Digital Shifts
Art as Activism: The Feminist Legacy of Éva Besnyő, Kati Horna, and Ata Kandó in the Digital Age
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Erdei Krisztina
In the digital age, where AI-generated information shapes our access to knowledge, feminist art history plays a crucial role in making overlooked narratives more visible and fostering the evolution of digital archives. This paper examines the activist work of three Hungarian-born photographers—Éva Besnyő, Kati Horna, and Ata Kandó—who, throughout the 20th century, remained deeply committed to the transformative power of art and artistic action. Their work has often been interpreted through the lens of modernist photography, a framework that, while significant, has not fully captured the depth and social engagement of their projects. By exploring the intersection of art and activism, this paper highlights the societal impact of their work and the ways in which their careers challenge conventional narratives. Re-evaluating their contributions offers a deeper understanding of socially engaged art as a means of community building and shared responsibility. Ultimately, this paper argues for a more nuanced appreciation of activist art, emphasizing its aesthetic diversity and conceptual depth.
From Body Vision to Body Sensation: An Aesthetic of Immersive Ambiguity
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Anna Charrière, Miguel Angel Almiron
Between incarnation and decorporalization, certain immersive works engage the viewer's body in a space of confusion where the work becomes a physical and sensory experience. In Cameron Kostopoulos' virtual reality work In the Current of Being (2025), the body is at once subject, medium, and symptom of a fragmented and painful reality. The body and its double become a medium of political and emotional expression, navigating the "gray zones" that link voyeurism, exhibition, and empathy. By analyzing the recent VR works In the Current of Being by Cameron Kostopoulos, The Dollhouse by Charlotte Bruneau and Dominique Desjardins, and The Exploding Girl by Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel, we ask: What does the immersion of the simulated body (double) do? How does it relate to the body of the viewer? What does immersion add to traditional art questions?
Glass House: Displacement, Memory, and the Silent Image of Survival
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ozgul Kılınçarslan
This paper explores the video installation Glass House (HD, 6’22”, Color, Sound) as a meditation on displacement, collective memory, and the quiet endurance of uprooted life forms. Rooted in the symbolic language Aby Warburg described as the "afterlife of images," the project draws on personal and societal narratives to trace the shifting meaning of a single visual motif: the tree. Set against the backdrop of the 2013 Gezi Park protests in Turkey and the subsequent waves of political unrest, migration, and institutional dislocation, Glass House positions a potted lemon tree—confined within a glass structure under artificial light—as a living image of exile. This work examines how an image, when dislodged from its natural context, gathers new layers of meaning through social trauma, memory, and imagination. Drawing from Warburg's concept of the Pathosformel, the project interrogates how ordinary objects — trees, spaces, bodies — embody profound collective behaviors and emotional residues in times of crisis. It also engages with questions around how visual metaphors operate within democratic aesthetics and digital culture, addressing how imagery persists and mutates as part of our species-being. This paper reflects on the making of Glass House in dialogue with broader contemporary questions: How does a living form survive symbolic exile? How do images of forced displacement, both human and botanical, resonate within the frameworks of contemporary image-making and collective consciousness?
