information and possible action is widespread in both technophile and critical discourses. Embracing the paradox and connecting to techno-scientific methods of observing the world, many artists use technologies such as sensors and methods like big data to get in touch with what has been unknown for a long time. They try to ‘translate’ earthbound signals into human perception (i.e. make them visible or hearable), in order to deliver information and establish new relations between non-humans and humans. I have called these technologies ecomedia. But what do these ecomedia and their images narrate? And whom do they address? How do they affect us? What kind of experiences do they open up and what role does the aesthetic play in this?

Drawing on theories of media ecology and new materialism as well as on results of the ongoing research project “Ecodata-Ecomedia-Ecoaesthetics”, this talk discusses how visual aesthetics may (or may not) enable participation and transversal thinking beyond the Wasteocene.

REGISTRATION
To attend the workshop the registration is mandatory (please register on the workshop website: https://visualworkshop.info/ or write an email to: visualworkshopisa19gmail.com)
Registration deadline: 10 June 2019

Alpen-Adria-Universität
Institut für Kulturanalyse
Abt. Visuelle Kultur
Universitätsstraße 65-67
A-9020 Klagenfurt
www.aau.at/kulturanalyse/
www.visualworkshop.info

For more information about the Visual Sociology Research Committee (RC57) see below:
Website: https://www.isa-sociology.org/en/research-networks/research-committees/rc57-visual-sociology/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/isa.visualsociology/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/isa_visual (isavisual)