| | | | | | | | From False Positives, 2015–2016 © Esther Hovers | | | | | SITUATIONS/Deviant | | | | | | | 19 October 2019 – 23 February 2020 | | | | Opening & Aperitif: Friday, 18 October 2019, from 18:00 | | | | | | | | | | | | | Photographic images capture and freeze moments: they fragment bodies, arrest movement and render our behaviours observable. Through photography, we can detect and categorise even the slightest deviations from the norm. In turn, photographs not only reinforce these norms, but can be instrumental in spawning new or deviating forms of behaviour: we may adapt to photographic models or tailor behaviours and appearances to the camera. SITUATIONS/Deviant examines the mechanisms of socio-cultural normalisation and deviation in the age of digital surveillance systems, algorithmic classification tools and preemptive technologies.
With works by Mitra Azar, Daniele Buetti, Esther Hovers, Simone C. Niquille, Carrie Mae Weems and Mushon Zer-Aviv.
Kindly supported by Ars Rhenia Foundation. | | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Esther Hovers, from False Positives, 2015–2016. © Esther Hovers. | | | SITUATION #186: Esther Hovers » , False Positives, 2015–2016
Video surveillance systems have become an integral part of public space. Like an omnipresent eye, they monitor our environment 24/7 and are crucial in the analysis and investigation of crimes. Intelligent surveillance systems not only reverse this temporal logic, but can even go one step further: they are able to detect deviant, potentially criminal behaviour based on specific corporeal signatures and can thus initiate an intervention even before a crime has occurred. For False Positives, Dutch artist Esther Hovers worked with intelligent surveillance system experts and based her project on a total of eight diagnosed ‘anomalies’: Deviations from the usual behavioural norms in public space, expressed through the body language and the movements of pedestrians. These deviations, tracked with visual technologies, are translated into data and fed into the algorithms of surveillance cameras. Hovers’ photographs are imbued with the analytical gaze of the camera, while the tension between documentation and staging raises a discomforting concern: when is the pre-emptive intervention, i.e. the active and anticipatory intervention in a potentially imminent event, justified – and at what point do such technologies start producing their own reality?
More by Esther Hovers: estherhovers.com | | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | Pinwall, C-prints on a wooden board (collage), 2003 © Daniele Buetti | | | SITUATION #187: Daniele Buetti » , Pinwall, 2003
In his collage “Pinwall” which forms part of the series Looking for Love (1994–2011), Swiss artist Daniele Buetti exposes the ways in which the advertising and fashion industries frame the body, ultimately delivering a critique on our image-driven consumer society. Buetti punches brand logos on the back of advertisements and photo spreads from magazines, re-photographs them and assembles these fragments into a picture wall. “Pinwall” not only reflects on the commodification of the young, athletic, often female body, but also on the lack of critical reception of these media frames and the way this mutually reinforces gender stereotypes and ideals of beauty. Reminiscent of tattoos, Buetti’s violent manipulation of the immaculate advertising shots disrupts the beauty and body cult that still prevails today. This cult was especially fuelled by the emergence of the so-called supermodels and the increasing professionalisation of Photoshop in the 1990s. It is perpetuated by image practices on social media, finding its latest peak in the self-representation of influencers who increasingly stage the body as a brand and shape their identity through products. | | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | Mushon Zer-Aviv, The Normalizing Machine, 2018 | | | SITUATION #188: Mushon Zer-Aviv » , The Normalizing Machine, 2018
The Normalizing Machine, an interactive installation developed by Israeli artist Mushon Zer-Aviv in collaboration with the software developers Dan Stavy and Eran Weissenstern, deals with visual notions of “normality” and the ways in which bias is inscribed into and reinforced by algorithms and machine learning systems. While being captured on camera, visitors have to decide from a collection of previously photographed visitor portraits which ones seem more “normal” to them. The datasets assembled in this way are evaluated in order to generate an algorithmic image of “normality”. Zer-Aviv thus tracks face recognition techniques of the 21st century back to practices of facial measurement misused for propagandistic purposes under the Nazi regime as well as to the forensic image practices emerging as early as the 19th century. The Normalizing Machine examines how we perceive “normality” today, questioning whether we can do so beyond subjective categories – and the role of photographic technologies as supposedly “objective” techniques with regard to mechanisms of normalisation.
More by Mushon Zer-Aviv: mushon.com/tnm | | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | Video still from Homeschool, digital video, 8:10 min., 2019 © Simone C. Niquille | | | SITUATION #189: Simone C. Niquille » , Homeschool, 2019
In Simone C. Niquilles Animationsfilm Homeschool können die Zuschauer_innen die Perspektive eines Staubsauger-Roboters einnehmen und miterleben, wie dieser die häusliche Umgebung wahrnimmt und die einzelnen Elemente um ihn herum zu identifizieren versucht. Solche bereits Ende der 1990er-Jahre entwickelten Haushaltsroboter haben längst den Einzug ins private Heim gefunden. Sie werden dazu programmiert, sich entlang von Wänden, um Stühle herum und auf Teppichen fortzubewegen. Dazu muss man ihnen mithilfe von Datensets zuerst antrainieren, woraus alle Elemente des häuslichen Umfeldes bestehen und anhand welcher Kriterien man diese erkennt. In dieser kurzen narrativen Arbeit verhandelt Niquille auf spielerische Weise die Mechanismen und konsequenzreichen Prozesse eines auf visuellen Datensätzen basierenden, maschinellen Lernens und skizziert die Auswirkungen der ihr zugrundeliegenden algorithmischen Erfassung der Welt. Inmitten einer virtuellen Szenografie, die sich aus fotorealistischen Darstellungen von Innenräumen aus einer der grössten Trainingsdatensätzen (SceneNet RGB-D) speist, führt Homeschool jene Ambivalenzen und Reibungen vor, die sich im Aufeinanderprallen von maschinell erzeugten Modellen der Realität mit der tatsächlichen Realität eröffnen.
