8th Triennial of Photography Hamburg 2022
September 30–October 2, 2021
A discursive forerunner to the exhibitions of the 8th Triennale of Photography Hamburg 2022, the symposium “Lucid Knowledge” will be accessible for all via a livestream. Artists, critics, curators, poets, and scholars engage with three key themes: Fields of Perception, Narrative Currents, and Image as Currency.
Thursday, September 30, 2021: Fields of Perception
Since the early 20th century, thinkers have attributed prosthetic qualities to the medium of photography for how it shapes perception and structures experience. Traversing a range of practices and insights, Fields of Perception engages questions of photographic impetus, the social uses of photography, and the ethics of spectatorship. Featuring an introduction by Koyo Kouoh, keynote lecture by Ariella Aïsha Azoulay with respondent Natalia Brizuela, and a conversation between Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung and Akinbode Akinbiyi.
Friday, October 1, 2021: Narrative Currents
While images both support and carry interpretative leaps, they also provide glimmering propositions of their own that act as guiding forces into archives and other knowledge repositories. Day two’s proceedings are dedicated to the discursive, literary, and critical imaginaries through which photography flows. Robin Coste Lewis gives the second keynote lecture, followed by a conversation between Maaza Mengiste and Biljana Ciric with respondent Tala Hadid. The Errant Photo Album will be interspersed throughout the day, closing with a performance lecture by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige (Aida Save Me).
Saturday, October 2, 2021: Image as Currency
Currency most immediately evokes the instrumentation of value through trade flows, canon-making, and systemization. Critically repurposed in this setting, the term explores the ongoing and unfinished exchanges that take place around acts of noticing and listening to images. Featuring conversations with Tina Campt and Saidiya Hartman, Elias Sanbar and Léopold Lambert, Françoise Vergès and Frieda Ekotto, with respondents Antawan I. Byrd, Ariel Goldberg, and Rasha Salti. Contributors to the Errant Photo Album reflect on visual production, circulation, and consumption through the lenses of art and film, as well as literary and cultural theorizations guided by feminist, queer, trans, ecological, decolonial, and Indigenous epistemologies.
“Lucid Knowledge” closes with a parallel event, a joint site visit and artist’s talk with Kapwani Kiwanga and Carolin Köchling around Kiwanga’s public project BEDFORM, located on Dar-es-Salaam-Platz, HafenCity Hamburg. Hosted in cooperation with Imagine the City: THE GATE, an art walk with an audio library that invites visitors to experience Hamburg’s vision of the “gateway to the world” from new perspectives. For more information and to register for the event visit imaginethecity.de
View the livestream
View the full program
View the list of speakers/biographies
The 8th Triennial of Photography Hamburg 2022 is funded by the Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg, Behörde für Kultur und Medien.
The symposium is funded by the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural Foundation) and by the Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien (Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media).
Initiated by F. C. Gundlach, the Triennial of Photography Hamburg has taken place every three years since 1999 federating Hamburg’s major museums, art spaces, cultural institutions, galleries, and foundations. This unique structure has mobilized a wider involvement of the entire city, and presented an exceptionally polyphonic, and creative celebration of photography. Since 2014, the Triennial’s organization has been led by the Deichtorhallen Hamburg GmbH.
The 8th edition of the Triennial of Photography Hamburg 2022 is guided by the notion of Currency. In this endeavour, artistic director Koyo Kouoh leads a curatorial team that includes Rasha Salti, Gabriella Beckhurst Feijoo, and Oluremi C. Onabanjo, with the coordinative assistance of Cale Garrido. Opening on 19 May 2022, the Triennial is conceived as a parcours of eleven exhibitions at major museums, institutions, and spaces across Hamburg, a summer festival and closing events.
