On Expansion: Photography’s Status in a Digital World

News Story and Vimeo Links

On Expansion was a roundtable discussion that recently took place at King’s College London on 21 January 2014. It was a closed-door workshop led by curator Alfredo Cramerotti (Director, MOSTYN) in partnership with artist/researcher Michael Takeo Magruder (Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London) that attempted to unpack certain aspects of the status of photography in an increasingly digital world. It is part of the AGM conversation series and was recorded as part of Alfredo Cramerotti’s ongoing research in this area.

The event focused on two lines of enquiry, namely: What is photography’s ontological status in the world today when thought in relationship to the omnipresence of the digital image and video? and How does this (digital) photographic moment in the history of image-making change the methodology of artistic and curatorial inquiries, their value, and their justification?

Discussion topics included:

• considering how the visual translations of ideas through various networked social systems have a major impact on our artistic and curatorial practices; examining how – now – images are made, distributed, recycled or found; and how curators are curating contemporary artists using new technology to reflect upon its meaning today.
• exploring how the artistic and curatorial act of making, manipulating, distributing and ‘digesting’ pictures is hybridized by devices like mobile phones, tablets and computers but, also, virtual reality glasses and game consoles.
• discussing the work of some artists and theorists in relation to these networked systems.

With an invited group of specialists and practitioners from diverse backgrounds, On Expansion looked at the ways in which conceptions about photography, art, digital practices and curating are in flux, and how these shifts – particularly in the artistic production and curatorial presentation of photography – can engender new ways of thinking about archives, collections, exhibitions and display.

Discussants included: Anna Bentkowska-Kafel (King’s College London), Gair Dunlop (University of Dundee), Marialaura Ghedini (University of Sunderland), Andrew Prescott (King’s College London), Anna Reading (King’s College London) and Gillian Youngs (University of Brighton).

Organisers:

Alfredo Cramerotti
Writer and Curator
Director, MOSTYN; Head Curator, APT Artist Pension Trust; Editor in Chief, Critical Photography series, Intellect Books; Research Scholar, eCPR European Centre for Photography Research, University of South Wales
http://www.alcramer.net + http://linkedin.com/in/alcramer
alcramer@gmail.com

Michael Takeo Magruder
Artist and Researcher
Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London
http://www.takeo.org + http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/ddh/people/affiliate/magruder
m@takeo.org

Links:

AGM Culture
http://agmculture.org

On Expansion video documentation
(part 1) http://vimeo.com/85040796
(part 2) http://vimeo.com/85046523
(part 3) http://vimeo.com/85054088
(part 4) http://vimeo.com/85069770
(part 5) http://vimeo.com/85069771

tv-tv LAP TALK 03: MemeFest

LAP TALK is a series of introduction to various non-mainstream forms of communication through web platforms. It is part of Chamber of Public Secret’s TV program broadcast on the independent television platform tv-tv.

LAP TALK 03: Memefest memefest.org
archive at chamberarchive.org/laptalk.html and alcramer.net
(first broadcast 12.04.2005)

Italo Calvino – Six Memos for the [Present] Millennium / 1NYC

Video, sound essay based on the book “American Lectures” by Italo Calvino, 10 min.

In 1984, he was invited to deliver a cycle of lectures at Harvard University in the United States. The writer elected five themes: lightness, rapidity, exactitude, multiplicity and consistency. Calvino has written the first five, but died before the completion of the last. The conferences never took place, but the texts were collected in a book that serves as an important inheritance to the newly born millennium. My thanks to Gian Zelada of mamutemidia.com.br, who has inspired this work.