Launch of RESET: Questioning the Image, the Market, and the Role of Representation

Stay tuned! We will be launching our new publication with an online event on March 18th.

Do our current definitions of photography still hold up, or are we overdue for a questioning of the medium?

Tune in on Thursday, March 18th for the publication launch of RESET: Questioning the Image, the Market, and the Role of Representation by Futures Photography. The event will be premiered at 6PM (GMT) on our social media and BJP's website. The evening will be spent in conversation with Goldsmith's professor of new media Joanna Zylinska, artists and editor of RESET Salvatore Vitale, and Futures artist Ana Zibelnik.

Taking Zylinska's contributing essay 'Does Photography Have a Future (Does Anything Else)?' as our starting point, the discussion will posit this question while touching upon our machine mediated reality of nonhuman photography, the evolving relationship between photography and extinction and what redefining the medium reveals about modern society and the artist's role in it.

This event is graciously hosted by The British Journal of Photography and introduced by Zoe Harrison.

About the publication:

RESET: Questioning the Image, the Market, and the Role of Representation pushes past the dimensions of a yearly round-up or catalogue – to engage in debate on our splintered representations of reality and their revealing architectures of influence.

The exponential rise of nonhuman photography; our ambivalent relationship with memes, emojis and digital communication at large; and how the forces of representation continue to shape our racial condition are just some of the topics explored by a host of cross-disciplinary contributors. Including Mariama Attah, Joanna Zylinska, Geert Lovink, Sandrine Colard, Olav Velthuis, Lewis Bush, Rafal Milach, Ola Lanko, Salvatore Vitale and more.

The structure of RESET – in a play on the world turned upside-down – is developed in two parts that must be flipped to read. One side delves into how photography plays into our collective situation and the implications that can be traced in its social future; housing essays, visual interventions and discussions that took place during Futures Digital Festival 2020. While the reverse proudly features the work of 57 image-based artists and collectives, annually nominated by Futures’ network of institutions across Europe for their exceptional practice and urgent stories they tell.

About the speakers:

Joanna Zylinska is Professor of New Media and Communications at Goldsmiths, University of London. The author of numerous books – including AI Art: Machine Visions and Warped Dreams (Open Humanities Press, 2020) and Nonhuman Photography (MIT Press, 2017), she combines her philosophical writings with image-based art practice, experimental publishing projects and curatorial work. She is currently working on a new book provisionally titled Does Photography Have a Future?

Salvatore Vitale (b. 1986, Palermo, Italy) is a Swiss-based visual artist, editor and educator. In his layered artistic practice and research, Vitale’s work focuses on the functioning of modern societies and power structures, visual politics and technological development, whilst making use of different media and multiple levels of visual narratives. His work has been awarded internationally, and has been exhibited widely in museums and photo festivals. Vitale is a lecturer at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (HSLU). He is also the co-founder and editor-in-chief of YET Magazine and the current guest curator of Futures Photography.

Ana Zibelnik (b. 1995, Ljubljana) is a photographer currently based in the Netherlands. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana in 2018 and recently completed her MA degree in film and photographic theory at Leiden University. Through long term projects she explores the topics of death, immortality as well as the relationship between photography and extinction. She is part of PARALLEL - European Photo Based Platform, Haute Photographie Talents, British Journal of Photography Ones To Watch 2020 and was selected as the GUP New Talent of the year.