Image Entanglements

Abstract

Image Entanglements is a PhD project in artistic research that looks at images as social agents and examines the agendas with which they operate. The project combines methods from the visual arts and art history to develop a way of speaking about images that makes their agency apparent.

Central to the project was the creation of an archive of digital images from different periods and contexts including art, journalism, politics and social media. With the help of this archive, three types of “image activities” were explored: the interaction between images that produces pseudomorphic similarities; the capacity of the image to function as a substitute by providing an artificial presence; and the ability of images to shape viewers’ empathic responses to certain events.

Across four lecture performances and four accompanying essays, the project investigates apparent entanglements between images from different genres, and seeks to demonstrate how viewers can become enmeshed in the images’ operations.