Abstract
This paper presents research conducted through visual practice and scholarship, that explores how images can act and be participated in politically becoming catalysts for new forms of political appearance, or what Hannah Arendt would describe as a ‘space of appearance’. (Arendt, H. 1998) While Arendtian ‘appearance’ is brought about through people acting and speaking together in public, this research explores what agency images can have in, or as, this space. I do this by bringing together as a ‘knowledge-montage’ (with refernce to Didi-Huberman on Aby Warburg) a diverse but very specific combination of historic images and newly produced photographs; namely Paul Fusco’s photographs of Robert Kennedy’s funeral train (1968), Gustave Courbet’s 1848 painting ‘The Burial at Ornans’ and new photographs that I shot on Regent Street in London. I discuss how in all these images can be found the ghosts of the ‘demos’ (the People) or the democratic, manifesting as a ‘space of appearance’ that is increasingly in jeopardy. By bringing the images together in this knowledge-montage and thereby approaching them as critical catalysts from the past that can enable a new reflection on the present, these ghosts are rescued to become surviving images through which the urgency to recuperate genuine democratic appearance is made manifest. The study includes visual examples from the images under discussion and clips from the video work that comprises the final ‘knowledge-montage’.
Presenters
Brigid Mc LeerSenior Lecturer, Fine Art , Manchester Metropolitan University, Lancashire, United Kingdom
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Democratic, Appearance, Politics, Art, Ghosts
