Description
From my abstract: How can we see what they say? Opacity and impossibility in The Otolith Group’s Nervus Rerum and Hito Steyerl’s The Kiss How can one depict people in war or refugees in a refugee camp? This question has been considered over and again, yet it remains urgent. In this paper I discuss two artworks that question the role of the image in relation to a state of exception and a situation of displacement. The Otolith Group’s video Nervus Rerum (2008) takes place in the Jenin refugee camp in Palestine and Hito Steyerl’s video installation The Kiss (2010) unwraps a moment of deportation in the war in ex-Yugoslavia. Drawing on theorists such as Ariella Azoulay, Judith Butler, Édouard Glissant and Susan Sontag, I analyze how these artworks challenge the transparency of the image and its possibility of providing us with information. Finally, I suggest that the artworks develop theoretical and artistic strategies of visually thinking and contesting representation, namely through articulating and materializing opacity and the impossibility of the image.| Period | 3 Oct 2013 → 5 Oct 2013 |
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| Event type | Conference |
| Location | Århus, DenmarkShow on map |