After the glitch: Photographic friction in Lisa Tan’s Dodge and/or Burn

Abstract

This article aims to analyse how a photographic interaction, complicated by technical and bodily disruption, entails a productive glitch in the form of systemic friction. The analysis is grounded in artist Lisa Tan’s exhibition Dodge and/or Burn in Stockholm (2023–24), with a focus on a central video work. The exhibition’s theme of crisis and transformation guides the analysis within a qualitative framework informed by an art historical methodology of semiotics and phenomenology combined with media and disability studies. This interdisciplinary perspective organizes an account anchored in the artwork’s initial capture and exhibition display. As the glitch is redefined, from a technical error to an embodied experience of systemic friction, the article offers an innovative take on how both photography and glitch can be conceptualized and deployed. As a result, the glitch emerges as a tool to address today’s dominant sociotechnical systems and their visual underpinnings.