THREE KEYNOTES – THREE SESSIONS

9:00 – 9:15 Inscription

9:15 – 11:15 Morning session “Post-photography”
Welcome
Geoffrey Batchen (NZ)
Kirstine Autzen (DK)
Kristoffer Ørum (DK)

Coffee

11:40 – 13:25 Mid-session “Disseminations of the Image”
Cecilia Grönberg (SE)
Eva Stenram (SE)
Jana J. Haeckel (BE)

Lunch

14:15 – 16:15 Afternoon session “Beyond the Index / Beyond the Pictorial Plane”
David Bate (UK)
Robert Overweg (NL)
AVPD (DK)
Closing remarks by Mette Sandbye (DK)

16:15 – 16:45 Network Opportunity

The Morning Session presents Professor Geoffrey Batchen, Kirstine Autzen, and Kristoffer Ørum.

9:15 – 11:15

The Mid-session presents PhD Cecilia Grönberg, Eva Stenram, and Jana J. Haeckel.

11:40 – 13:25

The title given to this symposium would seem to confirm that the term ‘post-photographic’ has become part of the vernacular, an adjective apparently now able to be applied to just about any contemporary photograph. Like most terms, however, this one has a history.

A tracing of that history might allow us to address what is at stake in the use of such a word, and what questions can and should be asked about that use. I will argue that, in the context of a nuanced understanding of the history of photography, the kind of self-reflexive attitude to the photograph I first described as post-photographic in 1992 continues to be relevant, perhaps even essential, today.

9:35 – 10:15

”New Tactics – moving in a soft field” is an exhibition about bodies becoming images and images acquiring a ’body’ through merging with other media. It examines the role of the artist in navigating an image saturated visual culture full of photographic hybrids (such as face recognition software, discrete retouching apps and alternative printing techniques).

The curatorial process was inspired by a shift in wording, from talking about photography ‘converging’ with other media to defining photography in the post-photographic era as ‘porous’, a word borrowed from an essay “Post-Photography” by Geoffrey Batchen. It is a term that denotes physical matter more than representation, and which also references the permeability of and overlap with the body, and the new works created for the exhibition show great sensitivity towards the qualities of surface, materiality and movement.

In conversations with the exhibition’s artists Nanna Lysholt Hansen, Kristoffer Ørum, Sandra Vaka Olsen and Valérie Collart it is evident that they each define their role as artists as resonance boards, librarians of our visual image history and hackers in our visual culture today.

10:20 – 10:40

“Händelsehorisont || Event Horizon. Distributed photography” is Grönberg’s 1012-page dissertation on ‘distributed photography’. The book is an artistic research project in photography that between 2004 and 2016 sounded, mapped and visualized some of the persisting effects of analogue photographs within digital ecologies. Händelsehorisont is localized between different images and systems, technologies and ways of reading; between humans, animals, and software.
Her presentation will gravitate around some of these renegotiated photographic concepts and practices where the photographic index is being reshaped into a more gelatinous existence, where inscription becomes transmission and publishing a decisive aspect of the photographic act.

11:45 – 12:25

Taking the point of departure in her own artistic practice, Eva Stenram – one of the participating artists in the exhibition “Photography to end all photography” at Brandts in Odense – will share her thoughts on digital manipulations and the transmutation of meaning when motifs are reproduced or repeated.

In her works we often encounter images from popular representations of the female body from vintage erotic magazines widely distributed and consumed. Through manipulations of such photographs she conceals the body as object for the male gaze and evokes a different kind of desire than the mere libidinal. In her presentation she will talk about this tactic of detournement and her subversive position vis-à-vis consumption.

12:30 – 12:50

The widespread use of smartphone cameras and associated processes of uploading pictures online have not only intervened in how we see the world, but also changed how we see older forms of analogue photography. On the one hand, this shift triggers nostalgia for a format that some have never used, whilst on the other, those same new formats provide a new visioning of everyday life. What are the effects of these technologies and their shifting platforms on the image of the human body and culture? 

14:20 – 15:00

As an artist Robert Overweg has been exploring virtual worlds of computer games. He has been documenting them as a photographer since 2007, with a focus on the shifting border between the physical and the virtual world.

His talk will be about how Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality will influence our photography and images. Where can we already encounter this influence? What Hollywood tech is slowly flowing into the hands of consumers? We take a step back and sketch out a possible future where digitization could alter our notion of what is ‘real’. — if it hasn’t already. Where doubt and uncertainty will be paramount. But don’t worry it’s not all dark and gloomy there is a silver lining. 

15:05 – 15:25