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Call for Proposals, Veranstaltungen, Ausstellungen

CfP: The Post-photographic Apparatus

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

Workshop: Photography, Writing, Letterpress (13.-14.03.19, Marburg)

Photography, Writing, Letterpress
13.‒14.03.2019, Philipps-Universität Marburg

Although both being visual media, printed texts and photographs are generally perceived as being very different, if not opposed, in character. Print is seen as a standardized and easily reproducible form of writing; writing, in turn, is considered as a convention-based durable translation of speech, of thoughts and observations into an abstract visual code. Photography, on the other hand, is understood as a physical imprint of light, as a perceptually accessible trace of the scene it depicts, and is therefore seen, at least to a certain extent, as a medium of realism, truth and objectivity. Their complex relationship and its range of phenomena renders scientific research on this topic not only appealing, but also extremely challenging. The workshop encourages an interdisciplinary exchange in order to discuss possible answers to the primary question how this relationship can be addressed methodologically.

Please, find the complete abstract and program behind the link:

Flyer Photography, Writing, LetterpressHerunterladen

The workshop is organized by Deutsches Dokumentationszentrum für Kunstgeschichte ‒ Bildarchiv Foto Marburg and subproject 5 of the DFG research unit 2288 »Journal Literature.

If you wish to participate, please send an e-mail to journale@staff.uni-marburg.de to receive the text reader and to register for the workshop.

Conference Image Net/Works

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 political­economic systems.

Photographic media have become central to the productive activities of today’s digital economy. Discourses around immaterial and digital labour have attempted to develop new models to address increasingly complex modes of production tied to global digital networks. Various approaches in media theory 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 HSLU Post­Photography research project. It will take place in the context of the exhibition SITUATIONS/To look is to labor (opening 7 December at 6 pm).

Programme

10:00–10:15 Welcome and introduction

10:15–11:00 Nicolas Malevé, “Machine Glancing”
11:00–11:45 Olga Moskatova, “Living Photographs: On Parasitic GIF(t) Economies”
11:45–12:30 Yanai Toister, “Photography: Love’s Labour’s Lost”

12:30–13:45 Lunch break

13:45–14:30 Rowan Lear, “A Profitable Habit: Photographing as Second Nature and Reproductive Labour”
14:30–15:15 Marco De Mutiis, “The Photographer as Player as Worker”

15:15–15:45 Coffee break

15:45–16:30 Jonathan Beller, “The Derivative Condition”
16:30–17:15 Ingrid Hölzl, “IMAGE­-TRANSACTION: The Image as a Lure”
17:15–18:00 Sebastian Schmieg, “Humans As Software Extension”

Conference Programme

Lehrmedien der Kunstgeschichte

Die Geschichte des Fachs ist immanenter Bestandteil und Gegenstand kunsthistorischer Forschung. Seit den 1970er Jahren lässt sich zudem ein wachsendes Interesse an den spezifischen medialen Konfigurationen der Kunstgeschichte beobachten. Die Marburger Tagung will diese Bemühungen erstmals systematisieren, indem sie Ansätze für eine fundierte medientheoretische Ausrichtung des Forschungsfeldes ‚Geschichte der Kunstgeschichte‘ formuliert. Jenseits einer ausschließlichen Fokussierung auf das für die Kunstgeschichte so zentrale Problem des Bildes adressiert das Projekt insbesondere die Spezifik der Medienverbünde und ihres Einsatzes innerhalb der kunsthistorischen Lehre. Besonders die Aspekte des Multi-, Inter- und Transmedialen sollen hierbei problematisiert werden. Die internationale Konferenz visiert zunächst den Fachdiskurs an, fragt jedoch darüber hinaus aus philosophischer, archäologischer und medienwissenschaftlicher Perspektive nach den Rändern und Grenzen kunsthistorischer Vermittlungspraxis. Die Konferenzsprachen sind Deutsch und Englisch.

Zeit | time: 22–24 November 2018

Veranstalter | organized by: Deutsches Dokumentationszentrum für Kunstgeschichte – Bildarchiv Foto Marburg | German Documentation Center for Art History – Bildarchiv Foto Marburg / Philipps-Universität Marburg

Organisation | organizers: Prof. Dr. Hubert Locher, Dr. Maria Männig

Ort | venue: Philipps-Universität Marburg, Forschungszentrum Deutscher Sprachatlas, Pilgrimstein 16, 35032 Marburg Vortragsraum | Room 001

Um Anmeldung wird bis 16. November 2018 gebeten unter: ddk-tagung//at//fotomarburg.de.

