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Article

Vol. 4, no. 2
2019
Online: August 26, 2020

Reading time: 17 minutes

Art can by no means counteract force directly. But likewise, force cannot directly divert an aesthetic expression.

Abstract

The wave of demonstrations that developed out of the Gezi Park sit-ins manifested a form of aesthetic creativity that employed transvaluation and displacement in a way that set them apart from other protests in Turkey and the Arab world. Transvaluation and displacement were arguably among the primary forces that drove the protests following the forceful breakup of the Gezi Park sit-ins. The protests began when police forcefully removed sleeping demonstrators from Gezi Park. To most observers, the police use of violence to clear the park was deemed disproportionate, and the resistance countered the tear gas, truncheons, water cannons, and detentions with a level of aesthetic intensity that surprised detractors as well as supporters. The primary aim of the movement was to protect a park in the center of Istanbul, but the resistance represented a broad coalition of those who opposed what they perceived as the autocratic ruling style of then Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. They ranged from anti-capitalist Muslims to students who simply opposed the Prime Minister’s Islamification of the Turkish public sphere. Examining the way in which transvalution and displacement were used as a response to the force employed by riot police at the direction of the Turkish government shows how political art was employed effectively in the Gezi Park protests.

Keywords: aesthetics displacement, art and social power, Gezi Park, political, political art, politics and aesthetics, protest

Stephen Snyder specializes in the philosophy of art and social and political philosophy. His research interests lie in examining the role that history and culture play in the transformation of aesthetic communication. His book, End-of-Art Philosophy in Hegel, Nietzsche and Danto, which critically examines the historical relationship of art to philosophy, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2018. Also in 2018, De Gruyter Press published New Perspectives on Distributive Justice, a volume of essays on political philosophy that he co-edited. His recent essays appear in ROAR Magazine, Michael Walzer: Sphären der Gerechtigkeit: Ein kooperativer Kommentar, Philosophy in the Contemporary World, CounterText and Croatian Journal of Philosophy. In 2018 he was a Fulbright Scholar in the Republic of Georgia, researching images of resistance in early medieval art. He is currently a visiting assistant professor at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul.

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Snyder, Stephen. 2018. The End-of-Art Philosophy in Hegel, Nietzsche and Danto. London: Palgrave MacMillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94072-4

Interview

If There is No Community, There is No City

Interview with Murat Germen

Iza Pevec, Murat Germen

Vol. 4, no. 2
2019
Online: August 26, 2020

Reading time: 17 minutes

If artistic creation can be considered as an astral trip to the outer space, planning and architecture education taught me how to come back to the Earth.

Summary

Public space directs how we live and act, how we socialize and even protest. If there is no community and solidarity there is no city, no civilization; there can only be a »city-state« as the modern version of an empire, says Murat Germen, photographer known for his critical view on the home-town of Istanbul. Muta-morphosis, probably one of his most famous series, uses digital manipulation to show a dark vision of future cities: buildings cramed together as in a strange and dangerous mutation process, almost melting as objects in Dali’s paintings. Through his artworks, text and lectures, Murat Germen criticizes excessive urbanization, motivated by capital and not by human needs. He also documented Gezi Park protests, in which the political aspect of managing the city became very apparent. His photos can be understood as a visual protest and Murat Germen thinks some of them may turn into visual evidence of the urban crime committed by the present Turkish government since 2002, when it came to power.

Keywords: art, art and social power, gentrification, urbanism, visual protest

Iza Pevec (1987) finished the studies of art history and comparative literature. She has been writing about art and culture for some time, she was writing for Radio Student and since 2014 she is also working for Radio Slovenia – programe Ars. As a young curator she was part of the project Zagon of Gallery Škuc and in programme of the Centre and Gallery P74 Incubator for young curators. Since 2013 she is also writing for the Fotografija magazine.

Murat Germen is an artist, academic and archivist using photography as an expression and research tool. Born 1965, he currently lives and works in Istanbul and London. Has an MArch degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he went as a Fulbright scholar and received AIA Henry Adams Gold Medal for academic excellence. Works as a professor of art, photography and new media at Sabanci University in Istanbul. Having many papers, photo series published on architecture, photography, art and new media in various publications; he has lectured at tens of conferences internationally. His oeuvre focuses on impacts of over-urbanization and gentrification, dis-possession, new forms, tools and methods of imperialism, civic rights, participatory citizenship, sustainability of local cultures, human devastation of nature, climate change, global warming, water rights.

