#9 Reading Workshop together with Riga Biennial

We invite you to take part in the reading workshop No. 9. The last workshop will take place on Wednesday, 24 Oct at 6 pm at the Residence of Kristaps Morbergs.

#9 Workshop: THE TURNING-POINT OF VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE IMAGES

In the analysis of art and visual culture, references are often made to the so-called pictorial turn, which highlights the role of the visual in today’s social reality. According to W. J. T. Mitchell, images have power; they become involved in ideological manipulations. Explaining how they exercise that power, he invites to pose the question not what images do but what they want, because what images want is not at all what they express or the effect they create.

But today we can talk about a new pictorial turn: they no longer represent but affect our everyday life, they watch us and direct our actions, says the artist Trevor Paglen. Created and perceived mechanically, through the applications of digital technologies, images allow the visible reality to be automated on an unprecedented scale. Today’s world is cluttered with invisible visual culture and mechanically produced images: from police cars to buildings, bridges, highways; in shopping-centres, advertisements, industry etc. Posting images in social media feeds the massive system of artificial intelligence and produces information about how people can be identified and how places, objects, habits etc., etc. can be recognized. Since the mechanized image actions do not depend on the subject of human vision, it is more difficult to recognize them for what they are: powerful gears for social regulation that serve the powers that be and are used to control our everyday lives. 

The content of the first workshop will be based on texts as follows:

> W. J. T. Mitchell, "What Do Pictures Want?”. What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images. 2005. The University of Chicago Press. 2005, pp. 28–48.

> Trevor Paglen, “Invisible Images (Your Pictures Are Looking at You)”. The New Inquiry. 2016

https://thenewinquiry.com/invisible-images-your-pictures-are-looking-at-you/

Participants are requested to show their interest by emailing to readingworkshop2018@gmail.com; after that, they will receive the texts for the upcoming sessions. Texts should be read before the workshop.

Free admission