Symposium

Sorting Daemons Symposium

Program Information

Kathleen Ritter is an artist and writer based in Vancouver. Her work has been exhibited at VIVO Media Arts Centre, Vancouver (2009); Prefix ICA, Toronto (2009); Modern Fuel Artist-Run Centre, Kingston (2008); Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa (2008); Western Front, Vancouver (2004); Centre des arts actuels Skol, Montreal (2000), and Access, Vancouver (2000). Her writing has been published in the anthology Places and Non-Places of Contemporary Art (2005) and the journals ESSE, Fillip, Open Letter, Prefix Photo and SWITCH. She has curated several projects, including How Soon Is Now (2009) at the Vancouver Art Gallery, and Expect Delays (2003), a series of artist's interventions that took place throughout the city of Vancouver.

 

"Now You See It, Now You Don't"

Increasingly we find ourselves in the business of looking. Looking is never neutral, but implicated in the broader socio-political conditions that inform visual perception. Likewise the ways in which we negotiate visibility, especially in the public sphere, is mired in a complex of power relations that is often neither direct, nor visible itself. Using an image of a video camera "hidden" inside a woman's purse as a starting point, this paper will analyze the semiotics of visibility through one image/object to consider the ways in which we use other means to deflect, divert or otherwise defer being seen.