LIAS Symposium: "Performativity, Memory and Imagination of Technical Images"
12. Feb
Date: Wednesday, February 12 2025, 1:30-5:30 pm
Location: Leuphana University Campus, C40.530
Language: English
Workshop organized by LIAS Fellows Paula Bertúa and Bruno Moreschi.
We often assume that technical images and inorganic, external, portable memories have substantially transformed our logic of perception. The history of the mechanical production of images, since the 19th century, narrates the externalization of the production of images in a series of recording devices. These images are no longer created solely by human beings, thus distancing themselves from the imaginative possibilities of the human sensorium. At the same time, the logic of recording makes it possible to archive materially what had been the prerogative of (immaterial) human memory: the sensory experience of these images. This conference invites us to think about the radical consequences of the externalization of imagination to the point of questioning the idea that imagination itself is an exclusively human prerogative. It will examine from a historical, technical and conceptual approach and from devices of diverse nature (analog, digital, AI) inscribed in various fields (art, media, science) how the notion of memory has been technically externalized, what are the implications for a non-human imagination and how this can be conceived from a performative perspective, in particular in relation to the always amphibious faculties of memory and imagination.
Programme
1.30–3:30 pm
Performativity, Memory and Imagination of Technical Images
Panel discussion and Presentations
Co-moderation and discussion: Erich Hörl (LIAS Co-Director) and Paula Bertúa (LIAS Fellow)
Speakers: Snježana Šimić (Paris), Renzo Filinich (Johannesburg), Katharina Weinstock (Karlsruhe) and Sheung Yiu (Helsinki)
4:00–5:00 pm
Technical Images as Tower of Babel: Six Memos
Lecture Laura González Flores (Mexico City)
Introduction: Paula Bertúa, LIAS Fellow
My presentation will take Pieter Bruegel the Elder's oil painting of The Tower of Babel (1563) as an allegory of technical images today. By tracing analogies between the painting's depiction of its theme, I will reflect on six notions associated with the contemporary social, cultural, political, and economic uses of machine-made images: illusion, iteration, regularity, indistinction, acceleration, and programmability. Rather than the notion of “cosmetics” that Jean-Louis Déotte proposed to understand images as aesthetic apparatuses, I will conclude by suggesting "chaosmosis” as a better description of high-tech AI-informed images today.
5.00–5.30 pm
Final Discussion
7.30–9.30 pm
Acapulco
Screening and talk with Inge Hinterwaldner (Karlsruhe) and Bruno Moreschi (LIAS Fellow)
Scala Arthouse Cinema, Apothekenstraße 17, 21335, Lüneburg
Employing methodologies rooted in critical pedagogy, Moreschi crafted an immersive experience for the “seers” who participate in this film. Leading experts from around the world received printed postcards by mail featuring some images used to train AI/ Computer Vision, while crowd workers who tag these images participated in several experimental reading and conversation sessions. The culmination is a visual odyssey that invites speculation on novel approaches to image comprehension, advocating for a paradigm shift in computer training methods towards more nuanced, human-centric perspectives.
