February 29, 2016
Midway Studios, University of Chicago
“Whose Gaze Is It Anyway? Or Internet Aesthetics and the New Political Imaginary”
Five years on from the public uprisings that swept the Arab World, Omar Kholeif reflects on the context of image making in and around the Arab region and its borders. How was the euphoric language around endless springs co-opted and transformed into a fleeting form of soft power? How was the shape of images transformed through the digital distribution mechanisms of the Internet? How did artists and cultural practitioners respond to this evolving, ‘revolutionary’ culture? Tracing a genealogy of image making, Kholeif will propose a speculative manifesto that considers the affective relationship between politics and visual culture in a post-digital age.