Art Knowledge News
Fotomuseum Winterthur to Present Exhibition of Power and Violence, Disease & Death |
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| Written by Urs Stahel |
| Monday, 31 August 2009 05:01 |
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The exhibition will include works by many photographers and artists, including: Antoine d'Agata, Christian Boltanski, Sophie Calle, Hans Danuser, Maria Friberg, Nan Goldin, F. Holland Day, Peter Hujar, Sally Mann, Enrique Metinides, Miyako Ishiuchi, Shirin Neshat, Gilles Peress, Walid Raad, Sophie Ristelhueber, Andres Serrano, Fazal Sheikh, Cindy Sherman, W. Eugene Smith, Weegee. Francesca Woodman etc. On exhibition 5 September through 15 November, 2009.  The
exhibition begins with the focus on positive energies: taking a gamble,
venturing forth, competing, without knowing what the outcome will be.
These are situations involving physical risks, pushing the body to its
limits in pursuit of pleasure and bonding. Diving into water, entering the
ring, risking injury: ambivalently perhaps, but driven by positive
energies, by strength, ambition or eroticism, and always by free choice.
Up to this point, the body remains more or less unscathed in spite of the
risks taken; radiant even after a fight, smiling in spite of any physical
or mental injury. But from here on in, the boundaries shift. Free fighting
is gaining ground both in the ring and in everyday life. The body as the
dwelling-place of the self, usually subject only to natural fluctuations
and developments, is redefined, reconfigured, inscribed and pumped and
injected. It is slimmed and trimmed, adjusted and adapted to new imagery.
Its integrity is violated. Reshaped and interfused by many different
cultural body images and by new, sometimes contradictory, identities, it
is transformed from a dwelling-place into an instrument that is constantly
being sharpened and polished, trained and toned. Bodies are subjected to massive forces. They collide, crash, burn, explode; they are shot at, injured, ripped apart, raped, mutilated, hacked to pieces; they are executed, hanged, decapitated, poisoned, electrocuted. The energy vector has changed direction. In the next section of the exhibition, the body no longer steps into the world to stake out its territory and form bonds with easy abandon. Instead, it is buffeted by a massive thrust-reversal of energies. Physical, mental and emotional forces attack its integrity, injuring it, destroying its spiritual and material system. Images of domestic violence, of assassination attempts, wartime attacks, bomb explosions, mass murder, xenophobic rage, structural and social violence, and state power are shown. Gradually, the human body goes into decline. It ages, shrinks, stiffens, withers, disintegrates and decomposes. And what remains? The assertion of dignity against the decline of the body, then death, then just the body itself, the funerary rites, the rituals of remembrance, the anatomical knowledge of the body. Death, unlike life, is a barely tangible, abstract concept, a concept that is negatively defined: drained of energy, devoid of life or spirit. A strange, existential nothingness. Images of violence excite and electrify all those the horrors have passed by uninvolved. They read like memorials, like visual tablets of the law, when they portray state and judicially sanctioned violence. They claim to be enlightening, accusatory manifestos and moral appeals for an end to the horror they portray. And what is more: they sell. People are fascinated by shocking photographs of horror, terror, murder and branding, not only for the reasons already mentioned, but also because of a desire to glimpse at the dark side of civilised, orderly life. Having a part in something without actually participating – a kind of voyeurism of violence and its portrayals.  On the other hand, images themselves attract violence. Images
generate energy, power and violence. They not only represent, but they
also present; they are monstrative. “Each image is a monstrance... the
image is of the order of the monster,” writes Jean-Luc Nancy in Image and
Violence. “The monstrum is a prodigious sign,” he goes on, “which warns …
of a divine threat.” The image must be able to present itself. It must be
able to irrupt out of nothingness and externalise itself. In addition to
this visual power, photography also has the power of the factual, the
power of realistic portrayal, coupled with the framing of time and place
by which the camera – through such choices as shutter speed and lens, what
is included or excluded, close-up or distance, sharp focus or soft focus –
can separate the image from the continuum of reality. This power is an
inherent trait of the photographic medium. We can also discern a kind of
performative power: the act of photographing not only documents, but also
intervenes in what is happening. Children laughing, women crying – because
they are being photographed. Certain acts of cruelty occur only
because a camera is present. Plato, as cited by Abigail Solomon-Godeau, maintained that “... it is not by means of the image that moral, ethical, or political knowledge is produced”. Some 2400 years later, we are living in a visually sophisticated media world in which the latest, the closest, the most horrific, have become redundant. And in Ingeborg Bachmann’s short story Three Paths to the Lake, the character of Trotta complains to his photographer girlfriend, “Do you suppose you have to photograph those devastated villages and corpses so that I can imagine what war is like, or take pictures of children in India so that I know what hunger is? What kind of stupid presumption is that? ... Looking at corpses is not the way to stimulate liberal-mindedness.” Who photographs, who publishes, at whose request, for what audience, and with what intent? How much money is involved and how good is the quality of the print? All these questions have to be asked anew, time and again, about images of horror and of physical, human terror. For the image rarely stands on its own merits. There is always an overall context that makes such images seem relevant, irrelevant, or simply shocking. And yet, reality is always more violent than any image. The exhibition addresses these dark sides of the body image and explores many of the questions raised by photographic representation. For this reason, the accompanying catalogue is not only richly illustrated, but also includes eleven essays discussing issues of photography, human suffering, violence, and photography and death. Curator of the exhibition: Urs Stahel, Director Fotomuseum Winterthur Click on logo below to add this article to your favorite Social Website ~ |
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