The curator and selection committee member for the 18th Festival’s Southern Panoramas show discusses the configuration of contemporary imagery, contaminated by images from media circuits. According to him, the works submitted and shortlisted for the show are a testimony of how memory is no longer pure, i.e. no longer built from what is lived as a direct experience, but also by media-based experiences, especially images. Thus, considering that all which reverberates on memory is key to building an imagery, the result, he believes, is that these imageries are not closed-off territories. He mentions the work of Turkey’s Zafer Topaloglu, where childhood memories are retrieved through mass media images; and of Akram Zaatari, who combines references from advertising and contemporary dance. Not only is this imagery built by the individual, it is also constantly influenced by various image circuits. According to de Jesus, many of the artists in the show make attempts at retrieval, i.e. archival work, activated in different ways, but never in a completely neutral fashion, and always having political implications.
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