Weitere Informationen: https://lehrmedien.hypotheses.org Keep Reading

CfP: Circulating Photographs: Materials, Practices, Institutions

Call for Papers
Circulating Photographs: Materials, Practices, Institutions
A photo-historical course organized and led by Tatjana Bartsch (Bibliotheca Hertziana), Maria Antonella Pelizzari (Hunter College, CUNY, New York), Johannes Röll (Bibliotheca Hertziana), and Steffen Siegel (Folkwang Universität der Künste, Essen).

Rome, Bibliotheca Hertziana, Max Planck Institute for Art History
March 18–22, 2019
Deadline: October 22, 2018

Photography has always been a powerful tool of communication and has developed into an instrument of our everyday experience: Through photographs we are able to communicate quickly and easily with each other. As a medium of social interaction, photographic images are used as a handy alternative to language, supplementing or even replacing it. They transport us to sites and individuals, connecting the distant and the temporally remote. This far-reaching development is increasingly driven by the digitization of our everyday culture. Photography is both part of this process, and its most visible expression. Photo-historical research can contribute important observations to this diagnosis of our own time. From the moment photographic images became a matter of public interest, they served as objects of circulation and social connection. Already by the middle of the 19th century photography had opened global routes of image-based economies,providing and distributing our interpretations of visible worlds. As commodities or gifts, they are traded and exchanged, distributed and collected. The proliferation of photographically based information and the trading of photographic objects constitute important aspects of social interaction in the early stages of globalization.

These observations are our point of departure for the course titled “Circulating Photographs: Materials, Practices, Institutions”. Our aim is to develop a focused, multi-disciplinary analysis of the photographic image as an object of circulation, especially over the course of the 19th and early 20th centuries (up to 1950). In the context of photo-historical research it is common practice to ask about processes of production or reception. In contrast, by putting circulation modalities at the center of our interest, we would like to accentuate the importance of such interactions for the production of photographic meaning. Acts of transmission constitute an important framework for the semantics of photographic imagery. Thus, we are interested in the realm of photographs as a foundation and tool for social interaction and in the practices that lead to our current understanding of image exchange. The vernacular image and its everyday practices are as important as highly professional appropriations within the domain of the arts and sciences. We are particularly interested in strategies of networking that have been enabled, shaped, modified or rejected by photography.

Looking for historical conditions that enabled photographs to circulate requires a closer investigation of premises related to such interactions:

  1. The material foundations of photography, i.e., its historically shifting concreteness in terms of production processes and technologies.
  2. The ensemble of practices, i.e., the methods and channels that have been developed, cultivated and refined for the circulation of photographs.
  3. The diversity of institutions that have been created or adapted to this purpose.

Examining the variety of connections between these aspects will provide a new understanding of photo-historical developments that lean on the idea of exchange within the domain of visual media. We are especially interested in practices and strategies that have been developed in photography’s pre-digital era and we ask whether, and how, they can be regarded as a foundation for current media practices of transmission and exchange. Such an interest stimulates a variety of questions:

–   What types of circulation can and should we distinguish?
–   How does the materiality of photographic images affect and shape their circulation? And how does the circulation of photographs have an impact on their materiality?
–   What differences are there in professional and private practices among the networks of circulation?
–   What kinds of channels have been developed and used for the circulation of photographs?
–   In what ways do modes of circulation differ – modes such as sending, exchanging, transferring, sharing, dissemination, dispersion, etc.? How do we perceive and evaluate these historical practices today, and vice versa, how does our current practice shed light on the meaning of past exchanges of photographs?
–   How can we conceptualize the difference between circulating photographs as original prints on the one hand, and circulating reproductions of them on the other?
–   How does the photographic picture become a social entity in the process of its circulation?
–   How is meaning produced and altered through processes of circulation?
–   How can we describe the ongoing media change of photography from the point of view of circulation?
–   What conclusions can be drawn by examining specific time periods regarding the processes of circulation?
–   What kind of media practices of transmission from previous periods of media history are still in use today?

The course is aimed at advanced M.A. students, Ph.D. candidates and recent post-docs in art history and related disciplines with a strong photo-historical component. The course will be held in English. During the course, all participants will present their current research project, which should exhibit a close connection to the course subject matter. The course is supplemented by visits to photographic archives in Rome.

The Bibliotheca Hertziana will offer lodging and reimburse half of the incurred travelling expenses. In addition, participants will receive a daily allowance.

