CfP: The Post-photographic Apparatus

Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts
14–15 Nov 2019
Deadline: 31 Aug 2019

Previous post-photographic discourses have primarily focused on the transformations of photographic images. In the framework of our research on post-photographic practices, we invite academics and practitioners to adopt a different approach here and assume that photography is not primarily a technique to produce images, but rather an entanglement with a specific kind of apparatus. Against the background of growing complexity of media practices, our question is: has the very apparatus as much as our conception of it changed?

The workshop wants to address this question from three perspectives: technologically, the digitization of cameras has turned them into computers with attached sensors, and former functions of the hardware are increasingly simulated by software. The construction of a camera nowadays requires less domain knowledge, which has enabled companies from different fields to introduce new camera models and disrupt a previously relatively stable ecosystem. At the same time, many artists have questioned the tool of their photographic practices by turning self-created cameras into artworks in their own rights. Artists like Trevor Paglen (“seeing machines”), Hito Steyerl (“proxy politics”), Aïm Deüelle Lüski (“threshold as place”) and David Claerbout (“dark optics”) have also been driving forces in the discussion of post-photographic cameras. Finally, a theoretical critique of modernism (of which traditional photography has been an integral part), along with posthumanistic understandings of agency and technology (Karen Barad, Donna Haraway, Bruno Latour), have helped to blur what used to be the separate concepts of the camera, photographer and image. Hence, cameras can no longer be understood as black boxes/cameras obscuras. We need to re-assess them as nodes in larger media ecological networks.

We welcome papers by researchers and artists on topics including, but not limited to:

• Artistic practices involving camera constructions, modifications or dissolutions
• New camera concepts and photographic practices in everyday life
• Media archaeologies of the camera
• The photographer’s body as a counterpart to the camera
• The camera in posthuman photography
• Theoretical approaches to the changing concepts of medium and authorship

The workshop is organized by the SNF research group Post-photographyat the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts. The conference language is English. Paper proposals (abstract of up to 300 words and CV) for 20-minute talks should be sent to birk.weiberg@hslu.ch by 31 Aug 2019. Accommodation and travel allowance will be provided. 

For any inquiries, please contact:
Birk Weiberg, birk.weiberg@hslu.ch
Wolfgang Brückle, wolfgang.brueckle@hslu.ch

For the SNSF Post-photography research group, see https://blog.hslu.ch/postphotography

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