About anthonydowney

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Talk: “The Future of Image Production in the Middle East”, Nottingham Contemporary, February 13, 2018.

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Detail from Héla Ammar, Sidi Bouzid, 2011. Courtesy of artist

February 13, 2018

The Future of Image Production in the Middle East: Critical Practices and Digital Networks
In this workshop, Anthony Downey will address how images circulate within the context of the Middle East today. He will examine how computer generated images are not just  replacing the “real” of events in the region, but determining the means by which history is been represented and archived. A key element here is the extent to which new and social media are being presented as transparent means for political ends in contemporary art practices and how cultural production is made to stand in for political action and social commentary. These processes have given rise to politicized archives and interpretive anxieties about virtual evidence and image-based historiographies, nowhere more so than when social media and digital platforms are being used as evidentiary tools to explain conflict across the Middle East.
For more information click here.

Lecture: “Who Benefits from the Work of Art”, V-A-C Foundation, Moscow, January 20, 2018.

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20.01.2018 | 16:00–18:00

Who Benefits from the Work of Art: Political Exceptionalism and the Refugee Condition

A lecture by Anthony Downey

If the disavowal or absence of legal and political representation is a feature of being a refugee in an era of political exceptionalism, then what happens when artistic representation is inserted into this already compromised regime of visibility? In an all too amenable substitution that can often reconfirm the apparent absence of legal accountability, this lecture will suggest that cultural forms of representation are increasingly compensating for — if not replacing — the very systems and procedures of political and legal responsibility that are being denied refugees in the first place? This culturalisation of political debate has, in turn, effected two of the key aims of neoliberalism: the depoliticisation of debate and the de facto co-option of culture so that it ultimately answers to, rather than opposes, political debate.

The conversation will be in English with simultaneous translation into Russian. For further information, see here.

Essay: “Where to Now? Imminent Impermanence in the Works of Sheela Gowda” (November, 2017)

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“On 2 March 2012, the precincts of the City Civil Court in Bangalore, erupted into mayhem as a pitched battle broke out between members of the judiciary and local media groups. These skirmishes quickly degenerated into acts of vandalism and the local police force waded in with a lathi-charge — or baton charge — to restore order. Three months before these events, the same judicial advocates had staged a boycott of the courts, following an unprovoked attack on one of their members by police. This attack was part of a pattern of intimidation and harassment that, as far as the judiciary were concerned, was impeding their ability to carry out their duties. Infuriated by police harassment and, at the time, the adverse media coverage of their strike (which they considered both legitimate and necessary), the judiciary turned their anger towards the media”.

To read full essay, please click here

“Where to Now: Imminent Impermanence in the Work of Sheela Gowda”, is a catalogue essay published on the occasion of Sheela Gowda, Ikon Gallery, November 2017.

An edited version of this essay, also titled “Where to Now: Imminent Impermanence in the Work of Sheela Gowda”, was included in the exhibition catalogue for Sheela Gowda’s retrospective show, Remains, at Fondazione Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, April 4th to September 15th, 2019, with other critical essays by art historian Geeta Kapur and writer and curator Pablo Lafuente, a text on the show by the curators as well as well as contributions by Roger M. Buergel, Grant Watson, Abhishek Hazra, Jessica Morgan, Zehra Jumabhoy, Marta Kuzma and Tobias Ostrander.

In October 2019 an adapted version of this show will travel to Bombas Gens Centre d’Art, Valencia.

 

In Conversation: Ai Weiwei and Anthony Downey, FOMU, Antwerp, 25 October, 2017

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Join us on Wednesday 25 October for a conversation between Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei and writer and academic Anthony Downey. On the occasion of Ai’s first monographic exhibition in Belgium, they will talk about pressing issues including privacy and surveillance, the global refugee crisis and the critical potential of photography in the age of social media. The exhibition at FOMU runs from 27 October 2017 until 18 February 2018.

A full transcript of the conversation will be available in February, 2018, from Third Text.

For tickets and information: https://www.facebook.com/events/120248605322937/

In Conversation: John Akomfrah and Anthony Downey, Barbican Centre, 12 October, 2017.

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October 12, 2017

To coincide with new video installation Purple, John Akomfrah will be in conversation with academic, editor and writer, Anthony Downey.

