Deirdre M. Donoghue

Speakers: 

Edward Clydesdale Thomson’s talk: A Leopard, Some Monkeys, Numerous Butterflies, Dozens of Peacocks and a Sublime Vista, looks at the politics of representation by observing how different technologies of display affect our modes of looking and thus our visual experience/s. Together with Jonathan Crary’s notions about modes of attention and Foucault’s ideas on technologies of  power, he brings us on a journey through the Rotterdam Zoo via three different modes of spectatorships; spectacular vision / social vision / fully immersive vision, as they are shaped for us by the surrounding architecture. 

Ruth Legg’s talk: The Look of Science looks at how images are used to display meaning and knowledge in different contexts, particularly within science. Her focus is on examining the ways in which an image, object or set of words is made to represent a range of ideas, system of beliefs or produce a collective mood. She will be presenting a work in progress, which addresses the way in which science, through-out history has used imagery to present difficult ideas.

Priscila Fernandes’ work: The Ultimate Explanatory Representation of the Self (video performance realized exclusively for this talk) is the documentation of an absurd effort to find an ultimate representation for the notion of identity. The character in the video, in a didactic exercise of incongruous references from the Enlightenment individual to the postmodern subject, explains the imagining of multiple personalities (or shared personalities) as reflective of a sense of the fragmented representation of identity in contemporary society.

For more information and to reserve contact: openofficeforwords@gmail.com