Photography after immateriality

Photography and technology become the subject of artistic and scientific research

With performance lectures, laboratory reports and conferences on the artistic and conceptual use of photographic technique and the physical manifestation of the image.

The immateriality of photography has reached a new peak after CGI and NFT with AI-generated images. Names like ‘promptography’ describe new processes and give legitimacy to photographs that have never seen a camera or a subject. At the same time, terms such as “lens-based photography” are being introduced to define a photographic practice in which the act of taking a picture is still based on triggering a camera.

From the point of view of artists*, producers*, researchers* and art historians*, the negotiation of photographic technique now seems more topical and important than ever. While our relationship with new technologies is constantly being updated and is an integral part of our daily lives, we are increasingly at their mercy. The more complicated technology becomes, the more it disappears behind itself – the bigger the black box becomes.

New technologies also open up spaces in which it is worth asking forgotten or new questions in relation to analogue practices. How do we evaluate and understand analogue and material photography in the context of our knowledge of digital and dematerialised photography? Does temporal distance, and an awareness of a photograph as an object, allow us to take a new, more critical look at the processes involved in creating analogue images?

This symposium examines digital and analogue technologies and brings them into dialogue. Immateriality forms the symposium’s silent background noise – from this noise emerge questions and positions on ‘material’ photography, which in turn leave an echo in the noise of immateriality.

Participants :
Andrea Gohl
Brigitte Lustenberger
Caroline Heider
Claudia Rohrauer
Estelle Blaschke
Hugo Ryser
Lisa Rastl
Maren Polte
Nadine Reding
Nicole Hametner
Rita Hofmann
Ruth Horak
Sabine Süsstrunk
HEAB students :
Tim Rod
Nina Caviezel
Daria Samoilova

Moderated by :
Amelie Schüle
Director of Photoforum
PasquArt Bienne

Curation :
Corinne Futterlieb
Bern University of the Arts