Table of Con­tents | Arti­cle doi: 10.17742/IMAGE.SA.12.1.1 | PDF

Structures of Anticipation: An Introduction

The Project

Struc­tures of Antic­i­pa­tion,² a four-day mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­nary sym­po­sium and exhi­bi­tion held in Wind­sor, Ontario on 21-24 May 2019, drew many of its core ideas from engage­ment with aca­d­e­mics, arts/media the­o­reti­cians and prac­ti­tion­ers, and cul­tur­al com­mu­ni­ties. It was part of a series of inter­na­tion­al workshops/events held since 2014 in the US, UK, Ger­many, and Greece—the series is com­mit­ted to find­ing col­lab­o­ra­tive prac­tices between art and media prac­ti­tion­ers, aca­d­e­mics, and research stu­dents from dif­fer­ent back­grounds. The Wind­sor-based sym­po­sium and exhi­bi­tion was focused on the image-text rela­tion­ship and the cri­sis of rep­re­sen­ta­tion gen­er­at­ed by the rapid inten­si­ty of break­ing news in crit­i­cal times.

The event mobi­lized cam­era-led research cre­ation where­in cri­tique is under­stood to emerge in the encounter in which the pho­to­graph is put into con­ver­sa­tion with writ­ing. Shut­tling between image and text is a process of rec­ti­fi­ca­tion, embod­ied learn­ing, and exper­i­ment. We were inter­est­ed in address­ing the rela­tion­ship of words and images, and how these texts (framed with­in an econ­o­my of words) might be deployed as a reflex­ive pause that can help us with­stand the emo­tion­al instan­ta­ne­ity of the dig­i­tal realm.

Par­tic­i­pants in the sym­po­sium were asked to respond to the theme with­in the built envi­ron­ment of Wind­sor, Ontario—a bor­der city to Detroit that is also the busiest cross­ing in North Amer­i­ca as well as the mate­r­i­al and sym­bol­ic site of dai­ly and tense antic­i­pa­tions. Each par­tic­i­pant was asked to pro­duce five images and gen­er­ate texts of no more than one hun­dred words to accom­pa­ny each image with­in a span of 48 hours. The econ­o­my of the 100 words chal­lenged par­tic­i­pants to be care­ful with writ­ing, and to select words that mat­ter in rela­tion­ship to the image. Our method engaged with the terse genre of writ­ing found on social media sites like Twit­ter, but encour­aged reflex­iv­i­ty rather than reac­tiv­i­ty. What was left unsaid, visu­al­ized as the spaces between the words, con­tributed to the struc­ture of antic­i­pa­tion that we endeav­ored to engage. The research cre­ation process and the sym­po­sium event chal­lenged con­ven­tion­al modes of method­ol­o­gy to high­light the idea of respon­sive pro­duc­tions and con­cep­tu­al­iza­tion in the process of word-image cre­ations. Such min­i­mal­ist prac­tices, how­ev­er, also elide and invoke silences, and what is left unsaid, or the spaces between the words, is pos­si­bly where the images might compensate—or vice ver­sa. These dip­tychs³ were then dis­played in a pub­lic exhi­bi­tion on the final day of the sym­po­sium (24 May, 2019) at the SB Con­tem­po­rary Art Gallery in Wind­sor.⁴ The pho­to-com­po­si­tions pub­lished here are part of the over­all project and rep­re­sent anoth­er stage of the process.

Intensities

On the day of the instal­la­tion and just before the exhi­bi­tion was due to open, a heat­ed dis­cus­sion broke out over one par­tic­u­lar image. It is one of five images cap­tured around the theme of sur­veil­lance, and part of a sequence of pho­tographs cap­tur­ing the mate­r­i­al envi­ron­ment of secu­ri­ti­za­tion and the nor­mal­iza­tion of surveillance.

The pho­tog­ra­ph­er had cap­tured a seem­ing­ly innocu­ous image: a fig­ure of a woman cross­es the street and from an angle, as if she is being watched from behind a store win­dow or from the mov­ing car—or rather as if we—not just the pho­tog­ra­ph­er, but the view­er as well—are watch­ing her. We can­not see her clear­ly. The reflec­tions enhance the photograph’s mul­ti-lay­ered ambi­gu­i­ty in a per­fect­ly framed image. On the right are “no park­ing” and “stop” signs in a rather unas­sum­ing neigh­bour­hood. It is all grey, green, and lush but it is the figure’s cloth­ing which stands out, draws our eye towards her—her bright red and blue fab­ric attracts our imme­di­ate atten­tion as she walks across the street.

