How technologies of image-capture and the channels of communication have in recent years transformed the very terms of human rights.
It is difficult to imagine making claims for human rights without using images. For better or worse, images of protest, evidence, and assertion are the lingua franca of struggles for justice today. And they seem to come in a flood, more and more, day and night. But through which channels does the torrent pass? The Flood of Rights examines the pathways through which these images and ideas circulate—routes that do not merely enable, but actually shape human-rights claims and their conceptual background. What are the technologies and languages that structure the global distribution of humanism and universalism, and how do they leave their mark on these ideas themselves? Which narratives and imageries have proven easier to export and import, and whose interests are at stake in the configurations in question?
Published following the eponymous conference organized by the LUMA Foundation and Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, at Les Forges, Parc des Ateliers, Arles, France, September 19-21, 2013.
Edited by Thomas Keenan, Suhail Malik, Tirdad Zolghadr.
Contributions by Amanda Beech, Rony Brauman, David Campbell, Olivia Custer, Rosalyn Deutsche, Thomas Keenan, Eric Kluitenberg, David Levine, Suhail Malik, Sohrab Mohebbi, Sharon Sliwinski, Hito Steyerl, Bernard Stiegler, Tirdad Zolghadr.
