Disruptions: On Photography and Capitalism Professor David Bate and Layal Ftouni

David Bate and Layal Ftouni talk to participating artists and discuss the work exhibited in On Borrowed Time, an exhibition created by MA Photographic Studies students from the University of Westminster in response to Burak Delier’s exhibition Freedom has no script.

The talk addresses the implicatedness of photographic practices in the culture of capitalism, be it through consolidation or critique. It further looks at the position of artist vis a vis market forces, the future of art education and artistic practices in light of austerity measures.

David Bate is a photo-artist and theorist. His books include the international visual work Zone (London: Artwords, 2012), Photography: Key Concepts (Berg: 2009) and Photography and Surrealism (I.B Tauris, 2004). Forthcoming works include collected visual works and essays on art photography. He is course leader of the MA Photographic Studies programme and Professor of Photography at the University of Westminster, London.

Layal Ftouni is a researcher and visiting lecturer at University of Westminster and SOAS, University of London. She is currently writing up her thesis
titled Dismantling or Reproducing the Orientalist Canon: Neo-Orientalism in Contemporary Visual Arts. She is currently working on a book with Tarik Sabry titled Arab Subcultures: Transformations in Theory and Practice (I.B. Tauris) and has recently published “Rethinking Gender Studies: Towards an Arab Feminist Epistemology” in Arab Cultural Studies: Mapping the Field (2012).