An objec­tion arises—she is clear­ly not white; she wears a hijab—she is iden­ti­fied (by the objec­tor) as a Muslim—is the pho­tog­ra­ph­er cod­ing her into a trope of racial anx­i­ety in their work on sur­veil­lance? The objector—who is not a participant—continues argu­ing: should this pho­to­graph be includ­ed? Does this fig­ure know she is being stereo­typed, uneth­i­cal­ly used, and appro­pri­at­ed in an exhi­bi­tion orga­nized by aca­d­e­mics and the cul­tur­al class? This fig­ure is with­out voice or representation—she is once again Gay­a­tri Spivak’s sub­al­tern who can­not speak. There are no objec­tions made of oth­er pho­tographs with non-vis­i­ble minor­i­ty peo­ple in them.

We the cura­tors let the pho­to­graph stand. The text which accom­pa­nied the pho­to­graph had addressed an aspect of uneasy sur­veil­lance anx­i­eties in a broad­er environment—which was the gen­er­al sub­ject of the series. More in order to affect this cri­tique, the image in ques­tion was extract­ed from its con­text. The pho­tog­ra­ph­er and writer had pro­duced a series of five dip­tychs, and viewing/reading them togeth­er pro­duces an alto­geth­er dif­fer­ent effect than the iso­la­tion of this sin­gle woman. In this series, win­dows, reflec­tions and dis­tor­tions repeat, under­scor­ing that we are look­ing at framed scenes (imply­ing exclu­sions) and that these scenes high­light their medi­a­tion, as opposed to mak­ing a claim for any easy sense of doc­u­men­tary real­ness. The pho­to­graph most “in focus” (from anoth­er of the dip­tychs) depicts a stat­ue of the Vir­gin Mary, the bril­liant reds and blues from her garb res­onat­ing with the reds and blues from the con­test­ed image. The Vir­gin Mary image’s accom­pa­ny­ing text tells of her replace­ment by new­er gods of sur­veil­lance. The image that fol­lows Mary in this sequence is, in fact, the image of the anony­mous woman. What dif­fer­ence might it make to con­sid­er these images and texts in con­ver­sa­tion with each other?

What of the woman in the pho­to­graph? We do not even know if she is Mus­lim or South Asian or African. She becomes an abstract fig­ure re-cod­ed into the anx­i­eties of our time, “the dis­mal future” that writes the “anx­ious present” (Lewis and Sigg)⁵—reduced to a polit­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tion insert­ed into white saviourism—taken beyond the image into the echo cham­bers of white guilt and feel­ings of moral cer­tain­ty. The last thing the fig­ure is accord­ed is the priv­i­lege of being giv­en the same con­sid­er­a­tion (or non-con­sid­er­a­tion) as oth­ers cap­tured in such instances, as part of a visu­al lex­i­con that allows us to read beyond exist­ing cat­e­gories. Her abstrac­tion as vic­tim is also an abstrac­tion by those who inhab­it privilege—speaking-for is also a prob­lem­at­ic ren­der­ing of the Oth­er as voice­less and there­fore com­mits a sim­i­lar act of stereo­typ­ing and con­tem­po­rary ori­en­tal­ism. The fig­ure here is wrenched beyond the image and insert­ed into the dis­cours­es of our frac­tious world—she becomes hyper-oth­er­ized beyond and against her knowledge—enmeshed into our con­tem­po­rary moral uni­verse that res­onates with the emo­tion­al tem­per­a­tures of these polit­i­cal times. The con­tem­po­rary semi­otic field is an anx­ious one, pul­sat­ing with antic­i­pa­to­ry inten­si­ties that dis­solve and simul­ta­ne­ous­ly ossi­fy rights and wrongs. Our see­ing no longer dis­tan­ti­ates us from the image or its tex­tu­al com­po­si­tion here but is enfold­ed into our affec­tive being.

