Reflecting on Ho Rui An's recent body of the work, the lecture will use the conceptual framework of the “image drive” to trace a contemporary politics of the image in which the persistent accumulation of images happens in tandem with the pegging of vision to (vehicular) motion. As with the rest of the artist’s practice, consistent across the investigations of this lecture is a consideration of the enduring force of racialisation, or what happens when the image drive is interrupted or corrupted. 

Ho Rui An is an artist and writer working in the intersections of contemporary art, cinema, performance and theory. Working primarily across the mediums of lecture, essay and film, he probes into the shifting relations between image and power, focusing on the ways by which images are produced, circulate and disappear within contexts of globalism and governance. His projects have been presented at Gwangju Biennale (2018), Jakarta Biennale (2017), Sharjah Biennial 13 (2017), Haus de Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2017), NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore (2017), Para Site, Hong Kong (2015) and Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2014). He is a recipient of the 2018 DAAD Berliner Künstlerprogramm.