Andrea Soto Calderón
Thursday September 19th, 7 pm. Virreina LAB
Free entrance. Limited places

For many, the image has been declared inappropriate as a means to critique reality. But rejecting images in the name of truth not only renders invention unthinkable but also makes it impossible to orientate ourselves in our present. We cannot turn a blind eye to the way the image has expanded its territory.

If what we want is a critique capable of investing its energy in a new creative passion in order to organise the polemical encounter between the real and the possible, we need to accept the challenge of a critique that is not oppositional. How should we galvanise our imagination in this reticular era of a network without a thread? How should we blow away the last traces of these dead images, whose singularity has been stripped from them so that they can circulate while isolating us from life? How can we reignite their danger?

This stance that seeks to explore the powers of images demands a split. But what should this sundering consist of? What should images be severed from? We propose to examine these questions in depth, analysing in what senses the imaginary does not consist of the representation of what is but instead, as Cornelius Castoriadis argued, “the radical imagination is the free association of anything with any other possible thing, possibly in the throes of becoming”.

Andrea Soto Calderón, holds a PhD and is currently researching the relationship between the image and fiction at the University of Paris VIII. She currently teaches aesthetics and the theory of art. Her research focuses on the transformations of the aesthetic experience in contemporary culture, artistic enquiry, the study of the image and the media, as well as the relationship between aesthetics and politics.