We accept that we sim­ply can­not dis­miss the con­cerns of the ethics of pho­tograph­ing the oth­er – and the object­ing par­ty had every right to voice their con­cerns. How­ev­er, the sit­u­a­tion and the ensu­ing dis­cus­sion also raised many inter­est­ing ques­tions for us and we felt that this par­tic­u­lar sit­u­a­tion also high­light­ed what we were try­ing to do in set­ting up the four-day research cre­ation process. Could we sit in this space of unease, what Don­na Har­away calls ‘stay­ing with the trou­ble’?⁶

If we were to find some con­cep­tu­al fram­ing to the research cre­ation exer­cise, it would be in the Pro­voke pho­tog­ra­phy move­ment and Japan­ese image the­o­ry of the 1960s. Japan­ese image the­o­ry, its ideas and prac­tices, emerged in a time of height­ened stu­dent protests, charged polit­i­cal cir­cum­stances and Cold War anx­i­eties in Japan. Influ­enced by per­for­mance art, film-mak­ers such as Oshi­ma Nag­isa and Mat­sumo­to Toshio, as well as Euro­pean phi­los­o­phy, the Pro­voke col­lec­tive sought to find and cul­ti­vate a new pho­to­graph­ic con­scious­ness in those tur­bu­lent conditions.

The Camera as a Gathering Apparatus

In 1958, the avant-garde film-mak­er Mat­sumo­to Toshio – moved by Robert Hes­sens’ and Alain Resnais’ 1950 doc­u­men­tary, Guer­ni­ca – wrote his influ­en­tial essay, “A The­o­ry of Avant Garde Doc­u­men­tary,” to cri­tique what he saw as the for­mal­ist-pop­ulist real­ism method of doc­u­men­tary films.⁷ In his essay, Mat­sumo­to addressed the chang­ing social and polit­i­cal cir­cum­stances in post-war Japan and argued for a new real­ism in which the doc­u­men­tary genre should embrace a more avant-garde sen­si­bil­i­ty that ques­tioned the rela­tion­ship between the uncon­scious and exte­ri­or real­i­ty in doc­u­ment­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of the “as-yet-unde­vel­oped world.”

The essay had a sig­nif­i­cant impact on the Japan­ese arts and media community—especially in pho­tog­ra­phy. Pub­lished nine years before Roland Barthes’ 1967 essay, “Death of the Author,” Mat­sumo­to had explored the role of the artist-creator’s sub­jec­tive con­scious­ness in dialec­ti­cal rela­tion to the mate­r­i­al world.⁸ He felt that doc­u­men­tary real­ism was dom­i­nat­ed by the all-con­sum­ing ego of the cul­tur­al cre­ator. His argu­ment for the “mate­ri­al­ist self-dis­so­lu­tion” of the human sub­ject or the “the author him- or her­self” as social phe­nom­e­non in the the­o­ret­i­cal and method­olog­i­cal fram­ing of doc­u­men­tary work influ­enced one of the most sig­nif­i­cant post-war pho­tog­ra­phy move­ments, Pro­voke (1968-1970).⁹

Often asso­ci­at­ed with the pho­tog­ra­phy of Moriya­ma Dai­do, the Pro­voke col­lec­tive of pho­tog­ra­phers and writ­ers appeared most active from 1968 to 1970, hav­ing pub­lished only three jour­nals. The exchange among those involved, often influ­enced by anti-war pol­i­tics and Marxism—including artists and academics—span over a decade from 1966 to the mid 1970s. Influ­enced by the site-spe­cif­ic protest-inspired per­for­mance col­lec­tives of the 1960s in Japan, such as Zero Jigen and Hi-Red Cen­ter, Pro­voke emerged in a time of social and polit­i­cal unrest with a pho­tog­ra­phy man­i­festo that chal­lenged the hege­mon­ic struc­tures of the times.¹⁰ Their off-kil­ter, grainy, blurry—or are, bure, boke—images¹¹ aimed to con­front and dis­turb the pre-exist­ing con­cep­tu­al expec­ta­tions of pho­to­graph­ic and doc­u­men­tary real­ism in an urban­scape of erupt­ing social chaos.¹² From uni­ver­si­ty cam­pus­es and stu­dent bar­ri­cades to the streets of Shin­juku, there were out­breaks of protests and social rebel­lion that were impos­si­ble to cap­ture with con­ven­tion­al pho­to­graph­ic meth­ods. How did you doc­u­ment the dynamism of such tumul­tuous ener­gy dur­ing a time of rapid social changes? The Pro­voke Man­i­festo, writ­ten by found­ing mem­bers Takanashi Yuta­ka, Nakahi­ra Taku­ma, Taki Kōji, and Oka­da Takahiko declares:

The image by itself is not a thought. It can­not pos­sess a whole­ness like that of a con­cept. Nei­ther is it an inter­change­able code like a lan­guage. Yet its irre­versible materiality—the real­i­ty that is cut out by the camera—constitutes the oppo­site side of lan­guage, and for this rea­son at times it stim­u­lates the world of lan­guage and con­cepts. When this hap­pens, lan­guage tran­scends its fixed and con­cep­tu­al­ized self, trans­form­ing into a new lan­guage, and there­fore a new thought.

