Open Image

2017 – 2019

Open image is a series of conversations bringing together academics, students, professional and amateur image-makers and image-lovers, on work with images, what they do, how they affect us, and what public and more private roles they fulfill.

We invite all those who, like us, are enthralled with and intrigued by images to join us by bringing their own images, and reflections on them, to what we hope will become a productive, pleasurable, and periodic gathering around images. Open image is a space to discuss, exchange, and workshop our ongoing projects.

Our understanding of the image is capacious, embracing digital, analog, moving, and still, ranging from the more glossy to the ‘subaltern,’ from fugitive, ephemeral images (dis)appearing on cellphones, sprayed on walls or limited by the space and temporality of an installation or performance.  But also painted images, collages, graphic novels, maps, and the many other kinds of images and image genres that might be deemed more ‘traditional’ and are equally welcome and important.

This is one sense in which our working title—Open Image Project/l’Image Ouverte—is meant, that is, in terms of an evolving, open-ended gloss on what images are and can be. Equally important is the emphasis on the multiple–indeed frequently unexpected–effects that images can have on those who engage them. Open Image/l’Image Ouverte also alludes to the impact and key public role of all kinds of images in the world today. 

Organized by Patricia Spyer and Marie de Lutz