Fotomuseum Winterthur | Events | Saturday, 04.10.2025, 10:00–15:00
React and Respond. Image Cultures under Platform Capitalism
Sara Bezovšek, from A Life of Its Own: American Psycho (2000), 2024, 2023 – © Sara Bezovšek
Contemporary networked image cultures cannot be understood outside of platform capitalism. Today, the production, distribution and reception of networked visual media is largely facilitated, managed and controlled by the algorithmic infrastructures, corporate policies and business models of digital platforms. At the heart of platform architectures is the quantification, evaluation and monetization of reactions – whatever we encounter online is designed to trigger our reactions, and our reaction patterns in turn drive the visual economies of platform capitalism.
The international conference organised by the DIZH Bridge Professorship for Digital Cultures and Arts at the University of Zurich brings together scholars and artists from a range of fields and backgrounds. The conference "React & Respond" aims to map and analyse these contemporary economies of networked image cultures and their aesthetic, ideological and political implications. After an opening night at Kino Xenix on the 2nd of October and a following day at Cabaret Voltaire, the final day takes the conference to Fotomuseum Winterthur.
The full program of the conference can be found here.
The event will take place in English.
Admission to the talk is free. A valid exhibition ticket is required for the guided tour.
Registration: The conference is open to all interested guests. As places are limited, we kindly ask you to register here.
Programme
10:00–12:30 Aesthetic Responses
with Sara Bezovšek, Marie-France Rafael, Noura Tafeche
Moderation: Marco De Mutiis
What is the potential of artistic interventions in response to the conditions of platform capitalism? Engaging with the works of Noura Tafeche and Sara Bezovšek in the exhibition The Lure of the Image, the panel approaches the way arts-based methodologies critically mobilise and reappropriate the image worlds and aesthetics of platform capitalism, playing off and subverting the mechanisms of our contemporary reaction economies.
12:30–14:00 Lunch Break
14:00–15:00 Guided Tour The Lure of the Image with digital curator Marco De Mutiis
This event takes place in the framework of the exhibition The Lure of the Image. The show explores contemporary digital forms of photography and their seductive powers: How do images bait or beguile us as they circulate online? How do they compel, capture or control us? Various artistic positions engage with visual phenomena that serve as vehicles for online communication, criticism and humour, highlighting the crucial role images play in shaping our social, cultural and political landscapes.
The international conference organised by the DIZH Bridge Professorship for Digital Cultures and Arts at the University of Zurich brings together scholars and artists from a range of fields and backgrounds. The conference "React & Respond" aims to map and analyse these contemporary economies of networked image cultures and their aesthetic, ideological and political implications. After an opening night at Kino Xenix on the 2nd of October and a following day at Cabaret Voltaire, the final day takes the conference to Fotomuseum Winterthur.
The full program of the conference can be found here.
The event will take place in English.
Admission to the talk is free. A valid exhibition ticket is required for the guided tour.
Registration: The conference is open to all interested guests. As places are limited, we kindly ask you to register here.
Programme
10:00–12:30 Aesthetic Responses
with Sara Bezovšek, Marie-France Rafael, Noura Tafeche
Moderation: Marco De Mutiis
What is the potential of artistic interventions in response to the conditions of platform capitalism? Engaging with the works of Noura Tafeche and Sara Bezovšek in the exhibition The Lure of the Image, the panel approaches the way arts-based methodologies critically mobilise and reappropriate the image worlds and aesthetics of platform capitalism, playing off and subverting the mechanisms of our contemporary reaction economies.
12:30–14:00 Lunch Break
14:00–15:00 Guided Tour The Lure of the Image with digital curator Marco De Mutiis
This event takes place in the framework of the exhibition The Lure of the Image. The show explores contemporary digital forms of photography and their seductive powers: How do images bait or beguile us as they circulate online? How do they compel, capture or control us? Various artistic positions engage with visual phenomena that serve as vehicles for online communication, criticism and humour, highlighting the crucial role images play in shaping our social, cultural and political landscapes.