Staged across a variety of disappearing ecological landscapes, from the hinterlands of Alaska to desolate, icy Arctic Greenland and the volcanic Maquesas Islands in theSouth Pacific, Akomfrah’s new film prompts the viewer to meditate on the complex relationship between humans and the planet.

To buy tickets, click here.

To hear an earlier interview between Anthony Downey and John Akomfrah, on the occasion of his solo show at Arnolfini, Bristol, click here.

Chair: On Photography and Politics Today (Ahlam Shibli, Edmund Clark, Nikolaj Larsen), Unseen, Amsterdam, 23 September, 2017.

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23 September, 2017

Living Room Unseen

The Barbican Presents: On Photography and Politics Today

Featuring renowned photographers who critically address history, conflict and the issue of representation, this discussion revolves around photography’s role and responsibility within our current political climate. Including artists Edmund Clark, Nikolaj Bendix Skyum Larsen and Ahlam Shibli. Moderated by Anthony Downey (writer, Birmingham City University). Curated by Alona Pardo (The Barbican) in close collaboration with Unseen Amsterdam.

Unseen Amsterdam
Living Room
Klönneplein 1
1014 DD Amsterdam

To buy tickets, click here.

Paper: “The Future of Image Production: Hermeneutic Suspicions and Neoliberal Conundrums”, Producing Image Activism after the Arab Uprisings Conference, University of Stockholm, 6-8 September 2017

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Producing Image Activism after the Arab Uprisings

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The workshop brings together theorists and practitioners to highlight the diversity of critical and theoretical perspectives. The workshop will focus on justice, journalism, documentary film, and art as overlapping sectors of the activist media ecology, each of which produces different kinds of public concern in regard to image activism in the Middle East.

Professor Downey will present a paper on the 8th of September in the Image Activism and Artistic Practice panel.

To learn more about the conference click here

Paper: “The Archive as Alibi”, (W)archives Conference, University of Copenhagen, 21-22 August, 2017

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Prompted by factors such as globalization, digitization and mediatization, the role and impact of archives are currently undergoing decisive changes.The changing role of the archive as political technology has impacted the understanding and conduct of contemporary warfare. Whereas military and states used to control the production of information about – and thus also mainstream news’ media coverage of – warfare, different actors now leak, mass-produce, circulate, and mobilize information across various media platforms. Professor Downey will be presenting his paper “The Archive as Alibi”, an abstract of which is include below.

To learn more about the conference please click here

Conference Paper Abstract

The Archive as Alibi

The photographic archive has been increasingly represented as an example of how visual “evidence” can be deployed for political, historical, ethical and economic ends. As a result, image-based archives have become associated with interrogative, critical, and juridical gestures: they are expected to do something, even if that is largely concerned with providing, to paraphrase Harun Farocki, a form of testimony against the archival image. In turn, there has been a critical and legal investment in the idea (if not ideal) of the photographic archive as an evidentiary form of witnessing that will in time answer to, if not ameliorate, present-day injustices. This is all the more evident in the wake of an unprecedented refugee crisis — one that now far exceeds the number of displaced refugees in Europe post-1945 — and revolutions across the Middle East. Images, in these contexts, are often positioned as proof of engagement and confirmation of responsibility; their archival potential apparently representing a bulwark against future forgetfulness. However, is it possible, this paper will ask, that the ongoing production and subsequent archiving of these images — specifically those of migrants and other displaced communities — are being submitted as compensation for the political and legal representation that is both withdrawn from, and thereafter denied to, refugees in the first place? Is it conceivable that photographic archives are not only becoming complicit in neutralizing political effect, but also in co-opting the political affect surrounding the figure of the refugee and the principle of justice? As models of visual representation, finally, what historical value will contemporary images of refugees — and their status as future-oriented archives — have as a tool for retrospectively enquiring into what occurred in an era defined by short-sighted protectionism, political exceptionalism and opportunistic extremism?

To listen to this paper, please click here.

 

Book Publication: Don’t Shrink Me to the Size of a Bullet: The Works of Hiwa K (Walter Koenig Books, August 2017), Documenta 14, Kassel

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May 2017

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Don’t Shrink Me to the Size of a Bullet: The Works of Hiwa K
Edited by Anthony Downey.
Contributors: Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Natasha Ginwala, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Aneta Szyłak, and Bakir Ali.
Publisher: Walther König Verlag.
Publication Date: May 31, 2017.
244 pp.
Colour illustrations.

