Still Searching…

From 2012 to 2023, the discursive blog format of Fotomuseum Winterthur subjected all aspects of photography and its role in visual culture to interdisciplinary scrutiny. The approximately 50 bloggers that contributed to Still Searching… discussed photographic media and forms within their complex technological, capitalist and ideological networks and negotiated some of the most pressing and relevant questions surrounding photography.

Blog series: The Spaces of Appearance

Nicholas Mirzoeff | 01.11. – 22.12.2016
The Spaces of Appearance

Philosopher Hannah Arendt coined the phrase ‘the space of appearance’ to convey her sense of where politics takes place. Until mid-December, Nicholas Mirzoeff will be exploring the spaces of appearance constituted by the intersection of the ‘right to appear’ (Butler) and the ‘right to look’ in both present-day and historical contexts. How does this space of appearance work, and what happens in the space of representation in politics and visual media that is its counter?

The posts will be written ‘live,’ in the week prior to publication, rather than being excerpts from finished, written work. Themes that are likely to be considered include the state(s) of whiteness, decolonizing the space of appearance, and Black Lives Matter and its intersections. Dialogue is welcome!

MAGA Masculinity, Scary Clowns and the Souls of White Folk

Tuesday, 01.11.2016

<p>During the revolutionary upheavals of 2011 from Tahrir Square to Occupy Wall Street, a transformation of real conditions of lived existence seemed at hand. In 1958, philosopher Hannah Arendt coined the phrase ‘the space of appearance’ to convey her sense of where politics takes place. This space, derived from the ancient Greek city-state, was constituted by exclusion of women, children, enslaved human beings and non-Greeks.</p>

It's on Us

Thursday, 10.11.2016

<p>Like so many others, I misjudged this. I had a draft of a post about how to undo whiteness post-Trump. Today these moves seem shallow, smug, self-righteous. It’s time to reflect. Trump and his followers are all about ‘them’: women, people of color, Mexicans. But what’s happened is on us, those people who are identified as white. We did this – or failed to stop it – and it’s mostly going to be people of color that pay the price.</p>

A Broken Hallelujah: Mourning and Militancy for the Age of Authoritarian Nationalism

Thursday, 17.11.2016

<p>The clock of the world is showing a new time that we’re struggling to understand. Neo-liberalism became hegemonic in the doubled moment of Thatcher and Reagan coming to power (1979–80). Brexit-Trump heralds a toxic new formation of white supremacy, patriarchy and nationalism. What Stuart Hall called ‘the great moving right show’ in 1977 has become the ‘it’s great to be white show’ in 2016.</p>

Empty the Museum, Decolonize the Curriculum: For the (Roman) General Strike

Friday, 25.11.2016

<p>How does white supremacy make itself normal and the given against which other actions are judged? In <em>Black Skin, White Masks</em>, Frantz Fanon claimed that cartoons and other forms of popular culture taught (white) people how to be racist. What teaches them/us how to be ‘white’? Whiteness demarcates the boundaries of the space of appearance and makes it a space of representation. To be admitted to this space is to not be, or have been, enslaved. And to be of the imperial group rather than the indigenous.</p>

Visual Sovereignty and Standing Rock: Decolonizing Native Spaces of Appearance

Thursday, 01.12.2016

<p>When I visited Aotearoa New Zealand in 2005, the conference I attended was opened by a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/tepuia.rotorua.nz/videos/861806003922772/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Maori</a> <em>rangatira</em> (leader; chief, if you must). As the visiting <em>rangatira,</em> I had to respond. It was a moving way to begin the event and it reminded everyone of the realities of settler colonialism.</p>