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![AI WEI WEI: INTENTION
"You see so many children come off these boats. They are like angels --
they are the most vulnerable. You can see the world has put them in
extreme, hopeless conditions. There are two worlds -- a world of adults
and a world of babies, and they are not connected”
"I was standing there and I could feel my body shaking with the wind --
you feel death in the wind. You are taken by some kind of emotions that
you can only have when you are there. So for me to be in the same
position [as Kurdi], is to suggest our condition can be so far from human
concerns in today's politics."](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/looking-220906224428-770b2121/85/Looking-pptx-34-320.jpg)
Uploaded byLaura McGough
Looking.pptx
This document discusses how spectators and viewers interpret visual forms like images, discussing concepts like the Kantian idea of disinterested viewing, cinema of attractions, and theories of spectatorship and how images negotiate social relationships and power dynamics. It also covers case studies analyzing how context, both historical/social and presentation, shapes interpretation, as well as the viewer's own identity and position. Key themes are how images can be read differently over time as social norms change, and how poor or amateur images reveal conditions of marginalization.
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Looking.pptx
- 1. HOW TO POSTTO WORDPRESS HINT: Write your post in Word or another word processing software and cut and paste
- 2.
- 3. Spectatorial Reception How spectators/viewers receiveand interpret visual forms (images, moving images, objects)
- 4. KANTIAN DISINTERESTED VIEWER+ FORMALISM • Immanuel Kant’s (1724-1804) ideal of 'disinterested' aesthetic judgment • For Kant, aesthetic judgments are disinterested, meaning that we take pleasure in something because we judge it beautiful, rather than judging it beautiful because we find it pleasurable. • Kant accordingly claims that the aesthetic judgment must concern itself only with form (shape, arrangement, rhythm, etc.) in the object presented, not content that affects the senses (color, tone, etc.), since the latter has a deep connection to the agreeable, and thus to interest. • Disinterested judgement is objective, not subjective • Museum structures support disinterest – theory in practice • Adopted by post-1950s US Modernist art critics like Clement Greenberg and Michael Fried as form of aesthetic judgement
- 5. YELLOW, CHERRY, ORANGE(1947) MARK ROTHKO OIL ON CANVAS 173 X 107 CM Color Field Painting Shape Line Application of/Thickness of paint Brushstroke
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- 7. CINEMA OF ATTRACTION(1890-1908) Cinema of Attractions = “an aesthetic of astonishment” Thomas Gunning (1986)
- 8. CINEMA OF ATTRACTION Cinema before1908 Single-shot without camera tricks (usually) and early narrative/animation Emphasis on image, not story
- 9. CINEMA OF ATTRACTION: FOREGROUNDS THE ROLETHE SPECTATOR • Film audiences don’t know how to view moving images • Film audience don’t know how to look • Filmmakers create work that invites the audience to look
- 10. ARRIVAL OF ATRAIN AT LA CIOTAT (1895)
- 11. HOW SPECTATORS AREINVITED TO LOOK Exhibitionist in nature Designed for affect (emotion) – not neutral Creates surprise/shock Uses Violence/Aggression/Danger/Humor/Cuteness Focuses on Taboo Subjects/Voyeurism Relationship to Carnival/Side-Show
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- 13. Some visual formsare very good at getting us to look: Gas Station TV
- 16. LOOKING Marita Sturken, “Images,Power and Politics”
- 17. THREE WAYS LOOKINGFUNCTIONS (OVERLAP) Looking = negotiating social relationships (interactions) Looking Looking = a way of negotiating meaning Looking Looking = a relationship of power Looking
- 18. NEGOTIATE MEANING • Adultsunderstand that even though something may be hidden, it still exists. Babies come to negotiate meaning – understand this – through looking games like peek-a-boo.
- 19. NEGOTIATING SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS “NOSEDIVE”– BLACK MIRROR
- 20. POWER – DIRECTADDRESS/HOLDING GAZE Great Train Robbery, 1903
- 21. THE VALUE OFDISTURBING IMAGES Key question for the time we live In
- 22. In 1973, thecritic Susan Sontag wrote about viewing, for the first time, photographs of World War II concentration camps: “One’s first encounter with the photographic inventory of ultimate horror is a kind of revelation, perhaps the only revelation people are granted now, a negative epiphany. For me, it was photographs of Bergen-Belsen and Dachau which I came across by chance in a bookstore in Santa Monica in July 1945. Nothing I have seen—in photographs or in real life—ever cut me as sharply, deeply, instantaneously. Ever since then, it has seemed plausible to me to think of my life as being divided into two parts: before I saw those photographs (I was twelve) and after. My life was changed by them, though not until several years later did I understand what they were about.”
