Art & Philosophy Forum at the DJCAD: Ontology of Photography

View from the Window at Le Gras. Heliographic image by Nicéphore Niépce, 1826

I will be presenting a paper at the Art & Philosophy Forum in DJCAD lecture theatre 5017 at 16:00 on 14 March. As always, these seminars are open to all interested students from across Philosophy as well as Contemporary Art Practice.

The paper is titled "Ontology of Photography and the Crisis of Representation: In Search of the Real". We will look into how our understanding of the 'photographic real' changed throughout history and discuss the challenges and possibilities that the notion of reality presents us with in photography. This interdisciplinary presentation will address the following questions:

• What is real in photography?
• Is realness something that needs to be explained?
• Should we strive for the kind of explanation that refuses to reduce reality to manipulable ingredients?
• What is 'crisis of representation' in photography and how can philosophy address it?
• Can information be a sufficient ground for the new ontology of photography that contemporary philosophy poses?
• What role does manipulation play in our understanding of realness?

"The State of Critique in the Times of Accellerationism"

Just finished the paper onthe state of critique that has been published in the Echo Gone Wrong magazine. See the abstract below and this is the link to the full text.

The paper addresses a problem of dismissal in relation to the critical engagements with the contemporary culture. It will be argued that in the hyper-networked and post-institutional world critique is often subjected to the demand to be ‘constructive’—a violent gesture according to which critique either fails to fulfil this demand and becomes dismissed and marginalised, or it embraces the given conditions and becomes dependent on them thus ceasing to be ‘critical’ in the strict sense of the word. Instead of being critical of the complex conditioning beyond the new manifestations of accellerating capitalism, critique either accepts the demonisation and marginalisation, or embraces the given state of events as something that is ‘uncriticisable.’ Thus critique faces a challenge of finding its voice in the world where all our practices—both subversive and recreational—are no longer immune to capitalisation. I will insist that a deconstructive approach provides us with a chance to escape the violent dichotomy of victim/immune system and embrace the autoimmunity of everything that contemporary culture renders as ‘pure’ and ‘necessary’—i.e., immune from thinking, reflection, and critique.

Digital Subject UK: A Workshop at the University of Dundee (1 April 2015)

• How enabling or disabling are concepts such as ‘the network’, ‘feedback’ and ‘information’ for contemporary forms of life?
• Is the Internet one or many things?
• Is the advent of the ‘Information Age’ something to be welcomed or feared?
• What role can philosophy play in thinking about information and communication technologies and forms of subjectivity emerging in relation to them?

These questions and other related ones were tackled in this intensive one-day workshop at the University of Dundee. The workshop took place Wednesday April 1st 2015, 10 am – 6 pm, Room 2S15 in the Dalhousie Building, University of Dundee. More info >

Dominic Smith (University of Dundee): ‘Does the Digital Subject Sleep?’  [MP3]

Ashley Woodward (University of Dundee): ‘Is the Digital Subject the Übermensch?’ [MP3]

Alan Bell (University of Dundee): ‘Paranoia, fictions and realities; technological change and the record’ [MP3]

Joris Vlieghe (University of Edinburgh): ‘How learning to read and write shapes humanity: A technosomatic perspective on digitization’ [MP3]

Erika Fulop (University of Hamburg): ‘Weave Your Own Web: Authorial Self-representation on the Internet’ [MP3]

Arnauld Regnauld (University of Paris VIII): ‘Aura is Interface: Translation and Subjectivity in the Digital Era’ [MP3]

Claire Larsonneur (University of Paris VIII): ‘Interface me? Living 3.0’ [MP3]

Pierre Cassou Noguès (University of Paris VIII): ‘Body as Money’ [MP3]

Galit Wellner (Ben Gurion University): ‘Codes of Subjectivity’ [MP3]

Tim Barker (University of Glasgow): ‘On Being Con-Temporary: What Technical Media Studies Might Offer to Theories of Contemporaneity’ [MP3]
 

Waltzing with the Undead: Before, After, Beyond, and Without Photography

Gytis Skudžinskas, "12 Truths of Photography" in "Titanikas" gallery (Vilnius Academy of Arts, Vilnius). 2015

Echo Gone Wrong Magazine published my reflections on contemporary photography and G.Skužinskas' show "12 Truths of Photography":

It is an attempt to reflect on an exhibition “12 Truths of Photography” (“Titanikas” Gallery, Vilnius, 27.01.-14.03.2015)—a series of media-specific artworks created over the period of the last decade by a photographer Gytis Skudžinskas. The fact that the exhibition has already taken place will not prevent us from talking about it as if it was still present, especially having in mind that a photographic exhibition, on its own part, can—and this text invites to exercise this possibility—take place without the conventional presence of photography as such. It is also an attempt to show how the event presents itself in this mode of ‘as if’ by becoming operative in both ways: positive (as if it is still there) and negative (let’s carry on as if nothing happened). Instead of it being a ‘review’ or a generalisation of Skudžinskas’ oeuvre, this reflection will try to problematize the very cultural context of his retrospective gesture, namely: what does it mean to turn towards photography as a medium and photographic practice today?

See full text in EchoGoneWrong.com