Representing Pasts – Visioning Futures

Abstract

This presentation considers contemporary artists’ moving image installations by Rachel Rose, Sondra Perry and Hito Steyerl. Their works are approached in the context of Jean-Luc Nancy’s post-foundational and corporeal ontology. Rachel Rose’s installation Everything and More (2015) introduces an overview effect experienced by astronauts in space, which in this research project metaphorically illustrates a conceptual movement starting from a discussion of the alternate space, toward the global networks of circulation of images and bodies in Sondra Perry’s Typhoon coming on (2018), and the Generative Adversarial Networks embedded in the production of reality in Hito Steyerl’s This is the Future (2019). A symbolic element unfolding throughout the works as a visual or conceptual reference is a liquid surface, which signifies boundlessness of space as a facilitator for a movement into unknown territory (e.g. outer space, ocean, future)—a site where experiential critique unfolds, and the malleability of the digital image surface is explored as a site of potentiality. The paper, which also acts as a curatorial platform to consider these works together as a response to the contemporary condition, attempts to explore how these artists acknowledge the imperceptible processes that shape daily life under the pervasive logic of extraction.