At this sin­gu­lar moment—now—language los­es its mate­r­i­al basis—in short its reality—and drifts in space, we pho­tog­ra­phers must go on grasp­ing with our own eyes those frag­ments of real­i­ty that can­not pos­si­bly be cap­tured with exist­ing lan­guage, active­ly putting forth mate­ri­als against lan­guage and against thought. Despite some reser­va­tions, this is why we have giv­en Pro­voke the sub­ti­tle provoca­tive mate­ri­als for thought. (Takanashi, Nakahi­ra, Taki and Oka­da, 1968)¹³

Mat­sumo­to Toshio had also writ­ten an essay on the “hid­den pho­to­graph” in the mag­a­zine Kam­era Jidai, where he expands on Hen­ri Cartier-Bresson’s com­po­si­tion­al con­cept of the “deci­sive moment” as an instance in which the “real” appears.¹⁴ In such instances—in the moment when the image is taken—there are rev­e­la­to­ry crevices or “pas­sages” (tsūro) which emerge out of entrenched stereo­types and struc­tures. For Mat­sumo­to such moments require “the align­ment of three fac­tors: an unex­pect­ed and rev­e­la­to­ry ‘acci­dent’ (gūzen) hap­pen­ing in the exter­nal world; a for­tu­itous pho­to­graph­ic cap­ture of the acci­dent; and a ‘sharp imag­i­na­tion’.”¹⁵ These ideas fed into Provoke’s found­ing mem­bers, and its main the­o­reti­cians, Taki Kōji and Nakahi­ra Takuma.

Taki Kōji pub­lished a series of essays on the Barthe­sean code­less image in the late 60s and ear­ly 70s where he argued for the dis­man­tling of the “seman­tic envi­ron­ment” by sur­ren­der­ing the photographer’s ego and turn­ing cre­ative action to the cam­era, thus dis­pelling the illu­sions of an elite-manip­u­lat­ed soci­ety. Key to Taki’s the­o­riz­ing was the con­cept of kankyō–the environment—where con­ven­tion­al pho­tog­ra­phy played a role in main­tain­ing the sta­tus quo. Kankyō nor­mal­ly referred to ‘the area sur­round­ing a place or thing’ or ‘the cir­cum­stances in which a dis­crete part of some­thing inter­acts with the larg­er whole.’ For Taki, kankyō was a rela­tion­al con­cept that fed into the pro­duc­tion of mean­ing, a process or ‘rela­tion­ship’ (kankei) “that entwines ‘sub­jec­tive indi­vid­u­als’ and ‘images’ in a total­is­ing nexus.”¹⁶ By exper­i­ment­ing with dif­fer­ent pho­to­graph­ic techniques—ones that pro­duced the plain and acci­den­tal image—the photographer’s cam­era, by “infi­nite­ly repeat­ing the act of pho­tog­ra­phy,” would chal­lenge the hege­mon­ic envi­ron­ment and trans­mit the real­i­ties of the world sub-lin­guis­ti­cal­ly.¹⁷ As Philippe Char­ri­er writes, “More than a mere repos­i­to­ry of use­ful styl­is­tic tech­niques, Taki regard­ed pio­neer­ing pho­tog­ra­phy forms as weapons that lay out­side the frame­work of ‘the sys­tem’. Their tech­no­log­i­cal crude­ness con­sti­tut­ed a kind of prim­i­tivis­tic pow­er that resist­ed the com­pro­mis­ing semi­otic struc­tures of lan­guage and nar­ra­tive.”¹⁸

