In her key-note speech at the inauguration of a Moving Image Department, cultural theorist, art critic and filmmaker, Mieke Bal, will make a plea for the politics of movement on the basis of Henri Bergson’s philosophy of the image as necessarily both material and moving. This leads to a view of images as involved in a triple movement – of the image, the viewer in exhibitions, and the emotional intensity images generate. Using some examples of contemporary artworks that – literally – work with this triple movement, she will introduce a vision of political art that is not “about” politics but performs an intervention in “the political”. The triple movement inherent in the image as such is the basis of action, activation, and activism all at once.
