Closure

Our visual culture has changed radically in recent decades: With incredible speed, the networked image has spawned new image forms and cultural practices – with unprecedented social and political implications. Memes and GIFS, selfies and Instagram filters, algorithms and neural networks, screenshots and drone images, net feminism and online visual activism, content moderators, influencers and attention economies: The image-based phenomena of our time have not only changed and expanded photography and its functions, but also challenged our understanding of it. With SITUATIONS, Fotomuseum Winterthur has spent around five years tracking the techniques, practices, and aesthetics of the post-photographic and putting them up for discussion.

The last cluster of SITUATIONS is dedicated to the circumstance of working through a question or an event with the desire to find clear answers and thus a conclusion – a closure. Within this process, which is often doomed to failure, photographic practices take on a central role by initiating an argument, setting a closing point, or setting an endless loop in motion. Whether in the form of ritual acts, of the reappropriation and reoccupation of spaces, narratives, and gaze regimes, or of a closure that turns out to be a short circuit, the works presented irritate and challenge ideological, capitalist, and colonial systems-and thus ultimately display photography as a universal form of expression.

With works by Samrat Banerjee, FRAUD, Simon Fujiwara, knowbotiq, Rhea Storr, Alba Zari and others.
SITUATIONS/Closure was developed in collaboration with the course of study Master of Arts in Art Education Curatorial Studies from Zurich University of the Arts. The jointly developed exhibition concept focused on contemporary artistic positions that address the relevance and complexity of the digital for the photographic. A research board developed by the group of students visualises the various development steps that led to the final exhibition. From the first concept studies to the discussed artists and documents of the final exhibition, impressions from the curatorial research process are shown. Thus, relevant connections between exhibition, curatorial research approaches, artist longlist and concept studies can be opened up.> Katrin Bauer, Kim Anni Bassen and Laura Schläpfer of Master Art Education Curatorial Studies were involved in the project. The project was supervised by Dr. Heiko Schmid (lecturer Master Art Education Curatorial Studies) and setup in collaboration with the SITUATIONS team of Fotomuseum Winterthur. 

Kindly supported by the Friends’ Association Fotomuseum Winterthur.