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Gallery

Terms and Conditions. The Legal Form of Images

Public seminar
10.4.2024, 3.30 p.m. – 7p.m.
With: Gwinyai Machona, Asia Bazdyrieva and an introduction by Tom Holert and Doreen Mende (Harun Farocki Institute, Berlin)
11.4. 2024, 10 a.m. – 1p.m
With: titre provisoire (Cathleen Schuster/Marcel Dickhage) in conversation with Renan Laru-an
Location: HGB Galerie

The public seminar is the starting point for "Performing a Case Study" at the HGB Gallery (10.4. - 10.5.2024) with the participation of the classes Expanded Cinema (Clemens von Wedemeyer / Mareike Bernien) and Photography and Media (Ines Schaber / Susanne Keichel).

On the initiative of the Harun Farocki Institute, Berlin, the HGB will be collaborating over the next two years on the artistic research project "Terms and Conditions. The Legal Form of Images". Developed together with artists, filmmakers, art historians, legal scholars, and media theorists and in collaboration with various exhibition venues in Berlin, Leipzig, Dresden, Zürich and Locarno, "Terms and Conditions" will inquire the largely overlooked (or willfully ignored) legal and paralegal frameworks which increasingly inform the contemporary art culture.

"Terms and Conditions. The Legal Form of Images" starts with a two-day launch event at the HGB Gallery. Conceived as a public seminar, there will be presentations, conversations and exchanges with the art historian Asia Bazdyrieva, the legal scholar Gwinyai Machona and the artist duo titre provisoire (Cathleen Schuster/Marcel Dickhage) (in conversation with the researcher, curator and artistic director of Savvy Contemporary Art Renan Laru-an).

The event will also mark the start of three Case Studies that will be developed with the students from the departments of Media art / Expanded Cinema (Clemens von Wedemeyer / Mareike Bernien) and of Photography / Photography and Media (Ines Schaber / Susanne Keichel) respectively in the HGB gallery (directed by Ilse Lafer).

Increasingly, contemporary image culture is informed by legal and para-legal frameworks. From state legislations to corporate regulations, from intellectual property and copyright to privacy issues, the operations of the law or law-like agencies permeate the fields of art and visual culture.

Long disavowed by cultural producers and their audiences alike, attention to these very frameworks is currently on the rise among practitioners. "Terms and Conditions. The Legal Form of Images" sets out to engage with this new work by artists, filmmakers, and scholars at the intersections of the audiovisual and the law, both locally and globally. A principal aim of the collaborative project is to foster general legal literacy in the realm of contemporary image culture—an ability to comprehend the juridical matrix in which images (here understood in a broad sense, i.e. exceeding visual representations) are embedded.

The range of topics comprised by "Terms and Conditions" pertains to the infrastructures and mechanisms governing the visibility (and invisibility) of images in the face of the law, the utilization of audiovisual media in law enforcement, court proceedings, and other legal contexts, the impact of technological developments (digitization, AI) on the language of visual forms, and the legacy of colonial laws as well as the challenge of decolonial legal concepts.

The diverse intersections of law and image ask for a multidisciplinary understanding, and demand the emergence of new actors capable of both enforcing and critically assessing these legal structures. At the core of this constellation of issues sits the tension between social struggles and the law, which has intensified alongside the crisis of the regime of truth that structured Western ideas of enlightenment, liberalism and democracy.

The project will be developed together with artists, filmmakers, art historians, legal scholars, and media theorists in collaboration with the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig (HGB), departments of film and media studies (EMW, Potsdam; UZH, Zurich), the Berlin Artistic Research Programme (BFKF, Berlin), Arsenal. Institute for Film and Video Art, Berlin, the Locarno Film Festival, and various exhibition venues (KV Leipzig and SKD, Dresden).

A cooperation project between the HGB Leipzig and the Harun Farocki Institute, Berlin.

The gallery of the Academy of Fine Art sees itself as a membrane between the interior and exterior of the institution. The gallery's aim is to supplement and extend both the teaching contents and practices of the various departments as well as making a contribution to current inquiries in the arts, thereby establishing connections between internal and external discussions and - being situated in the centre of the academy - offering a social and discursive place for carrying out such debates. In the framework of the academy's specific capabilities, the gallery affords students, lecturers, invited artists, curators and theoreticians an experimental and reflective form of exhibition practice that can incorporate, beyond the presentations themselves, the active involvement with the exhibition and the reworking and reformulating discursive material.