This lexicon was developed by the curators of this exhibition to define the vocabulary as it relates to the content of the website.
Find these words throughout the site in orange.
Agency:
a person’s ability to act or intervene; to produce a change
Alter:
to change an image’s conceptual, spatial, temporal trajectory in a significant way
Appropriation:
a curatorial act; an artistic act; (re)contextualizing an image in a violent, creative, generative, destructive, subtractive way; an assertion of power over an image; its erasure, theft, contemporization, performance, homage, reference, critique, interrogation, reflexivity, fiction, subjective truth, collapse
Archetype:
an ideal example; an original; a recurrent symbol
Archive:
a collection of data pertaining to a particular archetype
Collapse:
a process in which a structure falls in on itself or is deconstructed; to break down a structure in order to expose and densify information
Colonialism:
the policy or practice of acquiring full or partial political control over another people/culture, and the occupation and exploitation of that people/culture
Contemporary history:
histories understood as constructions of contemporary discourse; the collapse of the past and present in an ongoing reworking of narrative
Content:
substantive information or creative material of something; its meaning
Context:
the political, social, cultural, temporal, spatial constellation in which an object/image operates
Curating:
the practice of exhibition making through the selection of objects, images, documents, in line with an aesthetic, or conceptual thesis
Curatorial:
the conceptual constellations that inform the making of an exhibition
Currency:
the tangible representation of circulation within a system of exchange
Deconstruct:
analyze by the stripping away of layers of text, typically in order to expose hidden internal assumptions and contradictions and subvert apparent unity
Digital age:
a period in human history characterized by the shift from traditional industrialism to an economy based on information networks, service industries, and cultural currency
Density:
the depth of temporal, spatial, contextual, information within a single image or moment
Documentation:
the means by which ephemera (events, performance, interactions) are solidified in space
Event:
something that happens in a specific place at a specific time
Format:
the structure in which information is arranged and through which it is expressed
History:
the contemporary understanding of events from the past
Identity:
the ability to construct a self in relation to sociopolitical, economic, cultural norms
Image:
a representation of the external form of a person or thing in art
Informational Blockage:
to obstruct information from traveling through a network; halting communication
Informational Passage:
to facilitate the travel and communication of information
Institution:
an established system or place of cultural practice
Lexicon:
the vocabulary through which a system expresses itself
Mine:
to delve into an archive to extract, reconsider, and recontextualize an image
Monument:
a rigid structure that validates/perpetuates a fixed historical narrative
Monument to Ruin:
a deconstructed/collapsed monument that generates multiple, divergent, histories
Multiples:
the manifestation of an image, separate from its origin, that transcends notions of aura and authenticity
Original:
the assumption of an authentic source of a multiple
Popular Media:
institutionalized image circulation for a national/global audience
Poor Image:
a reproduction that deteriorates as it is circulated
Performance:
the intentional movement of bodies in space and time for an audience
Photojournalism:
the illustration of contemporary history in a linear narrative
Pixelation:
the degradation of a digital image
Reactivate:
the resurrection of an image in order to complicate its contextual/historical substance
Recontextualize:
to place or consider an image in a new or different context
Reference:
the use of a specific piece of information to illustrate the substance of an image
Remythologize:
to make a new mythological system out of an existing one
Restaging:
a performative parrotting removed in time from the original event
Stereotype:
a widely held but fixed and essentialized image or idea of a particular identity
Symbol:
something used for or regarded as representing something else