9 Visual politics and material semiotics
The digital camera’s translation of political protest
Rune Saugmann Andersen
In the hand of the police officer is a digital camera. You can see the photo. But is it an actor?1 That question informs my writing in this chapter. I use videos taken at the eviction at the Brorson Church in Copenhagen, from one of which the framegrab in Figure 9.1 is taken, to investigate the agency of digital cameras in political activism. In doing so I explore three themes in greater detail: first, I zoom in on the agency of the camera as a translator which substantially transforms political protest and reconfigures the conditions which make possible effective political protest by tying such effectiveness to the semiotics ...
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