BTK Lecture Series on The Archetype, The Cliché and Other Simplifications

Stereotypes — constructed simplifications that are reinforced and scattered throughout our culture, largely through the mass accumulation of visual, systemic and interactive representations created by the media producers that we, at BTK, are busy building or becoming.

This lecture series takes a critical look at the encyclopedic barrage of subtle (and at times not so subtle) imprints about gender, body, sexuality, identity, race, age, nationality, ability (this list never ends) in our media-driven culture. When left unchecked, this collective flow of ‘pictures’ form the conscious and unconscious biases that lay the foundation for generational, institutional and commercial prejudice, and discrimination.

Dr. Madoka Yuki: Visualizing Japan – Lost and Found in Translation

1. Oktober 2016

11.01.17 at 7pm // room 02.01

Since its invention in 1839, photography has served as a medium for documenting, understanding, and interpreting “foreign countries and cultures”. Because of its reality-referencing characteristics, the photographic image has very often been seen as real, and has become a stereotype of unknown culture.
This lecture focuses especially on the visualizing of Japan from the foreign point of view, from the 19th century to present. It explores the following two questions: How were stereotyped images of Japan developed by means of photography during the spread of Japonism in the 19th century, at the time which marked the first western encounter with Japan after over nearly 250 years of Japanese isolation? How has this exotic imagery been influenced by our current perspectives on Japan and changed in contemporary photographic art?

Dr. Madoka Yuki is an art historian specializing in the history and theory of photography. Since finishing her dissertation — Ich-Fotografie: Kommunkationsformen der japanischen Fotografie seit den 1990er Jahren (2013, Kadmos Verlag) — sie has held curatorial fellowships in photographic collections at the Kupferstichkabinett Dresden, the Municipal Museum in Munich, the Folkwang Museum Essen, and the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, under the auspices of the “Museum Curator for Photography” program run by the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach-Stiftung. Between 2013 and 2016 she has worked as an assistant professor in the Institut Kunst und Kunstwissenschaft at the University of Duisburg-Essen.

BTK University of Art and Design
Dessauer Str. 3-5, 10963 Berlin
Room 2.01

Six invited lecturers, representing a variety of the BTK disciplines, offer diverse perspectives on stereotypes prevalent in our creative practice, in our educational system and in our professional industry.

All lectures are held in English at the BTK University of Art and Design Berlin Campus, except Till Penzek on 14.12, who will be in German at the BTK Hamburg Campus.

FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

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