The group exhibition Zipped Worlds at the Photodays festival in Rovinj
Breda Beban, Dario Belić, Emma Ciceri, Fabrizio Giraldi, G.R.A.M., Borut Krajnc,
Paula Muhr, Adrian Paci, Eva Petrič & Laurent Ziegler, Metka Zupanič
6 – 31 May 2016
Centre for Visual Arts Batana, Rovinj
Zipped Worlds is a collaborative project by partner organisations Photon – Centre for Contemporary Photography and Trieste Contemporanea, in which curators explore new concepts of public and private, as communicated through the present use of photographic images. The exhibition brings together works of 12 artists from different European countries.
Photography is entering public space with its physical presence, through digital media and furthermore through the notion that everything around us is constantly being recorded. Photography is de facto the most ubiquitously present visual medium in today’s urban environment. Within this wide spectrum, photography appears in public space (urban exteriors and interiors) in the traditional form of a “picture” as well as through the omnipresence of a network of surveillance cameras that record images non-stop. At a time when most of us have mobile phone devices and digital cameras, we paradoxically insist on our right to privacy whilst simultaneously “snap-shooting” everything we see.
We are the most photographed and recorded world population ever. CCTV systems, Google Street View, security, satellite and other cameras follow every step we take, which means that we are also the most visually controlled population of all time. On the one hand, there is our desire to capture fragments of everyday life in images, and on the other hand, there is ever-increasing inclination to censor and exert control over the same images. These trends are, in essence, contradictory and paradoxical. Hence, photography in the public sphere is becoming an extremely contentious area in which collective fears of terrorism, paedophilia, intrusions on privacy and control over images converge. This also raises legal issues, in particular as regards to the restriction of the use of photography in the public space. Especially digital – Internet public space raises also a number of aesthetic, formal and ethical issues, and some of them are questioned by the artists involved in the Zipped Worlds project.
Curators: Giuliana Carbi & Dejan Sluga