Article

Semiotics of the Protest

Maria Paschalidou

Vol. 4, no. 2
2019
Online: August 26, 2020

Reading time: 13 minutes

In street demonstrations, people reclaim the public space on their own terms through their embodied collective actions.

Abstract

In the Semiotics of the Protest performed video, I visually examine the key significance of the body and its language for the materialization of the street protest, the vital tool by means of which people reclaim public space and activate it as a political terrain. The video is based on a performance for which I invited a volunteer dancer to “rehearse” public gestures of resistance against oppression. Challenging dominant representations of protestors as “mobs” and protestors’ bodies as irrational and uncontrollable entities, in this performed video, I visually analyse the political demonstration as choreographic tactics executed by bodies which are meaningful and purposeful and which, through their gestures, move forward to social change.

Keywords: participation, performed video, Phantasmagoria, politics and aesthetics, protest as choreography

Maria Paschalidou is a visual artist, photographer and researcher. Relying on expanded uses of lens-based media, her artwork investigates the multifaceted relationship between politics and aesthetics. Her research includes the performativity of visual media and initiatives for participatory acts in art that challenge dichotomies such as artist–audience, image–language and theory-praxis. She has participated in numerous exhibitions in Europe, USA, Canada, Russia, Australia, and Asia and been a visiting lecturer for various academic programs in Greece and abroad. She holds a Ph.D. in Lens-based Media (De Montfort University, UK, 2018), an MFA in Photography (Columbia College Chicago, USA, 2005), and she is now a Postdoc researcher at Panteion University (Athens, 2019–2021) with the support of State Scholarships Foundation (IKY). She lives in Athens working as an art professor.

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Article

Photographs of the Miners’ Raids

Reworking Images of the Past and Negotiating the Present

Ioan Daniel Mihalcea

Vol. 4, no. 2
2019
Online: August 25, 2020

Reading time: 28 minutes

Every image of the past that is not recognized by the present as one of its own concerns threatens to disappear irretrievably.

Abstract

This paper investigates the conditions in which photojournalistic images of the past are becoming iconic and it also traces the ways in which such images actively negotiate the meanings of particular events. Starting from Robert Hariman and John Lucaites’ iconic photography methodology (2007), this research aims to clarify how iconicity operates in specific situations defined by cultural and digital circumstances. The proposed case study analyses the photographs of the events known as Miners’ Raids that took place in Bucharest, Romania in the aftermath of the December 1989 Revolution. First, through a close reading of the aesthetic qualities of the photographic composition, I investigate how images themselves are sites where meaning is produced and how they have the power to sustain multiple and sometimes contradictory semiotic transcriptions. Second, I trace the circulation and appropriation of these photographs to argue their capacity to generate debates and absorb new meanings in the course of their afterlives. The purpose is to understand how photography can work as a distinct category that can articulate complex ideas, judgments, and dialogue.

Keywords: close reading, dissent, iconic photography, remobilization, Romanian public culture

Ioan Daniel Mihalcea is a Ph.D. Student at the Center of Excellence in Image Studies, University of Bucharest, the object of his research being Cultural Studies. His thesis is focused on the relationship between politics and aesthetics in documentary photography and photojournalism, especially in times of crisis and conflict. He is interested in how long-term documentary projects are re-imagined in the current digital environment, what visual tropes are articulated and how they contribute to the discourse of the visual public sphere. Starting 2018, he is an affiliated member of the International Association of Photography and Theory based in Cyprus. At present, he is a teaching assistant for the Photographic Image course at the Center of Excellence in Image Studies, where I concentrate on the prominent periods in photographic theory and its histories.
University of Bucharest, Center of Excellence in Image Studies
ioandanielmihalcea@gmail.com or ioan-daniel.mihalcea@drd.unibuc.ro

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Article

Actions. Situations. Possible Scenarios.

