Stella Baraklianou – The photograph as pulsating event
Event date: 29 October 2011
King’s Anatomy Theatre & Museum,
6th Floor, King’s Building
King’s College London,
Strand Campus,
London, WC2R 2LS
The photograph as pulsating event
That photography, since its inception, has been linked to the idea of a unique event or “truth” which it necessarily records is not new. A historical trajectory of photography and its emergence is closely linked with the politics of its invention. It was due to certain technological advancements that made possible the “fixing” of an image, the very transcendental idea that a real event can be fixed in time. What if instead of looking at this record as an event fixed in time, we discuss it in its ability to constantly recreate the event? Rhythmic analysis in this instance will allow us to consider the advent not in representational terms, (depiction of subject matter, indexical nature of the photograph) but rather in terms of how the affect of this event is communicated and experienced.
Digital technology can allow for us to consider the idea of a “pulsating time” a time that shimmers and reverberates in digitally coded algorithms that translate light into strings of mathematics. Ideas pertaining to the shift in technologies (analogue technologies or crystals of celluloid) will be explored to see if this has been merely and only a condition of the changes in technology or whether there is something fundamentally consistent in the photographic event. Damian Sutton has written on the subject of the “immanent” image and digital technolgies, Gilbert Simondon on the mode of existence of technological objects whilst Georges Didi Huberman has brought to the forefront an understanding or reading of images through “responsivity”.
Drawing from the above the idea of pulsating time as event, contained yet not stilled, within the photographic frame will be considered.
Stella Baraklianou completed her research by practice doctoral degree at Goldsmiths, University of London in 2007. She is a practising artist working with photography and installation and has exhibited her work in group shows internationally. She has taught in FE and HE in the UK and
abroad, including OTIS College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, California. She currently lectures on the BA Hons Photography course at the University of Portsmouth
