Trading Zones: Camera Work in Artistic and Ethnographic Research (2022)

“This book introduces camera-based practices at the intersections of artistic and ethnographic research that critically examine the means of their own production and social embeddedness. In shared practices such as recording in the field, editing in post-production and modes of presentation, the camera is involved as an agent rather than an innocent device. How does the camera grapple with the invisible and how does it reveal what the camerawoman is unable to see? How do films, videos and photographs provide access to vulnerable knowledges and what presentation formats can extend the linearity of narration?

Taking account of their own situatedness and the limits of representation, many of this book’s contributors attempt to speak with — rather than about — the other. These negotiations appearing in the featured projects open up a shared field of artistic and ethnographic inquiry, whose potential — for experiments and reflections — is far from exhausted.”

Contributions by Sepideh Abtahi, Shirin Barghnavard, Laura Coppens, Louis Henderson, Heidrun Holzfeind, Mina Keshavarz, Daniel Kötter, Jürgen Krusche, Bärbel Küster, Bina Elisabeth Mohn, Laura von Niederhäusern, Uriel Orlow, Barbara Preisig, Rani al Raji, Nahid Rezaei, Anette Rose, Sahar Salahshoori, Christoph Schenker, Amira Solh, Lena Maria Thüring, Zheng Mahler.

Edited by Barbara Preisig, Laura von Niederhäusern, and Jürgen Krusche
Publisher Archive Books, Berlin
Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0 license
ISBN 9783948212827
164 pages

Publisher
Zenodo

PDF (from publisher, 148 MB)
PDF (reduced size, 5 MB)

Dora García (ed.): If I Could Wish for Something (2021)

“In 1930, German film composer Friedrich Hollaender wrote “Wenn ich mir was wünschen dürfte”, famously performed by Marlene Dietrich. It inspired the foundation of Dora García’s exhibition ‘If I Could Wish for Something’ and this accompanying publication. The song serves as a powerful expression of a complex concept: sadness as political strength. García in turn connects this concept with women’s struggles for emancipation. Disappointed in the promise made to them by revolutionary movements, which for now remains unfulfilled, women are seeking to transform this feeling to overcome the temptation of victimhood and open up the possibility of an ethical encounter. ”

With texts by Antonio Cataldo, Saddie Choua, Paloma Contreras Lomas, Dora García, Agnieszka Gratza, Carla Lamoyi, Hilde Methi, Andrea Valdés, Sayak Valencia, and Pieternel Vermoortel.

Publisher Fotogalleriet, Oslo, and Netwerk Aalst, Aalst, 2021
ISBN 9789081080064, 9081080067
222 pages
via KHiO

Exhibition, (2)
Publisher
WorldCat

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The Postresearch Condition (2021)

“After an omnipresent “Research Decade,” the concept of artistic research currently seems to be in need of a recharge. Pressing questions are: Should we talk about a postresearch situation or a postresearch condition? Could this be compared with how poststructuralism relates to structuralism as its philosophical comprehension and the elaboration of its consequences? And how could a postresearch condition address contemporary art practices?

To answer these questions, it is important to start from the three conceptual spaces that fundamentally determine what we mean by research: creative practice (experimentality, art making, potential of the sensible); artistic thinking (open-ended, speculative, associative, non-linear, haunting, thinking differently); and curatorial strategies (topical modes of political imagination, transformational spaces for encounters, reflection and dissemination) – and to comprehend these spaces in their mutual, dynamic coherence as a series of indirect triangular relationships.

From whatever conceptual space one departs, an artistic research practice could signify a transversal constellation – as a creative proposition for thought in action. Yet, that mode of research could never be reduced to a method of one of the three constituents. Thus, artistic research cannot be equated with creative innovation, disciplinary knowledge production, or political activism. It seems urgent now to profoundly challenge and question the issue of how to articulate and present the condition of the intersection between the three conceptual spaces.”

With contributions from Peter Osborne, Hito Steyerl, Vytautas Michelkevičius, Florian Cramer, Terike Haapoja, EARN Working Groups, Rachel Armstrong, Amanda Beech, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Irit Rogoff.

Editor Henk Slager
Final editor Annette W. Balkema
Publisher Metropolis M Books, Utrecht, September 2021
ISBN 9789081830270
71 pages

Event website (incl. videos)
Publisher

PDF