Ileana L. Selejan

Vol. 4, no. 2
2019
Online: August 25, 2020

Reading time: 10 minutes

Whenever a wall is erected, there will always be “people arisen” to “jump the wall,” that is, to cross over borders. If only by imagining. As though inventing images contributed – a little here, powerfully there – to reinventing our political hopes. "- Georges Didi-Huberman"

Abstract

Zigzagging through personal memory and historical episodes of great consequence – the fall of the Berlin wall, the Romanian revolution and the April 2018 protests in Nicaragua – the essay seeks points of connection between the personal and the political, exploring how the two are intimately and inextricably intertwined. The textual approach can be situated in-between historical analysis and auto-biographical fiction; the aim is to enable multi-layered narratives, and contrasting, conflicting temporalities to co-exist. Illustrative of this intent, Romanian artist Călin Man intervenes upon the more well-known documentary photographs referenced in the text, by conflating them with everyday snapshots from the city of Arad taken at different points along the temporal arc described.

Keywords: documentary, memory, personal history, photography, revolution, transnationalism

Ileana L. Selejan is a Research Associate in the Department of Anthropology at University College London, where she is a part of the European Research Council (ERC) funded project, »Citizens of Photography: The Camera and the Political Imagination« (Grant no. 695283), and an Associate Lecturer at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts, London. She was previously the Linda Wyatt Gruber ’66 Curatorial Fellow in Photography at The Davis Museum at Wellesley College where she curated the exhibition »Charlotte Brooks at LOOK: 1951-1971«. She received her PhD in Art History from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and was granted the 2012–13 Joan and Stanford Alexander Award from the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, for her dissertation research in Nicaragua. As an adjunct instructor, she taught in the Photography and Imaging Department at Tisch School of the Arts, and in the Art History Department at NYU, at the Parsons School of Design, and in the Fine Arts Department at West University, Timisoara, Romania.

Interview

The Best Weapon is Camera

Interview with Gabriel Uchida

Louise M. Hisayasu

Vol. 4, no. 2
2019
Online: August 25, 2020

Reading time: 16 minutes

Resistance and protest are at the core of being an indigenous person, especially nowadays in Brazil.

Summary

Contribution focuses on the series Travelling Through the Territory by Brazilian photographer, Gabriel Uchida, in collaboration with the Uru-eu-wau-wau. In the interview, his experience living and collaborating with the Native peoples of the Amazon, the political climate in Brazil and the unsettling feeling towards the destruction of the Amazon are discussed. Brazil’s historical narrative has largely situated itself in contraposition to Indigenous narratives, which are often marginalized and submerged to a time immemorial. Illegal land invasions, death threats and injustice are on the rise, heightened by the damaging rhetoric of President Bolsonaro. Today, the Indigenous population is inseparable from resistance and protest, photography lends itself as a tool for self-defense and preservation. Besides cameras, the Internet is largely accessible, compact (smartphones) and provides direct contact with global audiences, contributing to the circulation of information and unbiased narratives.

Keywords: amazon, Brazil, indigenous, marginal narratives, uru-eu-wau-wau

Louise M. Hisayasu (1991, Sāo Paulo) is an interdisciplinary researcher based in Berlin, Germany, interested in discourses around decolonial theory, marginal narratives and memory. Her project, “Arquivo Tadaima” makes space for Japanese-Brazilian narratives, by investigating the (trans)formation of cultures through a critical reflection on migration and identity. She has recently completed her postgraduate degree in the fields of media studies and art & technology from the Erasmus Mundus – Media Arts Cultures joint masters degree.

Gabriel Uchida (33 years old) was born in Valinhos – São Paulo (Brazil). Uchida graduated in Journalism and started taking photos in 2008. After that he’s worked in several different places like Argentina, Uruguay, Cuba, USA, Germany, Turkey, Ethiopia and Namibia. His photos were already published in more than 30 countries and he had exhibitions in Germany, Ethiopia and Brazil. In 2018 Uchida won the first place photo award at the World Water Forum and also at the “Ojo a La Amazonia – FAO/ONU”. Since 2016 he’s been living and traveling around the Brazilian Amazon Rainforest to photograph indigenous peoples and environmental issues.

Agência IGBE. 2018. “10% of population concentrate nearly half of Brazilian income.” April 11. Available online here.
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Watts, Jonathan. 2019. “G7 Can’t Turn A Blind Eye To Ecocide In The Amazon.” The Guardian online.

Journal of Photography

Journal of Photography

Transvaluation and Aesthetic Displacement

Gezi Park and the Power of Art

If There is No Community, There is No City

Interview with Murat Germen

Semiotics of the Protest

Photographs of the Miners’ Raids

Reworking Images of the Past and Negotiating the Present

Actions. Situations. Possible Scenarios.

The Best Weapon is Camera

Interview with Gabriel Uchida

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