International Symposium
Vision Machines: A Shadow Archive
With: Susan Schuppli, Akira Mizuta Lippit, Jimena Canales, Thomas Zummer and Leslie Thornton
Tuesday November 15th at 6pm (Dublin)
Photo Museum Ireland, Meeting House Square, Temple Bar, Dublin 2, Ireland. Please note this is a hybrid event with virtual presentations projected in the gallery and a live audience, and will allow for an open discussion at the end.
Proceedings will also be available through Zoom.
Image: from Jean Antoine Nollet, Leçons de Physique expérimentale, 1764
About the symposium
Vision Machines: A Shadow Archive is an international symposium, curated and moderated by Katherine Waugh, responding to the political, philosophical and aesthetic subjects addressed in the exhibition I See a Darkness.
The Symposium addresses questions raised in the central film of the exhibition, about the streamlining of cinematographic technologies in the 20th century by scientific rationality, and the value of looking again at experimental practices and ways of thinking sidelined as a result. Guest participants are leading thinkers and practitioners in the philosophy of technology and science, film theory and the politics of digital culture, and artists, and were also contributors to the film.
Vision Machines: A Shadow archive will delve into the possibilities of an alternative genealogy of disciplines generally perceived as removed from each other. It will look at the often contentious fusion of artistic and technological representational models of our world, with their complex political ramifications, through presentations from speakers whose own work has challenged, and continues to challenge, any easy assumptions about visual culture.
Trevor Paglen’s rallying cry provides one touchstone :
““It’s imperative for other artists to pick up where [Harun] Farocki left off, lest we plunge even further into the darkness of a world whose images remain invisible, yet control us in ever-more profound ways.””
Yet the nature of what an image is and its mediation and construction through technology, becomes, in our present culture and environmental conditions, problematized and challenged by the very concept of material itself, as Susan Schuppli writes in Material Witness:
““our critical investigative practices must take into account alternate modes of witnessing that operate across scales and entities—including the technical and more-than-human—if, that is, we are to challenge the powerful contexts and institutional formats that determine the particular relevance of events or, indeed, to invent new ones.””
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:
Susan Schuppli is a researcher and artist whose work examines material evidence from war and conflict to environmental disasters and climate change. Schuppli is Reader and Director of the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths University of London where she is also an affiliate artist-researcher and Board Chair of Forensic Architecture. She has published widely within the context of media and politics and is author of the book, Material Witness, published by MIT Press in 2020.
Akira Mizuta Lippit is Vice Dean of Faculty in the School of Cinematic Arts, and Professor in the Division of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Southern California. He is also Professor of Comparative Literature and East Asian Languages and Cultures in the USC Dornsife College. His interests are in world cinemas, critical theory, Japanese film and culture, experimental film and video, and visual studies. Lippit’s published work reflects these areas and includes four books, Ex-Cinema: From a Theory of Experimental Film and Video (2012); Atomic Light (Shadow Optics) (2005); Electric Animal: Toward a Rhetoric of Wildlife (2000); and his most recent book, Cinema without Reflection: Jacques Derrida's Echopoiesis and Narcissism Adrift (2016).
Jimena Canales is an award-winning author and scholar focusing on the history of science in the modern world. Canales is the author of A Tenth of a Second: A History (Chicago University Press), The Physicist and The Philosopher: Einstein, Bergson, and the Debate that Changed our Understanding of Time (Princeton University Press), Bedeviled: A Shadow History of Demons in Science (Princeton University Press), and Simply Einstein. Her books have been voted Top 10 Books about Time (The Guardian), Best Science Books for 2015 (Science Friday, NPR, Public Radio International and Brainpickings), Top Reads for 2015 (The Independent), and Books of the Year for 2016 (The Tablet). Canales writes frequently for general audiences publishing in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Artforum, Aperture, Nautilus and WIRED among others. She has presented her work on science and art at the Pompidou Museum, SFMOMA, the 11th Shanghai Biennale, and the Serpentine Gallery in London. Canales received her MA and PhD from Harvard University in the history of science and was awarded the ‘Prize for Young Scholars’ of the International Union of the History and Philosophy of Science and the ‘Cosmos Prize’ for science popularization in 2022.
Thomas Zummer is a scholar, writer, artist and curator. Published works include “Projection and Dis/embodiment: Genealogies of the Virtual,” in —Into the Light: The Projected Image in American Art 1964-1977,” Chrissie Iles, ed., Whitney Museum, “Médusante,’ in Graphology, Edwin Carels, ed., Drawing Room London, and Thomas Zummer: Portraits of Robots and Other Works (exh. cat.) In 1994 Zummer curated CRASH: Nostalgia for the Absence of Cyberspace, at Threadwaxing Space, NYC, with Robert Reynolds, one of the first exhibitions to have a significant proportion of digital/online works, telepresence, projection, and other forms of transmission. Zummer and Reynolds also edited the accompanying book Crash. Other curatorial projects include Reframing Cartoons at The Wexner Center; and Single Cell Creatures at Katona Museum of Art. Zummer’s artworks have been exhibited at the Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst/Antwerpen, Belgium; Fundacio Antoni Tapies, Barcelona, Spain; Pierpont Morgan Library and Museum; Exit Art, San José Museum of Art, and White Box; and a retrospective entitled Thomas Zummer: A Partial Retrospective of Works I Should Have Done at Feldman Museum/PNCA, Portland, Oregon. Thomas Zummer is currently associated with the Philosophy Faculty at European Graduate School (EGS), and is the Director of Graduate Studies in Graphic and Information Design at CCSU.
Leslie Thornton is an artist whose work has been exhibited and widely screened internationally at: documenta 12, Kassel; The Whitney Museum of American Art, MoMA PS1, and Artists Space in New York; Tate Modern and Raven Row in London; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève; and at the Rotterdam, Berlin, Buenos Aires, and New York Film Festivals, among many others. Her recent solo exhibition at MIT List Visual Arts Centre Begin Again, Again 2021-2022, was accompanied by a monograph published by Sternberg Press. The relationship between technology, power, and violence is an enduring concern for Thornton.
When
6pm Tuesday November 15th
Start time 18:00 Dublin
[10:00 Los Angeles; 13:00 New York; 19:00 CET]
Where
Photo Museum Ireland & Zoom
Zoom Link
How much
Free