Karen Strassler - The Findley History of Art Lecture Series
"From Art to Porn: Watching the Image-Event in Indonesia’s Public Sphere"
February 20, 2020, 4:30 pm, Goldwin Smith Hall G22
reception to follow
In September 2005, members of the Islamic Defenders Front demanded the removal of Pinkswing Park, an artwork by a prominent Indonesian artist, on the grounds that it was pornographic. This paper charts the “image-event” of Pinkswing Park, arguing that the controversy around the artwork was both a product of, and a referendum on, the ease of circulation of images in Indonesia’s complexly mediated, loosely regulated post-authoritarian public sphere. My analysis forms part of a broader argument about why and how we might attend to the eventfulness of images within contemporary political processes.
