2017 ~ Sunday April 23: ROAMING ASSEMBLY #13 ~ THE NAVIGATION PRINCIPLE: ‘The Disembodied View' ~ by Vera Tollmann

Technoscientific image-regimes create a view that is disembodied from the human perspective. For example, the view from elsewhere in 'outer space' breaks with the standard partial perspective on mesoscale, a local position which seems habitual to human vision. How different is a picture taken by an astronaut in the International Space Station? Viewers have been trained in the objective view from above. How does machinic vision contribute to the construction of a 'disembodied view' and what does it mean for our relation to the image? When do we speak of embodiment and what do we mean with a universal view? Are formerly opposing concepts blending into hybrids? In her seminal essay "Situated Knowledges" from 1988, Donna Haraway reclaims the "sensory system" and critiques what she calls "the god trick of seeing everything from nowhere". Thinking with Haraway, is it possible to advocate for a universal view from below? And to update Haraway, can a contemporary feminist position succeed in transiting between scales? How could a critique of the Anthropocene concept get involved with humans on an embodied sense of self-scale?