What do we register via and in images? What does it mean to witness catastrophe and for us to see countless images of violence that inundate our hypermediated existence? And how do we confront the horrors of our time with images that summon sympathy and abjection while being proximate to frictionless views and scrolls? These forms promise intimacy, knowledge, but distance, erasure, dissonance are embedded in their circulation; perhaps the warped logic of consumption undercuts those promises. This wide-ranging discussion will try to find a way in considering visual forms, especially images that explain, document, portray, or chronicle; “visuals” as currency in an attention economy.
Seen, Unseen: Images in Circulation, Image as Consumption
Parsa Sanjana Sajid
Parsa Sanjana Sajid is a writer, researcher, and cultural practitioner working across disciplines spanning digital, visual and literary cultures, social spaces and movements, migration practices, and gender justice. She also runs a multi-venue Palestinian film series called Cinema Palestine Bangladesh (2023-).
Seema Amin
Seema Amin is a writer and PhD candidate in comparative literature at University of Oregon; and a lecturer at BRAC University.
Vince Rozario
Vince Rozario is a Bangladeshi-Canadian independent curator, critic, writer, arts administrator, and community organizer based in Tkaronto/ Toronto. They are also part of “Artists Against Artwashing” and the “No Arms in the Arts” coalition in Canada, which advocates for cultural boycott and divestment from entities tied to the genocide in Palestine.