Abstract
For over one hundred years, photography was one of the most important ways to document and account for our external reality, extending a visual regime that started with the development of the central perspective in the 15th century. Its claim to veracity lies in the technical replication of the visual experience of a single human being.
Today, digital image-making has unsettled the relationship between images and human experience. Ubiquitous pre- and post-processing means that images are more often generated than recorded, often never to be seen by humans but used for automated processes. But not only cameras are “seeing”, increasingly a whole range of “more-than-human” actors are understood as “sensing” the world in different ways, revealing layers and dynamics not directly accessible via the human senses. Moreover, contemporary realities have become so complex, abstract, and stretched out over time and space, that the individual visual experience is less and less able to make sense of it. After all, how much can documentary photography reveal about data-centers or climate change?
In response to all these challenges, artists and researchers are developing a new visual language that is able to account for the new contours of the real in the 21st century. We are, among others, focusing on works by Trevor Paglen, Suzanne Treister, Marc Lombardi, and Forensic Architecture and exploring the notion of “investigative aesthetics.”
Attendance (80%)
Participation in reading, discussions, and group presentations
Submission of a very short paper, personal interests in relation to the theme of the module
Pad for course notes:
“pre-human” Paradiesgärtlein (Garden of Paradise) Upper Rhenish Master, ca 1410
Invention of the Central Perspective (1420)
Valley of the Shadow of Death Roger Fenton, 1855, publicdomainreview.org
Walker Evans (1903–1975), https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/evan/hd_evan.htm
“If your photographs aren't good enough, you're not close enough.” Robert Capa (1913 – 1954) Legacy BBC Culture
Robert Frank (1924-2019): Americans, 1959, https://www.lensculture.com/articles/robert-frank-the-americans
Nan Goldin (1953- ), http://www.artnet.com/artists/nan-goldin
Michael Aschauer
Abu Ishaq al-Istakhri, 10th Century http://www.myoldmaps.com/early-medieval-monographs/211-al-istakhris-world-map/211-istakhri.pdf
Harry Beck. London Subway Map, 1933 https://www.theverge.com/2013/3/29/4160028/harry-beck-designer-of-iconic-london-underground-map
Google Maps, London Subway System 2021 https://www.google.com/maps/@51.5075274,-0.0849736,11.26z/data=!5m1!1e2?hl=de
David Claerbout. Olympia (The real-time disintegration into ruins of the Berlin Olympic Stadium over the course of a thousand years). since 2016 https://davidclaerbout.com/Olympia-The-real-time-disintegration-into-ruins-of-the-Berlin-Olympic
Talk at HBK, Leizpig, 2019
Rubinstein, Daniel. 2018. “Posthuman Photography.” In The Evolution of the Image: Political Action and the Digital Self, edited by Marco Bohr and Basia Sliwinska, 100–112. Routledge. https://www.academia.edu/31425877/Posthuman_Photography
Foster, Hal. 2017. “Real Fictions. Alternatives to Alternative Facts.” Artforum International, https://www.artforum.com/print/201704/real-fictions-alternatives-to-alternative-facts-67192.
Braidotti, Rosi, and Maria Hlavajova, eds. 2018. Posthuman Glossary. Theory. London Oxford New York New Delhi Sydney: Bloomsbury Academic.
Realism, 19th Century Painting, Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/rlsm/hd_rlsm.htm
Cinema Verité / Direct Cinema
Photo Realism: https://www.museum-franzgertsch.ch/de/franz-gertsch Franz Gertsch (*1930)
Machinic Realism
Tsiga Vertov: Kino-Pravda (1920s) Man with the Movie Camera, 1929
Evidentiary Realism. GROUP SHOW. FEBRUARY 28 - MARCH 31, 2017 https://nomegallery.com/exhibitions/evidentiary-realism/
Exhibition Catalogue, https://nomegallery.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/ER_Catalog.pdf
Read
Introduction by Paolo Cirio
https://forensic-architecture.org
Lecture: Weizman, Eyal: Forensic Architecture – Lecture, Haus der Kunst, Munich, Nov. 2018 (start at 11:40)
Works:
Read: Fuller, Matthew and Eyal Weizman (2021): Investigative Aesthetics: conflicts and commons in the politics of truth, Brooklyn: Verso Books.
Prepare questions for Matthew Fuller: * question/comment/elaboration on a specific quote from the text * question/comment/elaboration that goes beyond the text
Additional references:
Discussion of reading
12:00 - 13:00 conversation with Mathew Fuller (via Zoom)
Harun Farocki: Eye/Machine, 2000
Read: Trevor Paglen: Is Photography over? Four-Part Series, 01.03. – 15.04.2014
Lecture:
Kate Crawford, Trevor Paglen. Datafication of Science, 2019, 32 min https://www.hkw.de/de/app/mediathek/video/69622
* Kate Crawford and Trevor Paglen, Excavating AI. The Politics of Images in Machine Learning Training Sets
1-2 pages, personal interest, relating to themes discussed during the week.
Presentation of ideas for paper
Afternoon
individual writing
personal mentorat (if interest)
Parikka, J. (2023) Operational images: from the visual to the invisual. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.