Please send the following application materials as a single PDF-document to Fototeca@biblhertz.it (subject “Studienkurs”) by October 22 2018:
–   Abstract of proposed subject/case study
–   Brief CV
–   Brief summary of your master’s thesis, dissertation or postdoctoral project
–   Names and contact details of two references

For further information please contact: fototeca@biblhertz.it

CFP Conference Image Net/Works

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

CfP: Schwerpunktprogramm „Das digitale Bild“ (SPP 2172) der DFG

Der Senat der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) hat im März 2018 die Einrichtung des Schwerpunktprogramms „Das digitale Bild“ (SPP 2172) beschlossen. Als Laufzeit sind sechs Jahre vorgesehen. Die DFG lädt zur Antragstellung für die erste dreijährige Förderperiode ein.

Das Schwerpunktprogramm „Das digitale Bild“ will von einem multiperspektivischen Standpunkt aus in der Zusammenführung exemplarischer Projekte die zentrale Rolle thematisieren, die dem Bild im komplexen Prozess der Digitalisierung des Wissens in Theorie und Praxis zukommt. Intendiert ist eine kritische Thematisierung und Reflexion dieser Dimension als eines tief greifenden epistemologischen Umbruchs. Dies kann nur in einem dezidiert transdisziplinären Austausch und unter besonderer Einbeziehung auch der Informationswissenschaften erfolgen.

Im Schwerpunktprogramm sollen Projekte aufgenommen werden, die erstens auf den Anteil des Bildes im Prozess der Digitalisierung reflektieren in der Absicht, zu einer Theorie des digitalen Bildes in der Verwendung in Kunst, Wissenschaft, Kultur beizutragen; die sich zweitens beschreibend und interpretierend dem Phänomen, den Erscheinungsformen und Praktiken des „Digital Turn“ in seiner visuellen Dimension zuwenden, wozu zum Beispiel auch die Beschreibung und Interpretation von Formen der bildenden Kunst im digitalen Raum gehören; und die drittens auf die Praxis der Technologien des digitalen Bildes zielen, beispielsweise die Entwicklung innovativer Formen des Einsatzes des digitalen Bildes als Medium der Erkenntnis im Umfeld der Wissenschaft betreiben. Anträge können einem dieser drei Bereiche zugeordnet, sollen zugleich aber mit Blick auf die anderen konzipiert sein. Ein Schwerpunkt soll im Bereich der Praxis, hier der Untersuchung und Reflexion der technologischen Instrumente und sozialen Infrastrukturen, liegen.

In jedem Projekt, gleich welcher fachlichen Anbindung und Orientierung, ist eine reflexive Komponente verlangt. Diese kann als konzeptuell-entwicklungsorientierte und/oder medienreflexive Position umgesetzt werden. Projekte, die lediglich die „Digitalisierung“ eines Bestands bezwecken oder ausschließlich neue Tools zur Bearbeitung dieses Bestands liefern, sind nicht adressiert. Prinzipiell sollen die Projekte zum besseren Verständnis der Rolle des digitalen Bildes in der Wissensgesellschaft beitragen und damit die Bildhaftigkeit von Wissen im digitalen Raum reflektieren.

Der Antrag ist in englischer Sprache bis spätestens 15. September 2018 bei der DFG einzureichen:
https://elan.dfg.de/

Die Ausschreibung der DFG findet man hier:
http://www.dfg.de/foerderung/info_wissenschaft/info_wissenschaft_18_14/index.html

Den Antragstext hier:
https://tinyurl.com/y8z77jpf

Call for Papers Studientage für Fotografie „Fotografie und Gesellschaft“ / Research Seminar on the History of Photography 2018 „Photography and Society“

Die veränderten technischen Dispositionen und andauernden Erweiterungen der Verbreitungsmöglichkeiten des Mediums haben zu einer Situation geführt, die als »Allgegenwart« der Fotografie bezeichnet wird: Jeder kann immer und überall Fotografien aufnehmen, bearbeiten und verteilen, sie de- und rekontextualisieren und auch bewerten. Weil die Praxis und die digitale Verbreitung von Bildern immer einfacher werden, scheinen die Beziehungen von Fotografie und Gesellschaft offenkundiger denn je.

Die Studientage für Fotografie 2018 widmen sich der Zirkulation der Bilder, der gesellschaftlichen Verbreitung des Fotografierens, dem kritischen Potential fotografischer Gesellschaftsbilder sowie der Fotografie als Methode der Gesellschaftsanalyse aus gegenwärtiger und historischer Perspektive, um Kontinuitäten und Brüche in den Themenfeldern herauszuarbeiten. Die fünftägige Veranstaltung bietet Promovierenden und Post-Docs die Möglichkeit zur Präsentationen ihrer Forschungen, Seminare, Diskussionsrunden, Besuche wichtiger Sammlungen und Gespräche mit KuratorInnen sowie ein Künstlergespräch.

