Technology and Photography in Transition
An international symposium
New Europe College – Institute for Advanced Study www.nec.ro
Bucharest, May 11-12, 2007
Convenors: Ioana Pintilie Teleaga and Iosif Kiraly
Ever since 1989, after the fall of the Communist regime, Romania has
been a country in endless transition. It joined other countries headed
at various speeds towards a democratic system, while recognized
democratic systems were undergoing changes with respect to what they
had been before 1989, or even before September 2001. One of the areas
where change is increasingly more perceptible is that of the right to
privacy. On the one hand, the inhabitants of democratic countries get
more and more used to the idea that their daily lives (what they eat,
where they go, how much they spend, what they buy, what they write,
what they read, with whom they speak on the phone or communicate on the
internet) are recorded and closely watched over by the “big brother”.
However, the same people who comply most of the time with such
intrusions in their lives tend to find it extremely upsetting when they
themselves, their houses, or their cars come under the scrutiny of a
free-lance photographer.
The ease with which images are being recorded, transformed and
distributed gave rise to an attitude towards photography wavering
between a lack of trust in the capacity of this medium to document
reality objectively and the fear of being caught in an image whose
trajectory and destination can no longer be controlled or anticipated;
a fear akin to that of the “primitives”, afraid that images might steal
their souls.
If we adopt a different perspective, that of the image makers, we
encounter again, at another level, an ambivalent attitude: on the one
hand there is a plethora of discourses suggesting a significant
attenuation in the importance attributed to the concept of author, and
to such notions as “originality”, in favor of “collective wok”, of
“quotation”, etc.; on the other, at a financial and legal level, there
is an increasing tendency to invoke “author rights”, or “intellectual
rights”, with all the consequences they entail.
Program:
Friday, 11 May
Morning session: 9:30 – 13:30
9:30 Opening of the symposium
Introductory remarks by the convenors, Ileana Pintilie and Iosif Kiraly
10:00 Daniela GOELLER: Before and After Photography - on the Relation
of Art and Techniques
10:30 Rolf SACHSSE: The Future of Memory - Images and Their Storage in
Mind and Society
11:00 Discussions
11:30 – 12:00 Coffee break
12:00 Jean-François CHEVRIER: Photography Between Art And Document:
Photography as Document of Experience
12:30 Anca MIHULEŢ: The Emotionsl Visuality of Digital Rococo
13:00 Discussions
13:30 Lunch break
Afternoon session: 15:00 – 17:30
15:00 Panel discussion: Photography in Contemporary Art: Trends in
Romania After 1989
Participants: Irina CIOS, Aurora KIRÁLY, Iosif KIRÁLY, Anca MIHULEŢ,
Cosmin MOLDOVAN, Raluca NESTOR, Oana TĂNASE, Roxana TRESTIOREANU
16:00 – 16:30 Coffee break
16:30 Cosmin MOLDOVAN and Raluca NESTOR: The OFFSET 2007 Project
(offset.underconstruct.com/index/offset1.pdf): On Young Artists in
Romania Working with Photography and New Media
17:00 Discussions
Saturday, 12 May
Morning session: 10:00 – 13:30
10:00 Barnabás BENCSIK: Equivocal Images – Affection for the Analogue
in the Age of the Digital. The Use of Analogue Image Processing System
in the Current Hungarian Photography – Presentation of Some Artistic
Positions
10:30 Iosif KIRÁLY: Tinseltown – An Excerpt from the Romanian Transition
11:00 Discussions
11:30 – 12:00 Coffee break
12:00 Ileana PINTILIE-TELEAGĂ: Photography as a Document of Individual
and Collective Memory: On the Works of Ion Grigorescu, Mircea Cantor,
Christian Paraschiv, Iosif Kiraly
12:30 Magda RADU: Art and Politics: Considering Some of Ion
Grigorescu’s Films and Photographs
13:00 Discussions
13:30 –15:30 Lunch break
Afternoon session: 15:30 – 17:00
15:30 Matei BEJENARU: Documenting Poetic Situations: Artists son Show
at the Periferic Biennial, Iasi
16:00 Hubertus von AMELUNXEN: After Photography Is Before
16:30 Discussions
Iosif Kiraly
Str. Biserica Amzei 7-9
RO-010391 Bucuresti
Romania
www.iokira.com
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