Photo exhibition: SITUATIONS / Proletariats
Venue: Fotomuseum Winterthur, Winterthur, Switzerland
from 28-05-2016 to 11-09-2016, TUE – SUN: 11 – 18 hrs, WED: 11 – 20 hrs, MON: closed
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The SITUATIONS programme is organised around key clusters: the first was Relations (SITUATIONS #1 to #8), examining the changing social ontology of photography in relation to digital culture. The second cluster Seeing Machines (SITUATION #9 to #19) explored the way that technologies of seeing are increasingly devoid of human agency, the unprecedented power of algorithmic vision developing a new mode of ‘seeing’. Formats (SITUATION #20 to #22), the third cluster, dealt with lost and changing visual formats and the implications of these medial transformations for an examination of art and photography. Cluster four, Vanishing (SITUATION #23 to #27), explored the transitional moments inherent in the act of vanishing and asked how, and in what way, these moments are marked by the dynamics of (re-)configuration and (re-)appearance. Witnessing radical transformations in the production, distribution and consumption of images that migrate across mobile and interactive displays, the fifth cluster, (in)stability (SITUATION #28 to #31), revolved around moments of (in)stability in the history and contemporary experience of photography and film. Cluster six, Play (SITUATION #32 to #38) looked at new play practices and platforms – artistic game modifications, the gamification of photography, or new forms of social online interaction – that have emerged in the digital realm, questioning, in turn, how new parameters of game/play challenge the agency of the players. Each cluster can be searched and reordered by visitors in the SITUATIONS online archive using a system of tags. Over time, new clusters and combinations – and new virtual exhibitions – will emerge.
The latest cluster, launched on 28 May 2016, is Proletariats (SITUATION #39 to 40). This cluster looks at issues of labour from a historical perspective. How can the complex imbrications of labour, subjectivity, gender and social positioning be deconstructed through artistic strategies of representation? What role do photographic and visual media play in the constitution of labour – and what is their potential for political agency and their capacity to trigger revolt?
Submitted by Daniela Schwendimann
