Saturated Lines, Invisible Image: Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and the Accountability of the Post-Photographic Image

• In Event: Recent Latin American Art: Beyond Limits

Abstract

Post-photography has, in most recent times, been articulated as a marriage between image, technology and the Internet. The over-abundance of social media networks and the pervasive use of smartphones have helped constitute a society of control that, encouraged and supported by the massive production of images, generates a framework of constant and infinite surveillance of its members. In this way, of course, it is not just the individual member who is being monitored: those perpetually observed and haunted by surveillance’s reach are driven to engage in measures of counter and self-surveillance that become saturated – over-exposed – and themselves subjected to a loss of visibility due to the expansive and ubiquitous nature of the underlying phenomenon. Following specific works from Mexican visual artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, my aim is to approach the notion of post-photography in order to question the status of the image drowned out by accumulation and offer insight into what it might mean to lose track of the visible. I will argue that what is at stake for the post-photographic image (an image that has been collected, stored, ordered, buried and discarded by way of this marriage) is the threat of a self-imposed absorption: a saturating mechanism of elimination in the name of accumulation where a contagious disregard for accountability is perpetuated.

Author

• Camila A Moreiras-Vilarós, New York University