TaPRA: Theatre and Performance Research Association Conference, Northumbria University, Newcastle

Tomic-Vajagic, T. (Keynote/plenary speaker)

Activity: Participating in or organising an academic event › Participation in academic conference

Description

Internet’s ‘Disco Dancing Girls’: Softimages in Motion

Period	5 Sept 2024
Event type	Conference
Location	Newcastle, United KingdomShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International

Documents & Links

Abstract: What can we learn from unsolicited images of people that circulate the internet and shift identities of persons depicted? In one of his non-academic lectures, Sand in their Eyes (2017) artist Rabih Mroué wonders, “Is there any way one can control appearing in someone else’s pictures unintentionally?” (cited in Mroué and Hunter, 2020, 219) Given that images online often circulate decontextualised, fragmented, and become co-opted for various ideological and propagandist purposes, Mroué suggests that the “fear is to suddenly find out that your face appeared in some advertisement or propaganda for a political party or organization” (in Mroué and Hunter, 2020, 218). This paper considers a less overtly ideological, yet equally potent intramedial effects of decontextualised "softimages" (after Helzl and Marie, 2015) of people that roam the internet as bodies devoid of history and individual identity. Although this is a well known effect of stock photography, this paper focuses on a different case-- a particular digital "poor image" (Steyerl, 2009), a shaky fragment from a video portrait “Dee” from Rineke Dijkstra’s series The Krazyhouse (2009). The paper follows "Dee's" doppelgänger image found on YouTube and re-titled as the “Disco dancing girl of Rineke Dijkstra” (2012, YouTube). Curious about this new, somewhat random and vaguer denotation, that includes the words “disco” and "dancing girl", I look at how the label simultaneously detaches and reclusters the image of a young woman, whether the portrait subject and the artist photographer would agree or not. On the one hand, by partaking in this discussion--and spreading this unsolicited image-- this paper also knowingly enters the problematic ethical area of internet sharing, discussing, and placing values onto images or real people. Yet, it is important to consider that in reality this image may circulate the internet possibly endlessly whether we paid attention to it or not (the YouTube post in question is still present on the platform, over a decade). Thus, I argue that paying attention to such images and what they may tell us is important. Furthermore, I suggest a possibility of an optimistic aspect of this softimage--in the YouTuber's intervention, the "Dee" portrait detached itself from the high art portraiture, and as a "disco dancing girl" has formed new affinitive clustering, for instance with historic girlhood dancing spaces as well as with the present-day e-girl cultures, that may hold power akin to Lora Mathis's idea of radical softness (Mathis,2015).