We photograph to remember. We photograph to forget. Every picture we take ensures that we have something to return to should the moment it depicts slip from our minds. We don’t store snapshots in old photo albums anymore: Rather, apps turn the photographic documents into a constant flow of pictures which first and foremost share our iterations of the present. Uploaded in digital environments, information is added and new contexts affect their meaning, changing not only concepts of remembering and archiving, but the very „memory“ of the material that we use.

The international group exhibition “Picture(s) Now: Constructions of Temporality since Social Media” gathers works which tackle the mediation of the moment within image based media.

The exhibition is based on notions which suggest that social media has led to a new-conceptualization of the moment/ary: we upload pictures, we Snapchat and Instagram, and add comments to our curated lives. On Facebook, we return to life events, or experience the memory-function reminding us of last year’s events. While our photo albums gather dust at home, we connect with one other in real time, sending pictures – which communicate the “Here and Now” – over and over again. Once looked at, they disappear forever.

What happens when practices of “looking back” shift the constant reference to the present? Is the unique snapshot, cut out of space and time, being replaced by a flow of pictures which turns out to be as ephemeral as the captured moment itself? How does the inscription of extra information shift when confronted with different technologies? How are photographs being contextualized and how is information added to them? How can we document something when meaning only reveals itself in the context of social media?

The works of Alexandra Heide, Tobias Hübel, Daniel Neubacher, Martin Petersen, Norman Sandler and Yanai Toister tie in with these questions.  In addition the products of the workshop Instant : Document will be implemented in the exhibition. The workshops allows students of Shenkar College and University of Applied to work with artists Alexandra Heide and Daniel Neubacher in order to create their own image based constructions of the moment. 

An exhibition of Shenkar College of Engineering, Design & Art and University of Applied Sciences Potsdam, in cooperation with Kunstbibliothek der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin.

Curation: Lisa Andergassen, Yvonne Bialek and Rabea Rugenstein

Sponsored by Inspire Lab for Image Research, Shenkar College of Engineering, Design & Art.