Zur Bewerbung aufgefordert sind Promovierende und Post-Docs aller Disziplinen, die sich mit dem Thema auseinandersetzen. Die Konferenzsprachen sind Deutsch und Englisch. Bewerbungen mit einem Exposé (max. 3 000 Zeichen) und CV werden bis 15. April 2018 erbeten an Franziska Scheuer (scheuer[at]fotomarburg.de).

Das Stipendium umfasst Vorbereitungsmaterialien, Übernachtungen und einen Reisekostenzuschuss.

Mit Aida Bosch (Institut für Soziologie, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg), Florian Ebner (Chef de service, Cabinet de la photographie, Centre national d’art et de culture Georges-Pompidou, Paris), André Gunthert (Maître de conférences, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris), Andréa Holzherr (Global Exhibitions Manager Magnum Photos, Paris), Hubert Locher (Kunstgeschichtliches Institut, Philipps-Universität Marburg/Deutsches Dokumentationszentrum für Kunstgeschichte – Bildarchiv Foto Marburg), Jens Ruchatz (Institut für Medienwissenschaft, Philipps-Universität Marburg) und Erik Kessels.

Der Ausschreibungstext findet sich hier, ein ausführliches Konzept hier.

Informations in English can be downloaded here.

Weitere Informationen finden sich auf der Website des Dokumentationszentrums für Kunstgeschichte – Bildarchiv Foto Marburg.

Symposium: „POINTED OR POINTLESS? Recalibrating the Index – Part II“, on the 4th of November 2017 in Potsdam

Symposium: “POINTED OR POINTLESS? Recalibrating the Index”

Saturday 4th of November 2017 I 10:00 am – 5:30pm
Brandenburg Center for Media Studies I 18 Hermann-Elflein-Str., Potsdam 14467
Program: https://pointedorpointless.wordpress.com/programme/

The symposium “Pointed or Pointless? Recalibrating the Index” aims to reconsider the notion of the index, its history and present-day applicability. Some recent debates – which abandon strict definitions of analogue/digital and scrutinize fixed notions of truth and medium – are taken as an opportunity to readdress the notion in the 21st century.

The symposium is divided in two parts. The first event took place in London and was dedicated to the re-evaluation of the index, focusing on its historical re-assessment as well as on the steps of “stylization” of the term, following the trace from Peirce to visual theory. The second part in Potsdam will subsequently deal with the updating of the index, by taking a closer look at the use of the notion in debates on the networked image, as well as discussing gestures of authentication, which emphasize concepts of authenticity and objectivity and can be registered as indexical.

Please find more information on the symposium here: https://pointedorpointless.wordpress.com/about/

CFP: Versatile Camcorders: Looking at the GoPro-Movement

Versatile Camcorders: Looking at the GoPro-Movement

International Workshop June 21-23 2018 at ZeM (Brandenburgisches Zentrum für Medienwissenschaften) organized by Winfried Gerling and Florian Krautkrämer.

The GoPro is a so-called “action camcorder”, a small, easy-to-use and particularly robust camera which allows making video recordings under water or during a parachute jump and other situations that are difficult to shoot.
It was first launched as an analog photo camera for surfers in 2004. The objective of this new culture is inscribed in its brand “Go-Professional”: alleged professionalization of image production under extraordinary conditions.

With the GoPro as the “world’s most versatile camera”, as said in the advertising text, the gesture of this promoted mobility is transferred to the actions of the camera operator and the possibility of linking the camera to various moving objects and subjects.
A genre of daring (existential) images emerges. For example images of the falling (skydivers, base jumpers and wingsuit fliers) and the fallen (when helmet cameras of militants record combat situations) as well as images of situations beyond control (animals hijacking the camera). Even more as in images shot with a hand camera perspectives become shaky; they flip vertical or horizontal, with the filmmakers’ bodies in the center. GoPro not only introduced a new camera segment but also changed the way of amateur filmmaking. This cannot be reduced solely to technical means, but rather to assertive brand communication.

Topics that are to be discussed at the conference from the perspective of this still relatively new device include: the transformation of amateur filmmaking and its correlating visual worlds; the gesture of venturous action and increased risk-taking; the impact on (citizen) journalism; aspects of the the circulation of images in social networks; new gestures such as selfies as well as the effects of the device on the body; surveillance (when the GoPro is mounted on drones) as well as recording the unexpected or the unintended.
Contributions do not have to focus on the manufacturer of GoPro. Proposals on the voluntary work of users as part of the brand communication as well as contributions from an artistic practice, workshop reports and applied presentations of a problem are welcome.

Please hand in your abstract (should not exceed 400 words) with a short biographical note via e-mail to goprocall@zem-brandenburg.de by Dec 31 2017.

The workshop will be held in English and German.