26-27 November 2026, Cluj-Napoca, Romania. Deadline call for papers: 12 July 2026
In our current postdigital condition, digital technology is so deeply embedded in everyday life that the distinction between technical and natural is becoming increasingly blurred and images have become mere byproducts of our embodied co-existence with digital media. At the same time, we see that visual forms are continuously rendered obsolete by the rapidly evolving algorithmic processes. In new media, we are no longer even looking at “the image” any more, but rather always only at a version of an image that can be infinitely modified. Cameras are regularly used to connect the eye and the machine in a way that serves no aesthetic goal, creating purely “operational images” (Harun Farocki). Furthermore, the vast majority of the images that we see today strike us not only as ephemeral or as disposable “content” fracturing our attention and inviting us to scroll through on our digital devices, they are, in the words of Hito Steyerl, “upgraded to data performance events […] rendering warfare, marketing and surveillance as variations on the same spectrum”. Their relentless multiplication and ubiquity induce exhaustion, indifference, and the numbness of the senses. Our interactions with the constant flow of visual “content” disconnects us from the world and from ourselves.
...
start_date:
end_date:
News image:
