Some images do not end where they appear to disappear. They continue to live behind the eye, in perception and memory; they remain with us as afterglows, vibrations, faint traces. This year’s theme of LOOP, Afterimage, relates to this lingering visual experience. Viewed from the perspective of photography’s 200-year history, it evokes a phenomenon that belongs simultaneously to light, time, and the gaze: the moment when the image is no longer present, yet continues to exert an effect, returning and transforming.
The afterimage is one of photography’s most subtle legacies, but it is also inherent to the very nature of the moving image. Here, the captured moment does not come to an end, but begins to repeat; it shifts, dissolves, and rearranges itself. In this sense, the 20-second loop is not merely a formal framework, but an idea in itself: a space of return, where the image does not occur just once, but again and again, always slightly differently.
Afterimage is an open-ended theme. It may encompass the trace of light, the workings of memory, the disappearance and re-formation of images, and the meditative or unsettling experience of repetition. It can relate equally to abstract, experimental, narrative, photographic, animated, or digitally generated works. It is not a single subject, but a sensibility: an attentiveness to what remains of an image, and to what within it is still in motion.
In connection with the bicentenary of photography, Afterimage is not simply an act of looking back, but also an invitation to ask questions: how does the image live on today, when it is no longer merely captured, but also flows, repeats, counts, distorts, and recreates itself? What remains of it after we look? What disappears, and what only then begins to become truly visible?
We invited unique, 20-second looped moving-image works to be presented in an immersive exhibition space enclosed by four walls. The space itself is also a loop: it surrounds the viewer in 360°, while the projected content continuously returns to itself—an experience of a double loop.
At the opening, we will present not only the works selected by the professional jury, but all entries submitted in response to the open call.
After the opening, only the shortlist will remain on view until 24 January 2027.
