POETICS OF SEARCH

Poetics of Search – Your search for “miracles” results in 2 entries
29.10.2022–12.02.2023

Fotomuseum Winterthur, Passage

Today, research and therefore finding information as well as (photographic) images are mediated and informed by digital search requests. The exhibition focuses on the search as an actor that shapes our formation of ideas, knowledge, and selection processes – and thus influences our cultural present.

When looking at collection revision processes or the research on biases, inscribed in the holdings of archives and institutions, every search is confronted with a fundamental problem: Collections are defined not only by their visible objects but to the same extent by their voids: By absences and omissions – by what is not preserved or not named in the system and thus remains untraceable and invisible. The perspectives of those who do not find themselves represented in public collections illustrate the necessity to revise collections and question their criteria again and again.

Beyond the institution and its collection curators, the show reflects on digital search engines and algorithms as a second layer of non-human gatekeepers, shaping visibility.

The exhibition develops a playful experiment by initiating a dialogue between underrepresented voices and the collections of Fotomuseum Winterthur and the photo library via the search function. For this process the poems Who Said It Was Simple (1973) by Audre Lorde and My Tongue is Divided into Two (2004) by Quique Avilés were entered as search texts into the search fields of the collection databases. The two authors were deliberately chosen as their texts reflect colonial structures of language and destabilize power structures. Through the search results, but also the voids that reveal themselves through such a “poetics of search,” visitors are invited to understand the search process as a critical as well as experimental practice.

Acknowledging the transformation of the relationship between the photographic medium and text, the show does not only introduce the search text as a narrative to engage with the collections but also explores GAN Technology to understand it as a tool to create digital photographic anarchives, that visualize perspectives and voices who have been excluded for decades. By versioning the two poems into prompt texts to create GAN-photographs the exhibition shows synthetic text-based photography in dialogue with the collection. Examining the ongoing emergence of AI-based new imaging technologies, the exhibition shows them both in their potential as an artistic and activist tool, as much as a continuation of historical biases, inscribed into the archives that the technology is trained with.

The exhibition is a research sketch, exploring new ways of engaging digital infrastructures and search processes into curatorial practice and exhibition concepts.

With works by a.o. Graciela Iturbide, Robert Frank, Max Pinckers, Boris Mikhailov, Guerrilla Girls

Special thanks to my collaborators Juan Diaz Bohorquez and Dr. Doris Gassert.

GAN-images: Audre Lorde’s poem Who Said It Was Simple (1973) and My Tongue is Divided into Two (2004) by Quique Avilés interpreted as images via Midjourney’s GAN and Stable Diffusion, 2022 © Juan Diaz Bohorquez and Nadine Isabelle Henrich

Exhibition photographs: Ⓒ Conradin Frei, Courtesy Fotomuseum Winterthur, 2022.

For further info visit the Fotomuseum website here.

This case study on digital search processes and networked co-curation explores ways of revising collections and how to exhibit their patterns, blind spots, and biases, which will be published online on the website of Fotomuseum Winterthur. Read my essay on the case study here.