Transmedia Narratives: Lightbox Photo Library Session (with post-screening discussion)
Discussion to be conducted primarily in Mandarin.
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Special Measures- Keep your face masks on at all times
- No smoking, eating or drinking. Unauthorised photo-taking, audio and/or video recording is strictly forbidden
- Venue staff have the right to deny the admission of any person with temperature higher than 37.5°C
Overview
Against an evolving constellation of creative media in the post-media age, it has become near impossible for us to examine contemporary photographic practices while adhering to the definitions of traditional art history, photography theories from the era of mechanical reproduction, or modernist notions of medium. Singularly, the dematerialisation of art and the confluence of different media is being accelerated by technology and the internet. If we move beyond the conception of photography as static image and cross over into transmedia, it may guide us to unearth new possibilities in creative practices, new aesthetic perceptions, and new narrative potential in photography, conceiving and reconceiving it in diverse formats.
This also brings us to the problematics that arise from the shift from photography to transmedia storytelling or the kinetic energy of ‘expanded photography’: “This is no longer photography. What has it become?” It prompts us to rethink and reshape relationships between photography and different forms of image, including film, video and animation. The question of how the convergence between photography and moving image may be contextualised is indeed worth investigating.
On the other hand, transmedia is not just a tactic in the times of pandemic, but an exploration into the vitality of photography that resists definition. It illuminates the dialectical tensions between ‘stillness and movement’, ‘narrative and non-narrative’, ‘personal and historical’, and ‘archive and art’ that are inherent in photography discourse.
Beyond the quest for new interpretations, the five works selected for this showcase mark an attempt to return to the chaos, ambiguity and ambivalence of photography before the art became institutionalised. Meanwhile, these photographic transfiguration offer a different kind of opening for us to intervene in grand historical narratives.
The five artists engage in disciplines spanning photography, video and film, while their subjects include observations of everyday culture, reflections on personal memories and life histories, and reinterpretations of archival images. Their works embody the ‘in-betweenness’ of photography, and present new beginnings for the viewer to reimagine and rethink visual narratives.
