Michael Schäfer: Invasive Links – JUNE 2024

In a world increasingly torn asunder by interminable conflict, there remains an unstable division between those who endure among the frontlines of war and disaster, and those who observe these violent scenes through their digital devices from the comfort of affluent enclaves. As the former find new ways to address, involve, and otherwise engage the latter, conflicts are uploaded, relayed, and brought “back home,” changing the hypermediated dynamics of armed conflict worldwide. Working through the medium of the technical picture, the Berlin-based artist Michael Schäfer interrogates the role of the apparent (digital) bystander through a series of photographic provocations, Invasive Links, which call into question the borders and binaries that work to separate witnesses from participants. Schäfer insists that, as Europeans, we require a renewed moral courage to see what we see—especially when we prefer not to look—if we hope to apprehend some of the troubling lessons from this emergent form of affected spectatorship.