Mehr von Simone C. Niquille: technofle.sh | | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | “DoppelGANger poster (male #1 and male #2)”, Beirut iteration, 2019, from DoppelGANger.agency, 2019– © Mitra Azar | | | SITUATION #190: Mitra Azar » , DoppelGANger, 2019
Mitra Azar’s project DoppelGANger consists of a series of interventions in which he disseminates posters of missing persons on the streets of Cuba, Paris, Milan and other cities in the world. The images and texts on these posters are the results of algorithms based on generative adversarial networks (or GAN) – machine learning sytems based on neural networks. After being trained on large datasets of photographs and written data respectively, these algorithms are able to generate photorealistic yet completely fictional portraits and coherent paragraphs from scratch. The work questions the indexical relationship between the seemingly photographic portraits and their referents: it reverses photography’s claim of temporal and spatial accuracy by transforming image processes of capture into a pre-emptive technology whereby pictures of reality are simulated before they might potentially become real. Are these images of missing people waiting for their real counterparts to be ‘found’ in the streets or yet to be born? Are they computational ghosts of machine produced-visions of how humankind should look like or are they digital doppelgangers, proxies of real humans?
A cooperation with The Influencers festival and CCCB. | | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | Mirror, Mirror, gelatin-silver print, 1987 © Carrie Mae Weems | | | SITUATION #191: Carrie Mae Weems » , Mirror, Mirror, 1987
Since the 1980s, African-American artist Carrie Mae Weems has been using her work to negotiate the ‘black experience’ of discrimination and oppression. Mirror, Mirror bluntly addresses the racism anchored in social narratives which we pass on unquestioned to future generations – in ‘innocent’ fairy tales, for example. Grimm’s Snow White is the epitome of white supremacy: her fair, Caucasian skin colour mirrors the norm of (post-)colonial ideals of beauty that still prevail up to this day. This racist and sexist mentality also manifests itself in the male gaze symbolised by the mirror, which sexualises the female body and furthermore defines and ‘others’ the dark skin colour as a deviation from propagated beauty standards. Mirror, Mirror is a multi-layered and sharp critique of photography’s normative effect, which not only reinforces racism through stereotypical representations, but also through a media technique exploited by a colonialist agenda to ‘objectively testify’ to the inferiority of the black population and for many years was technically unable to depict darker skin tones. The privileged, white gaze that stares at us from the mirror/camera continues to be the unquestioned norm, and deconstructing it remains a social desideratum even 30 years after Weems’ Mirror, Mirror.
More by Carrie Mae Weems: carriemaeweems.net | | | | |
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| | | | SITUATIONS statement
situations.fotomuseum.ch
As every citizen with a smartphone, laptop or tablet knows, photography is becoming increasingly ‘distributed’. Driven by the vast replicative power of digital algorithms, photographs now move with tremendous speed across a wide variety of devices and platforms. The distinction between the still and the moving image is becoming increasingly blurred. At the same time, digital vision is now profoundly social, implicated in many areas of human activity. Certainly, this is having an impact on practice as younger artists in particular work with a range of media and no longer easily describe themselves as photographers.
In our daily work we find ourselves speaking more of the photographic than photography, of photographic media, rather than the medium. This poses a challenge for a photography museum with a distinctive, but significantly analogue history. We are convinced that Fotomuseum Winterthur needs to react decisively and that this means far more than simply re-embracing a rather out-dated ‘digital turn’.
On 10 April 2015 Fotomuseum Winterthur launched a new exhibition format titled SITUATIONS, which allows us to react more quickly to developments within photographic culture. The role of SITUATIONS is to define Fotomuseum Winterthur’s vision of what photography is becoming, at the same time offering an innovative integration of physical exhibition space and virtual forum. Using tags and clusters as a mode of curatorial classification the aim is to integrate the real and the virtual in relation to exhibition in a new way.
Numbered consecutively, a SITUATION may last a few hours, or two months, and might be photographic imagery, a film, a text, an on-line interview, a screenshot, a photo-book presentation, a projection, a Skype lecture, a performance etc. It might take place in Winterthur or perhaps in São Paulo or Berlin and be streamed on our website. The idea is to construct a constantly growing archive of SITUATIONS, reframing the idea of exhibition in relation to new technologies and both our local and global audiences.
Each cluster can be searched and reordered by visitors in the SITUATIONS online archive using a system of tags. Over time, new clusters and combinations – and new virtual exhibitions – will emerge. | | | | | | | | unsubscribe here
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© 13 Oct 2019 photo-index UG (haftungsbeschränkt)
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