Welcome to the desert of the real

Burma 2007. For the first time in history, revolutionary struggle and repressive violence are being immediately documented by people in the thick of it, through mobile phone videos and pictures posted on the web. From that time on, the multitude of several conflict zones, especially in the middle-east, has taken possession of its own representation traditionally kept by the ruling power, by special correspondents or by western artists gloating over transparency, diversity and freedom.

Is the act of snap shooting oneself being targeted by a tank, a moment of re-subjectivation and of feeling of the real, a kind of answer to the virtualisation of the world (like the cutters cutting themselves, as described by Žižek in “Welcome to the desert of the real“)? Or can its image create over it a radical change in the perception of the real, disclosing the hegemony underlying reality?

How to define a new role, responsibility and efficiency for the artist, journalist and new-born image producers? How to empower people to get together in an authoritarian context? How to control the veracity (if necessary) and the circulation of these images albeit censorship and misuse?

The panel will gather people producing iconistic and documentary images of conflicts, aware of their double sided dimension, circulating and empowering practices, in the time of mediocracy.

Mitwirkende / Mitwirkender: Jens Dietrich
Mitwirkende / Mitwirkender: Joana Mazza
Mitwirkende / Mitwirkender: Maryam Mohammadi
Mitwirkende / Mitwirkender: Salma Shamel
Mitwirkende / Mitwirkender: Urok Shirhan Alsaedy
Mitwirkende / Mitwirkender: Reinhard Braun