The cam­era for fel­low Pro­voke col­league, Nakahi­ra Taku­ma served as more than an instru­ment to uncov­er the hege­mon­ic ide­ol­o­gy of the mate­r­i­al envi­ron­ment, in this case, the land­scape.¹⁹ The cam­era was also a mnemon­ic device to cap­ture what the pho­tog­ra­ph­er could have missed, lay­ing bare the world and all beyond that had pre­vi­ous­ly not been “dis­closed.” Regard­ing Nakahi­ra Takuma’s pho­to­book “For a Lan­guage to Come,” Kohara Masashi writes that Nakahira’s cam­era is an anti-inter­pre­ta­tive device that cap­tures every­thing in front of it with­out under­stand­ing it, as a rem­e­dy for mem­o­ry loss that accepts every detail with­out dif­fer­ence.”²⁰ The cam­era, Kohara writes, is Nakahira’s third eye, and an instru­ment “to re-estab­lish his sun­dered link to the world – with­out lan­guage as a fil­ter­ing device, but with the cam­era as a gath­er­ing appa­ra­tus.” Nakahi­ra Taku­ma writes, “My pho­tog­ra­phy is an absolute neces­si­ty for me, hav­ing for­got­ten every­thing.”  Like his com­pa­tri­ot Taki Kōji, Nakahi­ra was also con­cerned about cap­tur­ing that which is not imme­di­ate to the eye or framed by the pho­tog­ra­ph­er. Influ­enced by Roland Barthes and Wal­ter Ben­jamin, Nakahi­ra found inspi­ra­tion in Eugène Atget whom he cred­it­ed as a pho­tog­ra­ph­er who dis­card­ed his ego and gave sig­nif­i­cance to the uncon­scious ele­ments in his pho­tographs, “[b]ecause he lacked any a pri­ori images, Atget laid bare the world as the world. But for us, who already ful­ly ‘know’ the world, can we still naked­ly man­i­fest real­i­ty like this or not? If we sup­pose it is pos­si­ble, then is there no oth­er way than to start out by first dis­card­ing one’s self?”²¹

Like many who read semi­otics and phi­los­o­phy dur­ing that dynam­ic peri­od, Nakahi­ra was also pre­oc­cu­pied with the rela­tion­ship of lan­guage and the image—and Pro­voke, Nakahi­ra argued, had revived lan­guage. “Images haunt lan­guage like a shad­ow”, he writes; “they line lan­guage, and give it sub­stance, and in some cas­es, they bring about the expan­sion of lan­guage.”²² Pro­voke had ful­filled its mis­sion in that the pho­tographs had thwart­ed the “fixed mean­ings of verisimilitude”—a tree is not a tree—the image is not self-evi­dent. In the unin­ten­tion­al­ly focused style of the Pro­voke pho­tog­ra­phers, inspired by the rapid urban­iza­tion of Japan, and a land­scape engulfed in social and polit­i­cal dis­sent, the total­i­ty of the urban author­i­ty-con­trolled “land­scape” was chal­lenged. The unstruc­tured pho­tographs revealed the fis­sures or “cracks” of pos­si­ble lan­guages or pos­si­ble worlds—of a lan­guage to come. Res­o­nant of Nakahira’s essays, Moriya­ma Dai­do – per­haps Provoke’s most cel­e­brat­ed photographer—in lat­er years would argue that giv­ing mean­ing to his pho­to­graph was pointless,

to shoot images is to receive shocks from the out­side world … impos­ing a theme drains pho­tog­ra­phy of its spark […] the out­side world is extreme­ly flu­id and mixed up. Wrestling it into a “theme” is an impos­si­bil­i­ty. The mix in its total­i­ty can­not be pho­tographed. With­in a thin sliv­er of this world, only the thinnest of seg­ments can be record­ed with the pho­to­graph – but I keep pho­tograph­ing. There is noth­ing else.” (Moriya­ma)²³

The explo­ration of image and text had also per­me­at­ed the world of man­ga in the late 1960s – espe­cial­ly the avant-garde man­ga (zen’ei man­ga) of Hayashi Sei­ichi and Maki Sasa­ki, who broke with con­ven­tion­al Japan­ese man­ga illus­tra­tion and the use of lan­guage. In eizō man­ga (image man­ga), the image and text rela­tion­ship is non-oppositional—it is com­pre­hend­ed through an aes­thet­ic appre­ci­a­tion of indi­vid­ual images and the poet­ic cor­re­spon­dences between one image and the next—a form of nar­ra­tive illus­tra­tion.²⁴ By rethink­ing the nature of the image (and pan­elling in man­ga), the role of the text is also re-con­sid­ered and re-inscribed beyond the role of the Barthe­sean “relay” function—and just as the Pro­voke pho­tog­ra­phers intend­ed, for the avant-garde man­gakas, the text is no more depen­dent on or con­nect­ed to the image but drifts in space, unan­chored from its con­cep­tu­al moor­ings and works as a com­pos­ite, a mon­tage of mes­sages that under­mine the cer­tain­ty of mean­ing in a con­di­tion of flux.

