[deutsche Version unten]

"Politics of the Image. Symposium on the Boundaries of the Visible."

Städelschule - Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste
Dürerstr. 10
60596 Frankfurt/Main

friday, 6th of january, 14:00 to 19:00 and
saturday, 7th of january, 12:00 to 18:00

The symposium will be held in english.

The frequent mention of the ‘pictorial turn’ has now become
commonplace. The changed relationship between visuality, text and spoken
word has inevitably led to a change in the conditions of political
debate and the formation of opinion. Some denounce the digital age of
images as a disembodied photoshop-reality without any remnants of
immediate or authentic experience, while others glorify the
revolutionizing power of the image. Apart from such general appraisals
and due to the functionalization of visual culture as an effective form
of social power play, the question of taking an emancipatory perspective
on the politics of the image arises. Reigning systems of visibility are
constituted through, among other things, the implicitness of
surveillance, normative body images and the reproduction of racist and
sexist stereotypes as well as the aesthetizised self-representations of
corporations, nations and politics in general. For critical image
production as well as competent pictorial politics, the question of the
possibilities and boundaries of strategic visualization within visual
culture emerges.

Visual artists have always dealt with the constitution of the visible.
They are visual pioneers with the supposedly longest tradition and are
also, as a result of their profession deemed ‘experts in seeing’. Since
modernity at the latest, the boundaries of the visible have been of
special interest to artistic production. These boundaries form areas
where the represented can no longer be named without difficulty and
where identification can be fallible. Within the changed technological
and discursive conditions of contemporary visual culture, one is
confronted with the additional question of the current potential and
competence of the institution of ‘art’. Thus, the heavy influence of
image production outside artistic practices lends a political
perspective to the edges of visibility as a contact point of critical
image production and activist intervention. At the moment when decoding,
articulation and identification fall into crisis, the following
questions can be raised: what can ‘be seen’ at all under the present
circumstances and which counter-imagery should it be confronted by, if
any?

In the course of the conference, these questions will facilitate
exchange:
How do the invited image producer react on the present visual
power structures? Where would they locate their own critical image
production
in relation to activist practices?

[List of guests - scroll down]

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"Bildpolitik. Symposium zu den Grenzen der Sichtbarkeit."

Städelschule - Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste
Dürerstr. 10
60596 Frankfurt/Main

Freitag, 6. Januar, 14:00 bis 19:00
und Samstag, 7. Januar, 12:00 bis 18:00

Aufgrund der Funktionalisierung visueller Kultur als effektive Form
gesellschaftlicher Machtausübung stellt sich die Frage nach einem
emanzipatorischen Umgang mit der Politik des Bildes.
Bildproduzenten/-innen unterschiedlicher Profession sind eingeladen im
Austausch über ihre Produktionsweisen und –Strategien die veränderten
Bedingungen herrschender Sichtbarkeitsregime zu diskutieren.

Die Veranstaltung findet in englischer Sprache statt.

Gäste:
Coordination des Intermittents et Précaires d'Ile de France | Judith
Hopf | Sandy Kaltenborn | Naeem Mohaiemen/VISIBLE Collective |
Martha Rosler | Hito Steyerl

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Gästeliste / List of guests:

Coordination des Intermittents et Précaires d'Ile de France
http://www.cip-idf.org
http://www.republicart.net/disc/precariat/intermittents01_en.htm

Judith Hopf
http://www.ateliereuropa.com/3.3_hopf.php

Sandy Kaltenborn
http://www.image-shift.net

Naeem Mohaiemen/VISIBLE Collective
http://www.disappearedinamerica.org
http://www.shobak.org
http://www.muslimsorheretics.org

Martha Rosler
http://home.earthlink.net/~navva/about/

Hito Steyerl
http://www.republicart.net/disc/mundial/steyerl02_de.htm
http://www.manifesta.es/eng/artistas/artistas/steyerl.htm

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The conference is part of the Staedelschule’s lecture series of the
winter term 2005/2006.

For further informations:
flo.maakgmx.net