Exploring the relationship between observer and image, Maia Gusberti uses practice based-research to examine artistic image practices that create complex image spaces. She focuses on extended photography and essayist-filmic positions: Using a critical, performative approach to accessing (post)photographic and media-based images, she tests the ambivalences of documentary forms of expression. To this end, she reflects on images through artistic image practices that complement the theoretical aspects of her project.
Using self-reflexive, performative gestures, Maia Gusberti accesses images of urban landscapes and explores the extent to which a representation of the city can serve as a means to include observers in a critical reflection of the image. She complements the framework of this artistic practice with curatorial formats that she uses to discuss the societal conditions of image production, circulation and reflection in experimental, discursive settings.
The aim of her dissertation is to develop formats that promote visual citizenship as well as aesthetic and media-political responsibility, and an emancipated understanding of the social power of images.