- 23. “The role ofimages providing views of violence, voyeurism and fascination with violence is countered by a history of using images to expose the devastating aspects of violence” Sturken (p. 11)
- 24. • What isthe value of engaging with or making material that depicts or represents challenging or disturbing content? • What is the risk of engaging with or making material that depicts or represents challenging or disturbing content? • How do we balance the risks and benefits of engaging or making with this material?
- 25.
- 26. CASE STUDY: PHOTO OFEMMETT TILL (1955)
- 27. EMMETT TILL Emmett LouisTill was a 14-year-old African American boy who was abducted, tortured, and lynched in Mississippi in 1955, after being accused of offending a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, in her family's grocery store. The brutality of the murder gained national attention His mother demanded an open casket and allowed photography so the nation could see this brutality
- 28. DISTURBING IMAGES, ARTISTIC INTENTIONAND SPECTATORIAL RECEPTION
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- 30. EL SALVADOR (1978) SUSANMEISELAS
- 31. CASE STUDY: AI WEIWEI AS ALAN KURDI + SPECTATORIAL RECEPTION
- 32. AI WEI WEIAS ALAN KURDI (2016) INDIA ART FAIR
- 34. AI WEI WEI:INTENTION "You see so many children come off these boats. They are like angels -- they are the most vulnerable. You can see the world has put them in extreme, hopeless conditions. There are two worlds -- a world of adults and a world of babies, and they are not connected” "I was standing there and I could feel my body shaking with the wind -- you feel death in the wind. You are taken by some kind of emotions that you can only have when you are there. So for me to be in the same position [as Kurdi], is to suggest our condition can be so far from human concerns in today's politics."
- 39. Nitasha Dillon -Hyperallergic
- 40. AI WEI WEI(2017) ISRAEL MUSEUM AFTER DONALD TRUMP VISITED
- 41. INTENTION ASIDE, CANAI WEI WEI’S WORK EVER HAVE THE SAME IMPACT AS THE ORIGINAL PHOTO?
- 42. SYMBOL VS. SIGN(SEMIOTICS)
- 43. • Stands forsomething else • Open for interpretation • We can miss seeing symbols • Has a meaning of its own • Culturally-bound definitions • We unconsciously read signs, but can learn to read them critically
- 45. INTERPRETATION OF ANIMAGE “is dependent on social, historical and cultural context. It is also dependent on the context in which the image is presented (in a museum gallery of a magazine, for instance) and on the viewers who interpret it” (p. 29)
- 46. 1 . SO C I O - H I S T O R I C A L C O N T E X T ( D I F F E R E N T M E A N I N G A T D I F F E R E N T H I S T O R I C A L T I M E / C H A N G I N G S O C I A L N O R M S ) : “we may consider when and where an image was made and displayed or the social context in which it is presented” (p. 27)
- 47. BALTHUS, #METOO + SHIFTINGSOCIAL MORES Balthus (Balthasar Klossowski) Thérèse Dreaming (1938) Oil on canvas 59 × 51 in Metropolitan Museum of Art the artist sexualized young girls in his work and this model was 12 or 13 when she posed for him. A woman looks at “Thérèse Dreaming” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
- 48. An online petitionin 2017 with thousands of signatories has demanded that the Met remove “Thérèse Dreaming” from exhibition “Given the current climate around sexual assault and allegations that become more public each day, in showcasing this work for the masses, the Met is romanticizing voyeurism and the objectification of children.” The museum is refused to comply, its spokesman merely citing the controversy as “an opportunity for conversation.” (Huffington Post)
- 50. CULTURAL KNOWLEDGE/CULTURAL REFERENCE(MEANING LINKED TO KNOWING WHAT IS BEING REFERENCED): “the conventions the images use or play off of, the other images they refer to, and the familiar figures and symbols they include” (p. 28) (Being in the know)
- 51.
- 52. 3. THE CONTEXTIN WHICH THE IMAGE IS PRESENTED i.e., “ museum gallery vs. a magazine” (p. 27) or a meme, on social media, etc.
- 53. 4. THE VIEWER • Age •Gender • Race • Sexuality • Class • Education • Profession • Religion • Politics • Nationality • Geographic location (rural vs. city) • Etc.
- 54. “IN DEFENSE OFTHE POOR IMAGE” (2009) Hito Steyerl (pre-social media explosion)
- 55. THE POOR IMAGEDEFINED Poor image = bad resolution, lack of quality but is accessible, that was re-downloaded and re-edited and remixed many times: “It is a ghost of an image, a preview, a thumbnail, an errant idea, an itinerant image distributed for free, squeezed through slow digital connections, compressed, reproduced, ripped, remixed, as well as copied and pasted into other channels of distribution.”