Last time I saw my mom before my farewell, I said, “Mom, I am leaving for good.  I don’t know… maybe I will not make it like the other 28 people who got shot last week” . She said “Son, if death comes, don`t panic. It is just death”. 

Hiwa K, “Don’t Panic”, 2016

Covering over decade of projects, Don’t Shrink Me to the Size of a Bullet: The Works of Hiwa K provides the first comprehensive account of the artist’s practice to date. Edited by Anthony Downey, with a foreword by Heike Catherina Mertens and Krist Gruijthuijsen, the volume includes essays by Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Natasha Ginwala, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Aneta Szyłak, and a conversation between the artist and Bakir Ali. A series of texts have been prepared and revised by the artist, and he has also included a collection of anecdotes that recount gossip, stories, jokes, personal insights, conundrums, and aphorisms garnered from multiple sources. These have all been translated into Kurdish for the first time. The volume is fully illustrated and will contain extended notes on the works.

To read Anthony Downey’s essay, “Unbearable States: Hiwa K and the Performance of Everyday Life”, see here

 Don’t Shrink Me to the Size of a Bullet: The Works of Hiwa K was launched at KW (Berlin), 31 May, and Documenta 14 (Kassel), 11 June, 2017.

Buy the book here.

ISBN 978-3-96098-160-2

 

 

 

Keynote Paper: “Performing Rights: The Subject of Injustice and the Cultural Logic of Late Modernity”, Art, Justice and Terrorism, Imperial War Museum, June 17, 2017

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17 June 2017

Art, Justice and Terror

Debate: Art, Justice and Terror  I  A day of talks and panel discussions

Curated by London College of Communication

11am – 1.30pm and 2.30 – 5pm  I  Book your tickets now: Adult day pass £12, Concession day pass £8

A series of talks and panel discussions in response to Edmund Clark: War of Terror. The programme will bring together artists, lawyers, eyewitnesses, writers and academics to discuss how art may contribute to informing social attitudes on matters of justice in a time of global conflict in which laws are sometimes absent.

Welcome address: Dr Christopher Stewart, Programme Director of Photography, London College of Communication

Art and Justice  I  11am – 1.30pm

How can art help bring justice to those directly affected by war? Can art question accountability? How might art manifest in the law itself? This morning session focusing on Art and Justice starts with a keynote by Professor Anthony Downey and features talks by Reprieve lawyer Cori Crider, former detainee and campaigner Moazzam Begg in conversation with Edmund Clark, and artist David Birkin. A consecutive panel discussion with the speakers is moderated by Max Houghton, Senior Lecturer at London College of Communication.

Anthony Downey’s keynote can be heard here.

Art and Terror  I  2.30 – 5pm

How can art represent a domestic experience of terror as a consequence of distant war? How can it help us to understand legal procedures enacted upon individuals for reasons of international security, which can in themselves be acts of terror? This afternoon session focusing on Art and Terror starts with a keynote by leading US writer Professor Fred Ritchin and features talks by IWM research curator Hilary Roberts, counter terrorism researcher Raffaello Pantucci, Professor Eyal Weizman, and photographic artist Diana Matar. A consecutive panel discussion with the speakers is moderated by Stephen Mayes, Director of the Tim Hetherington Trust.

How We Respond  I  Conversations – Artists on Conflict

Drop in, free  I  11.30 – 4pm

How are contemporary conflicts represented by artists, poets, photographers and in drama? What impact can their work have on our understanding of conflict? This is a unique chance to join artists and creatives whose work explore, represent or question our understanding of contemporary conflict for a conversation; to hear their views and to ask questions.

Installations and performances appearing throughout the galleries include Imogen Piper’s artwork Encoded Revolt, which translates Syrian airstrikes into music, as well as exclusive live presentations of BBC Media Action’s radio drama Hay El Matar, translated from Syrian to English for the first time, and first-hand accounts of conflict and exile through Amir Darwish’s live poetry performances.

Discussions will feature artists from each of the day’s installations and performances, including artist Imogen Piper, BBC Media Action Producer Boz Temple-Morris, poet Amir Darwish and photographer Edmund Clark.

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