Back to Windsor

We nev­er intend­ed to bring coher­ence to the theme of Struc­tures of Antic­i­pa­tion or plan a neat com­ple­tion to the project. It seems even more sur­re­al now, in these pan­dem­ic times, when the Wind­sor-Detroit bor­der has become a zone of infec­tion. Although the bor­der remains closed to tourists, essen­tial work­ers and truck dri­vers con­tin­ue to cross dai­ly and, as of this writ­ing, Wind­sor-Essex has the high­est rate of COVID-19 in the province.²⁵ Par­tic­u­lar­ly since 9/11, this bor­der has always been a site of antic­i­pa­tion and inse­cu­ri­ty; now it’s tak­en on an alto­geth­er dif­fer­ent qual­i­ty, almost like a phan­tom limb. The geo­graph­ic spaces now called Wind­sor and Detroit have been linked since before col­o­niza­tion. To see the oth­er shore, but be cut off from it, gen­er­ates feel­ings of loss, sur­re­al­i­ty, wor­ry, and antic­i­pa­tion for some kind of bet­ter future. Most­ly, we wait.

We had envi­sioned a process of stages and pro­longed time-gaps for post-event reflection—particularly after the inten­sive­ness of the four days of activ­i­ty in which print­ing and equip­ment issues added to the last-minute scram­ble. The 100-word com­po­si­tion was nev­er meant to “explain” the image but act­ed as com­pan­ion text, although in some cas­es it could stand per­fect­ly inde­pen­dent of the image. These jux­ta­po­si­tions of com­po­si­tions and images, we hope, act to dis­turb, illu­mi­nate, mys­ti­fy, and provoke—teasing out what lies beyond the writer-photographer’s eye or even the reader’s per­cep­tions, and invite us to gen­er­ate dif­fer­ent con­stel­la­tions of know­ing and re-assess­ing the word-image rela­tion in an age of dig­i­tal instantaneities—and of mean­ing per­pet­u­al­ly deferred. This was our par­tic­u­lar way of push­ing the semi­otic dis­rup­tion of the text-image relationship—by restrict­ed image selec­tion and lim­it­ing the word count with­in a time constraint.

Cer­tain­ly, the most tense and antic­i­pa­to­ry moments were felt dur­ing the instal­la­tion, and just before the exhi­bi­tion went live. The sequence of the pho­tographs was the participant’s deci­sion, while the instal­la­tion loca­tion and place­ment were the cura­tors’ deci­sion with the input of the con­trib­u­tor, if present. The restrict­ed time peri­od of the four days from open­ing work­shop to exhi­bi­tion cer­tain­ly cre­at­ed a sense of urgency on the part of those involved, and yet this dura­tion was con­sid­ered a pause against the flood of con­stant news and over­whelm­ing infor­ma­tion where par­tic­i­pants had to focus on cre­at­ing the five text-image com­po­si­tions. We rec­og­nize the con­tra­dic­tions here of pro­duc­ing work that calls a halt to the speed of infor­ma­tion in less than four days, but in the spir­it of Provoke’s man­i­festo, we too had hope to gen­er­ate fis­sures or cracks in the dis­course in the image-text exer­cise that took place in Wind­sor, the space of Taki Kōji’s kankyō—and to bring forth, in Nakahi­ra Takuma’s words, a lan­guage to come. If we did not leave the exhi­bi­tion with a sense of lin­ger­ing dis­sat­is­fac­tion or disquietude—and want­i­ng to write a lit­tle more, reor­ga­nize the sym­po­sium struc­ture, or change the selec­tion and num­ber of pho­tographs or their sequence – we believe we would have failed. As such, we decid­ed to give our con­trib­u­tors anoth­er oppor­tu­ni­ty to put down their thoughts, to select per­haps an image that they wished they had includ­ed or to expand their writ­ing – this time by about anoth­er 500 words but to a sin­gle image. These thir­teen pho­to-com­po­si­tions (arranged alpha­bet­i­cal­ly) pre­sent­ed as a dossier in this Imag­i­na­tions issue, are not post­scripts to the project. How­ev­er, we do see them as adding to the dif­fer­ent parts of the project; as exhi­bi­tion, as web­page, and as pub­li­ca­tion, pre­sent­ing yet anoth­er iter­a­tion of the theme that would serve as a spring­board to future work­shops, exhi­bi­tions, and encounters.

—The Cura­tors,²⁶ August 5, 2020