Zones of Conflict: Rethinking Contemporary Art during Global Crisis

Zones of conflict have proliferated globally, designating a historically unprecedented condition of war without geographical and temporal limit, one confronting a ‘terrorism’ similarly without spatio-temporal boundaries. Artistic responses have included the documentation of military action, the memorialisation of loss, activism against war, and conceptual analyses of military and media representations. But conflict has also sundered artistic representation, pressing the need for the reinvention of documentary strategies and the acknowledgment that conventional forms of realism are no longer adequate. Following seven years of the so-called ‘war on terror’, we are now in a position to consider in what ways contemporary art has confronted social and political upheaval and ‘infinite war’.

Participants: Kodwo Eshun and Anjalika Sagar of The Otolith Group (London); Lamia Joreige (Beirut); Amna Malik, The Slade School of Fine Art (London); Julian Stallabrass, The Courtauld Institute (London); Hito Steyerl (Berlin).

Image Wars is the first in a series of research workshops organised and moderated by TJ Demos. Follow the link in the right-hand column to find out more about the other three workshops.