The Artist
Florian Göttke is a visual artist, researcher, and writer based in Amsterdam. He combines visual modes of research (collecting, close reading, and image montage) with academic research to investigate the functioning of public images and their relationship to social memory and politics. Göttke has exhibited internationally, has written articles for academic journals and art publications. His book Toppled, an iconological study of the toppled statues of Saddam Hussein, was nominated for the Dutch Doc Award 2011.
Göttke obtained a PhD Artistic Research at the University of Amsterdam and the Dutch Art Institute in 2019. His dissertation entitled “Burning Images: Performing Effigies as Political Protest” investigates the peculiar practice to hang or burn effigies—scarecrow-like puppets representing despised politicians—as a form of political protest. His dissertation, which will be published at the end of 2020 with Valiz, Amsterdam, combines two discursive narratives: a linear text and a parallel assemblage of images. Image narrative and text are like the two voices in a musical composition, each in turn taking the lead to introduce themes, structure the work, direct the reader, set tempo and rhythm, halt the attention or accelerate the flow.
