[ecrea] Conference: The Still image in Conflict since 1945 - Manchester Met Uni

http://www.art.mmu.ac.uk/events/2018/the-pictures-of-war/

Wednesday 23 — Friday 25 May 2018
Pictures of War: The Still Image in Conflict since 1945

24 – 25 May 2018
Main Conference at Manchester Metropolitan University
Keynote Speaker: Artist Oliver Chanarin, Broomberg & Chanarin

23 May 2018, 5.30pm
Public Lecture by Louie Palu
Documentary photographer and filmmaker

23 May 2018
Masterclass on Pictures and Conflicts
For Postgraduate Research Students and Early Career Researchers

A conference on the intersections of conflict and pictures from the end 
of the Second World War to the present day.

Since the end of the Second World War, the nature and depiction of 
geopolitical conflicts have changed in technology, scale and character. 
The Cold War political landscape saw many anti-colonial struggles for 
liberation and national identity become proxy battlegrounds for the 
major powers. Wars continue to be waged in the name of democracy and 
terror, and in the interests of linguistic, theological and racial 
worldviews and migration and displacement are again at the top of the 
agenda.

As the technologies of war have shifted, so have the technologies of 
making pictures. This conference seeks to engage with these phenomena 
through critically engaged approaches to the processes of visualisation, 
their methodologies and epistemologies to contribute to our 
understanding of the ways conflicts are pictured. The intention is to 
expand the field of enquiry beyond localised, thematic or media-specific 
approaches and to encourage new perspectives on the material and visual 
cultures of pictures.
Keynote Speaker

Oliver Chanarin, from artist duo Broomberg & Chanarin
"The Bureaucracy of Angels"
24 May, 5.30pm—7.30pm
Geoffrey Manton Building
Conference Themes

A Heritage of Images

In looking at and in producing pictures, academics and practitioners are 
often aware of what Fritz Saxl called A Heritage of Images (1957) in 
self-conscious or subliminal ways. Pictorial accounts of contemporary 
conflicts arguably depend for their affectivity and recognisability upon 
their resonance with already existing historical depictive traditions. 
Contributions to this strand would seek to interrogate the idea that 
visibility (Ranciere, 2004; Butler, 2009) is manifested in pictorial 
images, and to investigate how far what pictures depict and represent is 
dependent on the ability to recover the past in the present: ‘namely, 
that images with a meaning peculiar to their own time place, once 
created, have a magnetic power to attract other ideas into their sphere; 
that they can suddenly be forgotten and remembered again after centuries 
of oblivion.’ (Saxl, 1947).

Pictures on the Move, Visualising Solidarities

The various expressions of solidarity have created pictures that 
reflected and inspired affinities and networks of possibilities beyond 
their intended aims and specific trajectories. Visual and material 
manifestations across ideological, ethnic and national borders, range 
from international solidarity in the struggles against totalitarianism 
in its various forms, colonialism, militarism and racism, as well as in 
demand for equal rights for women, LGBTQ individuals, refugees, and 
migrants. What kind of discourses do manifestations of solidarity 
trigger, and what kind of pictures do they produce? How do they vary 
across time and from one place to another? What are the different ways 
that they have shaped individual and collective identities and 
imaginations? Contributions can include but are not limited to: 
revolutionary, embodied, spatial and affective solidarities; Cold War 
official and unofficial networks, the solidarity of/with the displaced; 
notions of re-framing, undoing and decolonising in relation to visual 
interpretations of solidarity; failed attempts and their visual and 
material cultures.

Witnesses to Existence: The ethics of Aesthetics

The ethical challenges to the visual representation of conflict are 
deeply problematic. The ongoing dilemma for photographers of suffering 
lies in the interplay between the desire to engender a social good – the 
ending of exploitation, discrimination or extermination – with the 
desire not to expose the victim to further unnecessary suffering, either 
in the performative act of being photographed, or the re-performative 
act of displaying that image to an audience. Concentrating on the 
practice of imagemakers, contributions will examine the visual 
strategies deployed by photographers in response to these challenges, 
including the role of advocacy photography in human rights work, the 
genre of aftermath photography, the forensic turn, and the role of 
alternative dissemination spaces like the gallery and museum.

Visual Activism and the Middle East

Conflicts are no longer the major global events they once were. Rather 
than exceptional events on isolated battlefields major-power conflict 
have been largely neutralised (Hariman and Lucaites, 2016). Where 
conflicts do persist, they can become routine and unexceptional, an 
everyday disruption that people adapt to and endure.  How do visual 
activists record relationships between everyday life and larger forces 
of domination, disruption and change as a consequence of ongoing 
conflict as a form of resistance?  With an emphasis on the middle-east, 
this strand will discuss the evolving relationship between visual 
activism, political resistance and photographic practices. In doing so, 
it will consider proposals that seek to explore how such acts of 
visibility making, including but not limited to traditional photographic 
practices, can exist or meet at a number of social, spatial and artistic 
intersections and/or can be understood as having multiple functions.

Pictures, Conflicts, Modes of Transmission

Pictures of conflict, especially those involving forms of documentation 
or reportage, have generally been dependent on technologies of 
transmission. These technologies have enabled pictures of conflict to be 
moved across geographical distances, to be technically reproduced, and 
to be circulated amongst spectators. They have included ‘wire’ systems 
for the rapid movement of images between distant points, different forms 
of printing and mass reproduction, and more recently, Internet-based 
social media platforms that have enabled professionals and citizens 
alike to upload and transmit pictures of contemporary conflict 
situations. This strand seeks to explore both historical and 
contemporary situations involving relationships between the visual 
representation of conflict and modes of transmission, asking how have 
such modes of transmission shaped the form and politics of pictures of 
military and political confrontations and struggles?

The Unresolvable Past: Post-Conflict Trauma and Representation

The persistence of traumatic memory is a recognisable part of 
post-conflict culture, often re-emerging long after the events that 
caused it to have ceased. As Bennett (2005) suggests, it is art’s 
affective power that enables it to go beyond apparent claims to the 
objective documentation of conflict in that the form of the work itself 
helps to convey more elliptical forms of understanding. This strand 
invites papers that engage with the active and selective representation 
of themes related to post-conflict trauma within visual or material 
culture. To what extent, for example, can narration or depiction provide 
a means of dealing with the cataclysmic past, and can this process ever 
be complete, or even sufficient?
Conference Schedule

The conference sessions will be held in the morning and afternoon on 
Thursday and Friday, 24 & 25 May 2018.

Download Programme (PDF)
Conference Cost and Registration

£75.00 per day. £120.00 for two-days
Students Cost: £15.00 one day, £25.00 for two-days and £40.00 for all 
three days
 (Prices include tea/coffee/refreshments and 2x course hot lunch buffet 
with desert)

Register Online
Funding

There is a limited amount of funding available to put towards travel 
costs. Priority will be given to conference presenters who are 
independent practitioners or scholars as well as early career and 
postgraduate students.
Conference Conveners

Professor Jim Aulich, Mary Ikoniadou, Fionna Barber and Dr Simon 
Faulkner, Manchester School of Art, Manchester Metropolitan University. 
Dr Paul Lowe, London College of Communication, UAL. Dr Gary Bratchford, 
University of Central Lancashire.

The conference and workshop are funded by the Postgraduate Arts and 
Humanities Centre (PAHC) and the Manchester School of Art Research 
Centre at MMU; RAH! the Research in Arts and Humanities public 
engagement programme at MMU; The University of Central Lancashire; AHRC 
NWCDTP Cohort Development Fund; the London College of Communication, 
UAL; the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence at the University of Manchester.
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