Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts
14–15 Nov 2019
Deadline: 31 Aug 2019

Previous post-photographic discourses have primarily focused on the transformations of photographic images. In the framework of our research on post-photographic practices, we invite academics and practitioners to adopt a different approach here and assume that photography is not primarily a technique to produce images, but rather an entanglement with a specific kind of apparatus. Against the background of growing complexity of media practices, our question is: has the very apparatus as much as our conception of it changed?

The workshop wants to address this question from three perspectives: technologically, the digitization of cameras has turned them into computers with attached sensors, and former functions of the hardware are increasingly simulated by software. The construction of a camera nowadays requires less domain knowledge, which has enabled companies from different fields to introduce new camera models and disrupt a previously relatively stable ecosystem. At the same time, many artists have questioned the tool of their photographic practices by turning self-created cameras into artworks in their own rights. Artists like Trevor Paglen (“seeing machines”), Hito Steyerl (“proxy politics”), Aïm Deüelle Lüski (“threshold as place”) and David Claerbout (“dark optics”) have also been driving forces in the discussion of post-photographic cameras. Finally, a theoretical critique of modernism (of which traditional photography has been an integral part), along with posthumanistic understandings of agency and technology (Karen Barad, Donna Haraway, Bruno Latour), have helped to blur what used to be the separate concepts of the camera, photographer and image. Hence, cameras can no longer be understood as black boxes/cameras obscuras. We need to re-assess them as nodes in larger media ecological networks.

We welcome papers by researchers and artists on topics including, but not limited to:

• Artistic practices involving camera constructions, modifications or dissolutions
• New camera concepts and photographic practices in everyday life
• Media archaeologies of the camera
• The photographer’s body as a counterpart to the camera
• The camera in posthuman photography
• Theoretical approaches to the changing concepts of medium and authorship

The workshop is organized by the SNF research group Post-photographyat the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts. The conference language is English. Paper proposals (abstract of up to 300 words and CV) for 20-minute talks should be sent to birk.weiberg@hslu.ch by 31 Aug 2019. Accommodation and travel allowance will be provided. 

For any inquiries, please contact:
Birk Weiberg, birk.weiberg@hslu.ch
Wolfgang Brückle, wolfgang.brueckle@hslu.ch

For the SNSF Post-photography research group, see https://blog.hslu.ch/postphotography

Date: 8 December 2018
Location: Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland
Deadline: 15 September 2018

Image Net/Works is a conference organised by Lucerne University of Applied Arts and Sciences in collaboration with Fotomuseum Winterthur to tackle issues related to photography’s changing role in the context of contemporary political-economic systems.

Photographic media have become central to the productive activities of today’s digital economy. Discourses around immaterial and digital labour (Lazzarato 1996, Hardt and Negri 2000, Terranova 2000, Fuchs 2013) have attempted to develop new models to address increasingly complex modes of production tied to global digital networks. On the other hand, various approaches in media theory (Flusser 1987, Rubinstein and Sluis 2008, Steyerl 2009, Hoelzl and Marie 2015) have explored new forms of photographic production, describing new relations between photographers and the apparatus, as well as images and viewers. The discourse on the changing nature of labour is tightly connected to the role that photographic media, in their algorithmic and networked form, play in a society where information technology has become a dominant force. So far photography has received little attention beyond wider and more general reflections about media’s role as digital commodities and the internet as a playground for cognitive labour.

Image Net/Works will attempt to connect these separate but overlapping discourses. The conference will specifically focus on images and the associated economies of looking, producing and sharing. It will investigate contemporary and historical modes of photographic production and forms of labour that are connected to the computational exchange of pictures, the harvesting of attention, new kinds of image value and photography’s various roles in the current economic system.

The conference is an integral part of the SITUATIONS programme at Fotomuseum Winterthur and part of the Post-Photography research project. It will take place in the context of the exhibition SITUATIONS / To look is to labor (opening 7 December at 6 pm).

We welcome applications by researchers and artists working on this subject. Possible topics include but are not limited to:

• Economies of looking (spectacle, propaganda, advertisements, clickbaits, etc.)
• Exchange and use value of networked images (online sharing, ‘likes’ and ‘followers’, etc.)
• Labour behind the production of images (metadata, tagging, censorship, etc.)
• Attention economy and value extraction in image networks (fan labour, eye tracking, meme circulation, etc.)

Proposals that shed light on historical material from perspectives related to the abovementioned issues are also welcome.

The conference language is English. Submissions should include a title and an abstract (up to 300 words), as well as a CV, and should be submitted to demutiis@fotomuseum.ch by 15 September 2018. Accommodation and travel allowance will be provided.

For any enquiries, please contact:

Marco de Mutiis
Wolfgang Brückle