Event overview
Aesthetic Objectivity: Department of Visual Cultures Public Programme Spring 2014
From their very first artwork, a commission for a Rwandan sign painter to produce portraits for the contrasting ethnic stereotypes of the Hutu and Tutsi following the 1994 genocide, the artists' acknowledge the uncomfortable role of image making at the site of human suffering, a theme that continues in their practice today. Broomberg and Chanarin's talk will take the form of an overview of their practice to date, in advance of an upcoming retrospective in Antwerp this March. They will be discussing the links between ethnography, photography, materiality, and race, and exploring the ways in which their work challenges ingrained notions of authorship, and the mythic notion of a 'definitive' image. They will explore the role of photography in sites of human conflict and suffering, and the power imbalance between the subject and the state.
Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin are artists living and working in London. Together they have had numerous international exhibitions including The Museum of Modern Art, Tate Galleries, Apexart, The Gwagnju Biennale, the Stedelijk Museum, the International Center of Photography, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, The Photographers Gallery and Mathaf Arab Museum of Modern Art. Broomberg and Chanarin are Visiting Fellows at the University of the Arts London. Their work is represented in major public and private collections including Tate Modern, The Museum of Modern Art, the Stedelijk Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum, Musee de l’Elysee, The International Center of Photography and Loubna Fine Art Society. Most recently, they have been awarded the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2013.
Aesthetic Objectivity
The computational turn, or what might be called the algorithmic paradigm of calculation and modelling, has produced a new ethics that emerges out of bandwidth and code. This database-ethics has changed both the spaces in which action occurs and ways it is acted upon.
Increasingly, our primary access into the spaces of contemporary conflict is through remote sensing technologies and mobile phone uploads. For over four decades now, earth observation satellites have captured and transmitted data-streams allowing us to chart the long-term changes occurring within dynamic planetary systems, demonstrating the ruinous effects of deforestation, environmental pollutants, resource extraction, and climate change. CCTV video surveillance has also turned witnessing by mechanical means into a prevalent and normalised feature of every-day life. The Visual Cultures Public Programme for Spring 2014 aims to shed light on the kinds of spatial, aesthetic, and political transformations being produced by these changes.
The near real-time mediation of all contemporary events needs to be understood and examined not simply as a ‘progressive’ consequence of a technical evolution made possible by enhanced microprocessors, but as inaugurating a radical new form of aesthetic objectivity. How, asks this series, might we modify the aesthetic registers by which such objectivities are produced and activate new means critique and mobilise new modes of resistance?
Chair: Susan Schuppli
Free, no booking required ... all welcome
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 27 Feb 2014 | 5:00pm - 7:00pm |
Accessibility
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