The article ‘Aesthetics and Politics’ by Nikos Papastergiadis discusses the topics of art, activism, and the role of visual representation. The author considers how the role of imagery has changed. Images have become something which circulates in a saturated, ever expanding flow with power to exacerbate the viewer’s experience to the point of trauma. Papastergiadis refers to the repeated screening of the September 11 attacks as an example of how imagery functions as an enhancer and globalizer of trauma. This reminded me of my studies I did last semester on collective memory which is shaped through the medium of mass imagery. It is increasingly apparent that technology has changed the way we receive information and pictorial experiences. We define ourselves and the society we live in within our own imaginations.
I am interesting in how that role of the artist has changed as a result of the extreme availability of pictures today. Mass culture pumps out images through many mediums- TV, print, internet, mobile technologies etc. the author points out that artists, since modernity and even more so now, have ceased to be the creator of images but rather the “navigator” through the established visual world choked with symbols and pictures. This view, while initially feeling somewhat limiting, also places power in the hands of the artist, allowing them a place to interoperate the politics of everyday life.
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