Saskia Smith
1999, Leuven
Based in Brussels
Medusa Offspace
Polyflows
The Bureau
Digital BlingFri Jul 19 2022What distinguishes certain image-edits, causing them to outpour with meaning or give rise to social relations, be “thicker,” than others? This session embarks on a gesture to collectively read images that have been subjected to phone-edits, deepening our understanding of their socially formative potential, investigating why and how certain images may be charged with specific connotations. Anthropologist Jennifer Deger’s article “Thick Photography” will contribute to our understanding of this question as she observed a unique visual culture within the Aboriginal Australian Yolŋu community. This visual culture involves image-editing practices that incorporate layered embellishments, shimmering frames, and sparkly graphics onto portraits. The infusion of “digital bling” transforms Yolŋu photographs into a nuanced medium, expressing cultural textures, animating meaning, and mediating traditional Yolŋu cultural heritage. Given the emergence of this visual style on early internet platforms like blingee.com, we ponder on how the meanings and connotations of the visible surface vary across diverse social, temporal, and cultural contexts.
Keywords: internet, camp, glitter
