Workshop by Asia Bazdyrieva (Critical Media Lab Basel) and Clio Nicastro (Bard College Berlin/Harun Farocki Institut): A Body as a Witness, A Landscape as Witness

Over the past two years our visual landscapes are increasingly saturated with scenes of multiple violences, distant and close, fast and slow. Wars and ecocides are mediated through the proliferation of screens, which connect us to only separate us more. With every instance each of us might or might not be able to relate. As artists we ask: what symbolic work is capable of doing justice, if ever? What kind of storytelling? The proposed workshop is centered on topics of witnessing, registering, and evidence in relation to current environmental and humanitarian crises, and their further translation into artistic work.

For a detailed description of the workshop see mail PDF

We will focus on the relationship between art and witnessing by looking at recent concepts and works that span from large-scale institutional production of visual works (such as Forensic Architecture) to tone-lowered, individual accounts. Together we will think about how bodies and lands inscribe complex environments, and how such inscriptions are mobilized within artistic practices. Will will also watch video works and have a discussion, referring to themes of the texts that are suggested for reading in advance. The students are invited to work in groups, and either flash out propositions and moodboards for a potential project, or reflect on their current practice vis-a-vis the topic of the workshop.

An artistic research project in cooperation with the Harun Farocki Institute, Berlin with students of the HGB, including the Expanded Cinema Class and the Photography and Media Class.