Pocko Times #3
Light Works
Following the previous two editions of the Pocko Times, a large format art journal, this latest edition chronicles the work of arguably the world’s most important photographers in the fields of documentary, staged and fine-art photography. In addition, Light Works will feature extracts from “Living in the End Times” by Slavoj Žižek, the controversial and eccentric political philosopher, considered ‘the most dangerous philosopher in the West’.
In his book Žižek discusses the end of Western capitalism and asks what the West must do to adapt to the society of the future. Such issues are raised within the work of Light Works, where photographers capture the very essence and importance of the photographic image in modern-day society, and explore how the medium communicates to the world.
“Through a selection of iconic photographic works, some unseen and some classics, this edition of Pocko Times encapsulates a reflection of our age through photography, exhibiting the aesthetics of celebrity culture, pornography, media, conflict, poverty and wealth.”
“Today, we are clearly approaching a new epoch of interesting times. After decades of the Welfare State, when financial cuts were limited to short periods and sustained by a promise that things would soon return to normal, we are entering a new period in which the economic crisis has become permanent, simply a way of life. Furthermore, today, the crises occur at both extremes of economic life—ecology and pure financial speculation—not at the core of the productive process.”
"Perhaps there is no direct passage to the New, at least not in the way we imagined it, and monsters necessarily emerge in any attempt to force that passage.”
“Undergoing psychoanalytic treatment, one learns to clarify one’s desires: do I really want what I think I want? Take the proverbial case of a husband engaged in a passionate extra-marital affair, dreaming of the moment when his wife will disappear (die, divorce him, or whatever) so that he will be free to live with his mistress—when it finally happens his whole world breaks down, and he discovers that he no longer wants his mistress after all. As the old proverb says: there is only one thing worse than not getting what one wants—namely, actually getting it.”
