Biopolitics of the Digital Camera
Roya Rastegar
Artist BioThis installation project explores the biopolitical possibilities of digital videos, with a focus on two genres of videos that (in different ways) create a world of watchers: witness videos of unjust murders, often at the hands of police; and videos by social influencers, often structured around fashion or beauty. The part 1 of the project will focus on videos by social influencers. These videos enable a new way of inhabiting ones life, propagating a new subjectivity and way of being in the world that is self-determined. Those who want to watch populate this world; this watching quickly evolves into becoming a fan, being in love. This is more than taste making. This is the dialogic making of a system of values, morals, and ethics between the creator and the fan, the watcher and the seen, in a endless, relational process of creating their world.
Roya Rastegar
Los Angeles, CA
Roya Rastegar is a writer, curator and scholar living between Los Angeles and Philadelphia. Most recently, she collaborated with Wu Tsang as the screenwriter of Wildness (2012), a magical realist documentary that premiered at MoMA’s Documentary Fortnight Festival and has gained critical acclaim at festivals across the Americas. Rastegar has curated within both film and art contexts, as a Curatorial Fellow at the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program (2008-09) and part of the programming teams of various film festivals. Rastegar received a PhD in the History of Consciousness from the University of California, Santa Cruz, under the guidance of Angela Davis and B. Ruby Rich. She is a Visiting Assistant Professor and Andrew Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the History of Art Department at Bryn Mawr College, and is currently developing a critical study of American film festivals and the radical possibilities of film and new media curatorial practices.