CfP: Digital realities: political imagery and mediatized nature in times of Covid-19

Since the outbreak of the pandemic, public life has shifted to the digital realm. This primacy of the visual and the suddenness of this global shift has led to new types of ephemeral images: Cartoons and children's drawings of the (invisible) virus, photographs of empty cities, protest signs posted online as digital forms of strike and political self-portraits of activist groups, charts of daily cases and vaccination rates and expressions of solidarity. The focus of the workshop will be on digital ephemera in times of Covid-19, as current political crises such as the pandemic, social fractures, and climate change, along with its narratives, collide here. These range from virtual protests to a changed perception of nature and the pandemic’s disruption of global everyday life to questions of disinformation. Using examples of images, we will discuss the emergence of a time-specific political-ecological iconography and what influence this has on the ubiquitous generation and distribution of digital (moving) images as images and representatives of pandemic reality.
The workshop will take place on 15 and 16 December 2021 at the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, München.