Aperture Foundation, The Photography Program at Parsons the New School for Design, and The Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School present:
Confounding Expectations: Photography in Context Panel Discussion
Images, Surveillance, and Power
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
7:00pm
FREE Admission
Tishman Auditorium
66 West 12th Street, New York City
Seating is on a first-come, first-serve basis
Description: Since its invention, the camera has been used to make images surreptitiously and to satisfy the desire to see what is hidden. In the twenty-first century, cameras on street corners, in shops, and public buildings silently record our every move, while web-based tools such as Google Earth adapt satellite technology to ensure that there is no escape from the camera’s all-seeing eye. Security issues have raised important questions regarding privacy, technology, and power. The objective of this panel is to explore the use of contemporary digital technologies in exploring the relationship between images, surveillance, and power. Featured artists include Trevor Paglen, Jill Magid, and Marko Peljhan, alongside moderator Tom Vanderbilt.
Trevor Paglen received a PhD in geography and a BA from the University of California, Berkeley, and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His work has been shown in numerous exhibitions, including the Transmediale Festival in Berlin, the 2008 Taipei Biennial, and the 2009 Instanbul Biennial. Paglen is represented by Altman Siegel Gallery, San Francisco, and Galerie Thomas Zander, Cologne, Germany. He lives and works in New York and Oakland, California. His first photographic monograph—Invisible: Covert Operations and Classified Landscapes—was just released by Aperture. Social scientist, artist, writer, and provocateur, Paglen has been exploring the secret activities of the U.S. military and intelligence agencies—the “black world”—for the last eight years.
Marko Peljhan holds a joint appointment with the Department of Art and the Media Arts & Technology graduate program at University of California Santa Barbara. A theatre and radio director by profession, he cofounded the Ljudmila digital media lab in Slovenia and is active in numerous tactical media communities. He founded arts and technology organization Projekt Atol, music label rx:tx, and coordinates the ongoing mobile laboratory project, Makrolab, focusing on telecommunications, migrations, and weather systems in an intersection of art and science. His work has been featured in contemporary art anthologies (Fresh Cream, Art Tomorrow) and extensively online, and presented internationally at the Venice, Gwangju, and Johannesburg Biennials; Documenta; Ars Electronica; ISEA; Manifesta; and numerous other exhibitions and museums in Europe, Asia, and the U.S. Peljhan received his diploma from the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia.
American artist Jill Magid received her BFA from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, in 1995, and her MS in Visual Studies from MIT. She was Artist in Residence at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam, Netherlands from 2001-2002, and with Eyebeam, New York, New York from 2006 -2007. In addition to an upcoming solo show at the Tate Modern, London, she has shown at the Yvon Lambert galleries in New York and Paris, Gagosian gallery, New York, and The Hague, Netherlands. Her performances and installations have been shown worldwide in numerous group shows and fairs. Magid’s work includes video, photographs, installations, printed text, and books. She is represented by Yvon Lambert Gallery.
Tom Vanderbilt writes on design, technology, science, and culture, among other subjects, for numerous publications, including Wired, Slate, The London Review of Books, Gourmet, The Wall Street Journal, Men’s Vogue, Artforum, The Wilson Quarterly, Travel and Leisure, Rolling Stone, The New York Times Magazine, Cabinet, Metropolis, and Popular Science. He is a contributing editor to the design magazines I.D. and Print, and a contributing writer to the popular blog Design Observer. His most recent book is New York Times bestseller Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us), published by Alfred A. Knopf. Previous books include: Survival City: Adventures Among the Ruins of Atomic America (Princeton Architectural Press, 2002), and The Sneaker Book (The New Press,1998).
