Image Power – Image Control
Velkommen til foredrag av filosof Philipp Kleinmichel i forbindelse med Independent Study Program ved Rogaland Kunstsenter
Biblioteket ved Rogaland Kunstsenter
Tirsdag 4. juli kl 14.00
Foredraget blir på engelsk
Today we are surrounded by images. Images are not only mass-produced to inform and seduce us, in the digital age we find ourselves also responsible to produce and control our own images as the digital appearance of ourselves. In the current discourse about art and culture this has lead to a new interest in the production, distribution and ontology of images. But this fascination has also a long tradition. From Plato over Debord to the theories of the Iconic Turn, images have not only been considered as something seductive and dangerous, but accordingly also as something powerful that, insofar it has control over us, needs to be controlled. In my lecture I will ask why the idea of image power has become the central criteria for our understanding of images and how this understanding is relevant for contemporary artistic practice.
Philipp Kleinmichel is a philosopher and art critic. He studied philosophy, art and media theory at University Freiburg and Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe/ ZKM where he also received his PhD. He is a former fellow of the Whitney Museum of American Art/ISP and the Akademie Schloss Solitude and has lectured at institutions including the Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe/ZKM, the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies Giessen, and University Hamburg.
His monograph Im Namen der Kunst. Eine Genealogie der politischen Ästhetik (2014) investigates our belief in art under conditions of a total aesthetization of the world. The book connects the contemporary belief in art to the emergence of the aesthetic program of German Idealism and analyses why artists and intellectuals today feel constantly urged to justify artistic productions politically. From this perspective our relation to contemporary art appears to be a mere effect of belief empowered by a historical dialectic of disenchantment without cause. As a critic Kleinmichel has contributed to Artforum, Texte zur Kunst, and Cura amongst others.