Next dates: Tue, 17.06.14 / Tue, 22.07.14 / Sat, 26.07.14
Photography functions as the nodal point for the intersection of several discourses and practices, from (art) history, to cultural and media theory to photojournalism and art. As such, it signifies at once a theoretical horizon, a historical development, a technological operation, and a medium. This series explores the optical-theoretical significance of photography as the terrain of a twofold transformation, a shift in perception and transformation of social relations. We are interested in the dialectical structure of these transformations—i.e., of photography as a cipher of capitalist-modernity and the site of its interruption.
We propose to investigate this dialectical structure through the optical-theoretical trope parallax. As an optical phenomenon, parallax refers to the effect whereby the position or direction of an object appears to differ when viewed from different positions. The apparent displacement of the object is caused by a change in the observational position that provides a new line of sight. In The Parallax View (2006), Slavoj Zizek invokes the figure parallax as the structure of dialectic. He argues that parallax refers neither to an antinomy or structural polarity but to the nonidentity of the One with itself—i.e., a constitutive noncoincidence, tension or gap. In Transcritique (2003), Kojin Karatani invokes the optics of parallax as the structure of critique. In this work, a photographic optics displaces the optics of specular reflection, marking the immanent alienation and displacement of consciousness that Karatani argues is constitutive of the objectivity of self-consciousness.
This series attempts to bring theoretically invested photographic works and photographically informed theory into dialogue, approaching photography as a contemporary medium of thought. Taking up this optical-theoretical figure of parallax, each of the individual events within this series provide further explorations and articulations of the parallactic dialectics of photography. In this way, we hope to stage an experiment within theoretical production and artistic practice in order to explore the dialectical structure of photography.
Curated by Sami Khatib (Berlin) and Anne van Leeuwen (Berlin)
Participants: Adrian Alecu (Hamburg), Udi Aloni (Berlin), Diana Artus (Berlin), Yanick Avila (Berlin), Hannes Boeck (Vienna), Mladen Dolar (Ljubljana), Alexi Kukuljevic (Berlin), Jan Sieber (Berlin), Samo Tomsic (Berlin/Ljubljana), Nathania Rubin (Berlin), Jeff Weber (Leipzig), Sinta Werner (Berlin)