In the age of Facebook, Twitter, and Co., smartphone photos and videos are shared millions of times on the Web. They are liked or generate protest, they help form communities—and promote the circulation of emotional affects. In conjunction with the exhibition
of the same name, Affect Me: Social Media Images in Art presents nine artists who work with images originating from social media. They have a particular interest in those images that feed into social media in a political context. The artists focus on how these pictures move and mobilize people, beyond their reporting function, and how they are positioned on the permeable border between fiction and reality. In-depth essays examine the role social media images play in the generation of emotional affects and their transfer into the work of the participating artists.
The book is published in conjunction with the exhibition at KAI 10 | Arthena Foundation, Düsseldorf, 11 November 2017 – 10 March 2018.
The publication was produced in close cooperation with KAI 10 | Arthena Foundation, Düsseldorf, and the research project Affective Dynamics of Images in the Era of Social Media at Freie Universität Berlin.