Tuesday 17th February 2015, 8:00pm

Session 135: “Visual Evidence and Agency – How to Live with Images Now”

During this Theory Tuesdays session, Nadine Helm presented excerpts from three texts grappling with truth claims in photography and video coverage. The session addressed the current media landscape from different angles and questioned our role and agency within this landscape. What is expected when we look at images, and what can be done with the manifold information we receive on a daily basis? Is our engagement with news coverage a question of truth claims (right or wrong)? Or has our engagement simply become a question of creating a sphere of agency in which we are no longer over-flooded by information? And what could this sphere look like?

Texts:
(1) Eyal Weizman, “Forensic Architecture: Only the Criminal Can Solve the Crime” Radical Philosophy, 164, November/December 2010, 9-17.
(2) David Joselit, “Material Witness: Visual Evidence and the Case of Eric Garner” Artforum, February 2015.
(3) Ariella Azoulay, “The Civil Contract of Photography” Excerpts (New York: Zone Books, 2008).

Participants: 14