Lecture: From Screen Burns to Oil Spills

Materials, whether naturally occurring, industrially manufactured, or computationally derived behave in essence as mediatic sensors that archive their complex interactions with the world, producing ontological transformations and informatic dispositions that can be forensically decoded and reassembled back into a history. I call these non-human entities and machinic ecologies material witnesses. Through the presentation of a series of cases and screening of clips this talk tries to account for the myriad ways in which the responsiveness of matter to external forces demands an acute and renewed sense of material and technical specificity to grasp the full political implications that such ongoing changes or interactions might yield. How do our subjective modes of perception and choice of interpretative frameworks play a decisive role in determining what kinds of matters actually matter?

Susan Schuppli is an artist and researcher based in the UK, whose work examines material evidence from war and conflict to environmental disasters. Current work explores the ways in which toxic ecologies from nuclear accidents and oil spills to the dark snow of the arctic are producing an “extreme image” archive of material wrongs. Recent projects include Trace Evidence, a video trilogy commissioned by Arts Catalyst UK & Bildmuseet, Sweden and Atmospheric Feedback Loops, a Vertical Cinema commission for Sonic Acts, Amsterdam. She has published widely within the context of media and politics and is author of the forthcoming book, Material Witness (MIT Press). Schuppli is Reader and Acting Director of the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths University of London and was previously Senior Research Fellow on the Forensic Architecture project. In 2016, she received the ICP Infinity Award for Critical Writing and Research.