- 56. IS IT EVENSTILL AN IMAGE? “Not only is it often degraded to the point of being just a hurried blur, one even doubts whether it could be called an image at all. Only digital technology could produce such a dilapidated image in the first place.”
- 57. POOR IMAGE, RICHIMAGE, DEMOCRATIZATION • Non-commercial images were hidden through the advent of Internet/streaming • “Twenty or even thirty years ago, the neoliberal restructuring of media production (i.e., mergers/acquisitions) began slowly obscuring non-commercial imagery, to the point where experimental and essayistic cinema became almost invisible.” • VHS copies of cult movies passed around • “With the possibility to stream video online, this condition started to dramatically change. An increasing number of rare materials reappeared on publicly accessible platforms, some of them carefully curated (Ubuweb) and some just a pile of stuff (YouTube).”
- 58. UBUWEB • https://ubu.com/film/index.html • https://ubu.com/film/pfeiffer_count_rumble.html •The Long Count (Rumble In The Jungle)(2001) - Muhammad Ali vs George Foreman
- 59. POOR IMAGES REVEAL THE CONDITIONSOF THEIR MARGINALIZATION “Poor images are poor because they are not assigned any value within the class society of images—their status as illicit or degraded grants them exemption from its criteria. Their lack of resolution attests to their appropriation and displacement.” https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2019/11/13/a- defiant-song-of-protest-in-santiago/
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- 61. THE ECONOMY OF POOR IMAGES “the economyof poor images, with its immediate possibility of worldwide distribution and its ethics of remix and appropriation, enables the participation of a much larger group of producers than ever before. But this does not mean that these opportunities are only used for progressive ends. Hate speech, spam, and other rubbish make their way through digital connections as well.”
- 62. STAR WARS KID HTTPS://WWW.YOUTUBE.COM/WATCH?V=HPPJ6VIIBMU “OnNovember 4, 2002, Raza made a video of himself swinging a golf ball retriever around as a mock weapon. The video was filmed at his high school studio, and he accidentally left the tape in a basement. It was taped over a portion of a basketball game (as seen extremely briefly at the end of the clip). The video was discovered by a schoolmate, whose friend created a computer file from the video tape. The video was distributed among the school's students. A student (Cory Homertziem) uploaded it to the Internet with the title Jackass_starwars_funny.wmv. The video eventually became a viral Internet meme through P2P services.[ According to court transcripts, the video first appeared on the Internet on the evening of April 14, 2003. One of those that first uploaded the video was blogger Andy Baio who was credited with naming the video "Star Wars Kid".
- 63. SHARED HISTORIES • “Thepoor image thus constructs anonymous global networks just as it creates a shared history. It builds alliances as it travels, provokes translation or mistranslation, and creates new publics and debates.” • “there is also the circulation and production of poor images based on cell phone cameras, home computers, and unconventional forms of distribution. Its optical connections—collective editing, file sharing, or grassroots distribution circuits— reveal erratic and coincidental links between producers everywhere, which simultaneously constitute dispersed audiences.”
- 65.
- 66. Rabih Mroué (b. 1967) Lebanesestage and film actor, playwright, and visual artist His work includes videos and installation art, incorporating photography, text and sculpture.
- 67. THE PIXELATED REVOLUTION 2012 Criticalinterpretation of cell phone footage captured by Syrian citizen during the beginning of the Syrian revolution in 2011 , His role as an actor, a visual artist and a director, specifically lead him to read the cell phone footage critically from a very specific viewpoint
- 68. Questions Mroué asks How shouldwe understand the mobile phone images uploaded to the internet during the ongoing Syrian Revolution? Are the broken-up and incomplete images taken by Syrians an extension of their physical experiences? Are mobile phones extensions of photographers' brains, of their bodies, of their beings?”
- 69. PHILIP KENNICOTT Pulitzer-prizewinning architecture critic at Washington Post Writes about architecture, public space, culture and art Also writes for Opera News + Gramophone
- 70. “THROUGH THE LENS OFA CNN CAMERA ON THE GROUND, A VIEW OF AMERICAN DISINTEGRATIO N” On-camera arrest of CNN team covering Black Lives Matter protests in Minnesota Analyzes what it means when the CNN camera is laid on the ground and changes perspective How does the eye of the camera produce the image? How do we see the image when the camera changes position? https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/george-floyd-protest-updates- 05-28- 20/h_4ed08403663fa4ed3518221d0f2a1552?utm_medium=social &utm_source=twCNN&utm_content=2020-05-29T10:24:57