02.

On Reality

Dusseldorf Photo +
Biennale for Visual and Sonic Media
May 17 - July 14, 2024

In his 1972 BBC series Ways of Seeing, John Berger argues that how we look at images reveals something about ourselves and our social conditions. Today, as humans constantly morph into images and data, technical reproducibility dislocates both the image and the act of observing itself.

Focusing on various situations of surveillance, the featured artworks approach observation not only as technological monitoring but also as a selective, sometimes disruptive gaze that can reverse the relationship between observer and observed, articulating unknown sites of consciousness, experience, and communication.

In parallel to the exhibition, the symposium On Reality, hosted by K21 Kunstsammlung NRW, invite d artists, researchers, philosophers, and media theorists to explore how visual media relates to the notion of reality, and to which extent the medium influences our perception and comprehension of it.

The symposium looks at photography as an everyday ‘cultural technique’, linking it with philosophical, sociological, and ethical discourses. It critically examines how reality is constructed through techniques of visualization and naming and will address the challenges brought by contemporary ‘imaging techniques’. The perspectives range from an investigative view of the present to speculative approaches that encompass both the past and the future.

ON REALITY symposium, Elena Esposito
Photo by Pola Sieverding

Photo by Pola Sieverding.

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