Synthesizing Realities

A joint project between an artist and an art writer examining displacement, technologies of control, and the possibility of using these technologies to foster connection.Interdisciplinary artist Vanessa Amoah Opoku inquires into what diaspora and the displacement of bodies and of materials engender. To this end, she records narratives with infrared light and 3D scans, transforming surfaces into digital fragments. She also utilizes printing techniques and audio to create multilayered, large-scale installations. June Drevet writes and publishes about photography and video art at the intersection of cultural and media history, with a focus on (post-)digital visual practices, the questioning and reinterpretation of archival imagery, and publishing as a critical tool. Synthetic Realities is a polyphonic conversation between artist and critic about writing and publishing as artistic practice, digital sensuality, and worlding as a critical and conceptual model. This book is a process of uncovering structures and processes and asks how critical observation and lens-based recording can be reclaimed as forms of care. With contributions by June Drevet, Steph Holl-Trieu, Vanessa Amoah Opoku, and Shirin Weigelt.