THOMAS KEENAN (Bard College): “’ANTI-PHOTOJOURNALISM Thursday, 13th March 5.00–7.00pm Ian Gulland Lecture Theatre Whitehead Building Goldsmiths, University of London The rule of thumb for this sort of anti-photojournalism: no flash, no telephoto zoom lens, no gas mask, no auto-focus, no press pass and no pressure to grab at all costs the one defining image of dramatic violence. - Allan Sekula, Waiting for Tear Gas, 1999 We are now witnessing a radical transformation in photojournalistic practices, and more generally in the way cameras record and make news. This has very little to do with the so-called death of photojournalism — a rumour which I have no interest in confirming or denying. I am interested instead in critical and alternative accounts of the institution and practice of photojournalism. Artists, reporters, citizens, scholars, activists and archivists are doing exciting things that link the image to political and social struggles, often in unexpected ways. Their work is interesting in its own right, and for the deeper questions it often raises about the fundamental concepts of photojournalism. What are evidence, access, coverage, reporting, bearing witness, and how are these practices in their hegemonic form increasingly fragile and open to reconsideration? What has actually become of photojournalism today, and how does it stand in sharp contrast to the traditional forms of the practice? This talk will draw on the exhibition Anti-photojournalism to examine some answers to these questions in a genealogy of contemporary anti-photojournalism, from the 1960s to the present. Thomas Keenan teaches media theory and human rights at Bard College, where he directs the Human Rights Project and helped create the first undergraduate degree program in human rights in the United States. He is the author of Fables of Responsibility (Stanford UP, 1997), and with Eyal Weizman, Mengele’s Skull (Sternberg, 2012). He is co-editor, with Wendy Chun, of New Media, Old Media (Routledge, 2006), and with Tirdad Zolghadr, of The Human Snapshot (Luma/Sternberg/CCS, 2013). He curated “Antiphotojournalism,” with Carles Guerra (Barcelona and Amsterdam, 2010–11), and “Aid and Abet” (Quebec, 2011). He has served on the boards of a number of human rights organizations and journals, including WITNESS, Scholars at Risk, the Crimes of War Project, the Journal of Human Rights, and Humanity. ––– This is the eight instalment of ‘AESTHETIC OBJECTIVITY,’ the Spring 2014 series of the Visual Cultures Public Programme chaired by Susan Schuppli. 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?
Posted on: Tue, 11 Mar 2014 11:28:00 +0000
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