Forelesning

Tom Holert (Harun Farocki Institut, Berlin): Abstracting Vision. Operation, Detection, Navigation, and the Legal Form

Since filmmaker and critic Harun Farocki introduced the concept of "operational images" around 2000, ontologies and technologies of images have evolved considerably, driven by machine learning and AI. However, Farocki's observation that the operability of visual data has been all but delinked from conventional notions of human perception and turned into computer vision proves to be still valid. Mostly staying below the threshold of the visible (though busy recognizing and mapping in para-visual ways), operational images partake in what Marxist sociologist and Farocki interlocutor Alfred Sohn-Rethel has once dubbed "real abstraction". The talk will outline a conceptual genealogy of Farocki's "operational images" and foray into short discussions of image detection, visual navigation and the legal dimension inherent in the very abstractions here involved.

Tom Holert is an independent and curator, who lives and works in Berlin. In 2015, he co-founded the Harun Farocki Institut (harun-farocki-institut.org). Holert is the author and editor of several books in the realms of visual culture, art history and cultural studies (https://independent.academia.edu/TomHolert). Currently, he is writing a book length introduction into "art and politics", while pursuing HaFI's long-term research project "Terms and Conditions. The Legal Form of Images".

This lecture is presented as part of the course Image production during times of conflict, held by professor Maryam Jafri.