Curatorial Text
Images are an inseparable and inherent aspect of contemporary life. Its existence has deeply ingrained in our daily routine and all range of activities. We utilize it to communicate, to mediate information, to aid educational activity, and so on. Not only in being productive, but images might also serve itself as a form of entertainment, to bring the enjoyment of life and gave colors to our mundane and tedious routine. Their significance in our society is positively affected by continuous improvement in technological advance, which not only contributing to the ever-increasing accessibility of image production and manipulation but as a continuous attempt of creating a platform of its distribution, which in turn helps to aid our familiarity to their existence. By being familiar with us, images are also a democratic form of ‘aesthetic expression’. It no longer becomes a privilege and exclusively reserved for artists and designers alike, but to be a very populist medium for every citizen of global, contemporary society. Incidental or not, our present condition that mandates or even warrants us to intentionally limit societal interaction emphasize further the primacy of image and our dependence on them. Never before the utilitarian benefit of ‘image production’ manage to sufficiently conserve our level of industrial productivity to a certain limit and thus avoiding social unrest and global economic catastrophe. These various factors – the extensive scope of distribution, ease of production, and deep penetration and intense application both in casual or formal context – represent the omnipresence and inevitability of image, and also of its nature of being ‘immediate’.
The present state and significance of image to our society is surely a cultural phenomenon that promises numerous prospects and containing several risks as well. These continuous exposure and production have been contributing not only to the ever-changing and ever-shifting cultural landscape but also to our value as humanity in general. Unfortunately, the immediacy of image might alter our interest from the substance and value of things rather than to its superficial, temporal, and ‘surficial’ qualities. Aggravated by the triumphant of neoliberal economics which relies on consumption as its primary driving force, the utilization of image as ‘lubricant’ of marketing persuasion nurtures our petty desires and fetishism to the trivial, alienating ourselves from the value of living and existential awareness. Aside from this issue, technological advances in image production and manipulation offering us the possibilities of ‘expansion’ or arguably ‘another version’ of the real, detaching us from our physical existence through digital simulation with its prowess of manipulation. Even more problematic, these advances in image production promising its value as one of the most viable instruments of global surveillance and monitoring, entrapping us in an enclosed panopticon where privacy and individual liberty were compromised, enabling those who wield power to contain us in our ‘docile body’.
In another case, our achievement in image production offering us its potential to be utilized as a medium of critic, of social reporting, of personal expression, or generally, as an ideal instrument to deliver statements. and manifesting ideas. For those who wield the visual sensibilities of image-making, that of artists and designer, these technological advance promises extensive variabilities that are virtually limitless. Their endless effort transform images into a referential, elastic, and versatile resources for artistic expression. It could be utilized to form meaning and deliver critic and messages. As formerly stated that image is an effective instrument of power, image is also a versatile medium to criticize false governance and abuse of power.
These are some backgrounds that precede and motivate this exhibition, Immediacy of Image, that will be presented and mediated in the format of a website. Through gathering various inputs, statements, and critics from artists and creators, this exhibition will provide a space of cultural exchange that aims to address the immediacy of images as a cultural phenomenon, and as a platform to explore, discuss, and further scrutinize the existential merit of images in our society – unraveling its potentials and registering its risks as well. The format that this exhibition utilizes, manifested in the form of a world wide web, was determined to follow the spirit of this exhibition and emphasize the quality of being immediate as its core concerns and primary point of interest, and also to strengthen its relevance of discussing image in its ‘native’ environment. This format also proposes possibilities to expand its scope of participants to invite regional and international artists, thus expand the scope of discussion to the level of global culture.
Gumilar Ganjar