Fontcuberta discusses in his latest book, La Furia de las Imágenes, the new functions of photography in the digital age that are summarised in this post photographic manifesto, and which could also be extended to other areas of artistic and cultural life.
On the role of the artist: it is no longer a question of producing “works” but of prescribing meanings.
On the artist’s performance: the artist merges with the curator, with the collector, with the teacher, with the historian, with the theoretician… All these facets are chameleonally authoritative.
On the responsibility of the artist: an ecology of the visual is imposed that will penalize saturation and encourage recycling.
4. On the function of the images: the circulation of the image prevails over the content of the image.
5. On the philosophy of art: the discourses of originality are delegitimized and appropriationist practices are normalized.
6. In the dialectic of the subject: the author camouflages himself or is in the cloud. Alternative models of authorship are reformulated: co-authorship, collaborative creation, interactivity, strategic anonymity and orphan works.
7. On the dialectic of the social: overcoming tensions between the private and the public. Intimacy as a relic.
8. On the horizon of art: more play will be given to playful aspects to the detriment of the anhedonia (the solemn + the boring) in which hegemonic art tends to take refuge.
9. On the experience of art: practices of creation are privileged that will accustom us to dispossession: sharing is better than possessing.
10. On the politics of art: don’t give in to glamour or the market to join in the action of stirring consciences.
Nowadays the saturation of images on the Internet is evident, the same motif is photographed once and a thousand times, to create a kind of visual verbiage that does not stop growing and that Fontcuberta describes metaphorically as Liquid Photography. To illustrate this point I have chosen an approach similar to the one used by Corinne Vionnet in her Photo Oportunities series, choosing a single motif -Dinoseto is a very tacky plant sculpture that exists in the city of Vigo and that has become a compulsory destination for many visitors-, obtaining 140 images in Instagram with the tag #dinoseto and arranging them in a gif sequence of about 10 seconds.
The sequence is ordered according to the orientation of the figure, and describes an angle of about 270 degrees, illustrating almost furiously that river of tumultuous waters to which Fontcuberta refers.
Just like the waters of a river, the vision of animation has almost hypnotic power and it is well proven that the prolonged vision of this animated GIF can cause irreversible damage to cognitive function.
Digital Image and Culture 