The term ruin porn seems to have originated in Detroit to describe the popularity of pictures taken of abandoned buildings, a leisure activity which has engendered enmity among those who continue to live there. Debates about aestheticization and exclusion are important, but this talk focuses on the fascination with ruins that is now global in reach. Why are we witnessing such intense interest in the places we've abandoned, whether actual or fantasized? What is the relationship between what has been abandoned and what we continue to hold as valuable and conjured into being by photographs of such places? What kind of visual field accounts for how these photographs make abandonment visible?
4:30 pm East Gallery / Benton Museum
MIN HYOUNG SONG, Boston College
Co-Sponsored by Department of English (Contact: Kathy Knapp) and School of Fine Arts Department of Art and Art History (Contact: Alexis L. Boylan); this is an Honors designated event; we will have Prof. Song’s The Children of 1965: on Writing, and Not Writing, as an Asian American (Duke UP, 2013) available on-site, courtesy of the UConn Co-Op Bookstore.
For more information, contact: Ms. Fe Delos-Santos at fe.delos-santos@uconn.edu