The way we deal with images has dramatically changed in the age of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Co. Images circulating on digital networks have become the most significant means of personal expression for an extended public. The panel discussion with Lara Baladi, Sarah Nankivell and Philip Scheffner elaborates how artists explore and consider the usage, semantics and affective dynamics of social media images as well as their aesthetic qualities.

This event is staged in the context of the exhibition “Affect Me. Social Media Images in Art”, on view at KAI 10 | Arthena Foundation in Düsseldorf until March 10, 2018. The exhibition and its accompanying catalogue were produced in a close cooperation between KAI 10 and the research project “Affective Dynamics of Images in the Era of Social Media” at CRC “Affective Societies”, Freie Universität Berlin.

Lara Baladi is an internationally renowned, multidisciplinary Egyptian-Lebanese-French artist, archivist and educator, based in Cairo and Boston. She is currently teaching at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). For the exhibition “Affect Me” she developed the multimedia installation “Be Realistic, Ask for the Impossible” (2017) as part of the long-term transmedia project “Vox Populi. Archiving a Revolution in the Digital Age”, an interactive timeline of the 2011 Egyptian revolution.

Sarah Nankivell is part of Forensic Architecture, a research agency based at Goldsmiths, University of London. Forensic Architecture, whose work is also included in the exhibition “Affect Me”, undertakes advanced architectural and media research, often on behalf of international prosecutors, human rights organisations and political and environmental justice groups. Sarah has an academic background in Archeological Heritage and Museums. Her research focuses on the deliberate destruction of heritage sites in conflicts and the representation of these events through media.

Philip Scheffner is a filmmaker, producer, video and sound artist based in Berlin. In 2001, together with Merle Kröger, he founded the film production company “Pong”. The starting point for his documentary “Havarie” (2016) is a 3:36 minutes YouTube clip of a refugee boat in the Mediterranean Sea. It was awarded the “Best experimental” prize by the German Film Critics Association in 2017.

Moderation: Julia Höner and Kerstin Schankweiler, curators of the exhibition “Affect Me. Social Media Images in Art”. 

A review of the panel discussion can be found here [in German].