What Do Pictures Want?: The Lives and Loves of Images
... Pepe, on its own, also represents an affective assessment marker; and like "dude," it signals a kind of solidarity not only with digital media literacy and competent user engagement, but also taps within this history of Pepe's original popularity as a remixed image macro on 4chan. Echoing Mitchell's (2005) description of the power of relational connections between images and individuals, the framework of the divine Kek acts as an ideological idol; as something to be worshipped, if only ironically, and behavior to be modeled after, if only "for the lulz." Mitchell (2005) describes that an idol represents both metaphor and iconicity in terms of a discrete category of an object. ...
... Echoing Mitchell's (2005) description of the power of relational connections between images and individuals, the framework of the divine Kek acts as an ideological idol; as something to be worshipped, if only ironically, and behavior to be modeled after, if only "for the lulz." Mitchell (2005) describes that an idol represents both metaphor and iconicity in terms of a discrete category of an object. In this regard, the metaphor and iconicity that the deity Kek represents is reflected in users' written praise of Kek, which embodies (digital) chaos and politically incorrect ideologies. ...
This paper examines the relation of affordance and enregisterment in the socialization of users through the popular 4chan phrase “kek.” This word, overwhelmingly used as an equivalent for “lol” (netspeak for “laugh out loud”), has taken up several other meanings within “/pol/,” the politically incorrect subforum on 4chan, an anonymous imageboard forum. Drawing from both enregisterment and affordance theory, I claim that the processes of mobilizing kek in very community‐specific ways allow for users within this digital media space to not only enregister what a /pol/ user should “sound like,” but that it creates an environment which socializes a very specific kind of user itself. These branching paths of kek explored in this article situate kek as first, an affective assessment marker within interactive speech; then, as a lamination of the word, and deification of chaos magic and mischief celebrated on 4chan, represented by the frog‐headed Egyptian god Kek; and finally, as a sovereign nation, known as “Kekistan.” Through these examples, I argue that a “creature of kek” is a socially constructed, enregistered framework of “knowing,” by which users on /pol/ legitimize themselves to new users, and in broader digital spaces.
... For now, it must suffice to refer to a growing body of literature that stresses the specific agency of images. See Bredekamp (2010);Mitchell (2005). However, there exist also important warnings about visual essentialism that any reasonable description of the agency of images needs to take into account. ...
This edited volume explores the evolving role of visual and multimodal expressions in spreading hate ideologies within digital communication. In digital spaces, hate speech is increasingly conveyed through memes, images, and videos, blending textual and pictorial elements to perpetuate harmful stereotypes and other exclusionary narratives. While historical perspectives on hate imagery are well-documented, this collection emphasises the pressing need for contemporary analysis of visual and multimodal communication in digital environments.
Featuring contributions from interdisciplinary experts, this volume investigates the content, structure, and dynamics of normalisation of visual hate speech. By examining memes, manipulated images, and other visual artifacts, it reveals how hateful content gains traction in digital public spheres, often blurring traditional boundaries of acceptability. Through rigorous case studies and theoretical insights, the anthology provides a comprehensive understanding of how multimodality shapes hate discourse and its societal impact.
Grounded in empirical research, this collection also addresses the challenges of defining and analysing hate ideologies, offering nuanced frameworks for distinguishing legitimate critique from hate-based narratives. Decoding Visual Hate is an essential resource for scholars, policymakers, teachers, and digital communicators seeking to combat the proliferation of visual hate and foster more inclusive online spaces.
... Unlike the mythic Michael, who refers to St. George and Christ, the photograph veils the Christian theological underpinnings with the immediacy of historicity and fact. It convinces: this is real (Arnold 2015(Arnold , 2020Berger 1972;Carrier 2008;Mitchell 2006). ...
Roman Bordun’s twenty-first century photograph The Apartment After the Artillery Bombardment. Heat resistant Ceramic Vase. Irpin [Ukraine]. June 2022 uses light to express the Christian paradox of suffering that leads to redemption and eternal life for the just. In order to imbue spiritual meaning into a photographic work, Bordun draws from Renaissance artists in his use of technique (chiaroscuro), topic (warfare), and geography (the city) that all reference Christ’s Resurrection. Comparing and contrasting Bordun’s Apartment with Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino’s [Raphael] paint on wood Saint Michael Overwhelming the Demon (c. 1505) demonstrates how Bordun’s photograph can transcend its discrete historical context, merging the factual and the mythic as described by C. S. Lewis. Through his references to Raphael and the masters, Bordun lays claim to a Christian iconography and challenges the political use of religion in waging human warfare. His works all demonstrate contemporary or even quotidian plays on Renaissance works in order to address current political issues. The art of photography and stylistic references to churches’ involvement in politics, as opposed to Christian teachings, critiques Moscow’s “post-truth” justifications of the Ukrainian invasion and war.
... Elas subvertem os arquivistas e sua vontade histórica: subvertem, deste modo, a demanda do desejo exigido dos sujeitos encarcerados e das imagens que performariam. Assim, seu gesto político de contraarquivo foi o de não participar da máquina de desejo construída ao redor dos seus corpos.Os gestos arquivísticos, submetidos ao desejo de seus juízes soberanos (Estado, fotógrafa e comentadores), são superados por aquilo queWJT Mitchell (2005) chama de "desejo da imagem" (picture's desire). Mitchell sugere uma mudança na analítica usual sobre o poder das imagens, ANDRÉ KEIJI KUNIGAMI | Fotografia contra Vontade: as fotografias de Dorothea Lange dos campos de concentração dos Estados Unidos | Photography against Will: Dorothea Lange's photographs of the US concentration camps saindo da abordagem das imagens como signos de intencionalidade, entendendo-as na sua materialidade. ...
Este artigo tem como objeto principal as imagens que Dorothea Lange produziu para o governo estadunidense dos campos de concentração para japoneses-americanos durante a guerra do Pacífico (1941-1945). Considerando o contexto das políticas raciais, as restrições visuais sobre os campos e a forma como as imagens foram produzidas, suprimidas e comentadas, percebemos que algumas das imagens de Lange resistem à inscrição original, produzindo um contra-arquivo frente à vontade inaugural que as produziu. Propomos aqui uma atenção às imagens dos corpos imóveis, sugerindo ali uma resistência à demanda da “inclusão” no futuro da estado-nação liberal.
... E stratégiák közé tartozik a figyelemirányítás is, amely szintén csak az olvasó közreműködésével lép működésbe (Eco 1979, 62-63). Eco megközelítésével szoros rokonságot mutat a képszemiotika területén Mitchell felfogása: "Amikor a képekhez a poétika nézőpontjából közelítünk, nemcsak azt a kérdést kell feltennünk, hogy mit jelentenek, hanem hogy milyen választ várnak tőlünk, milyen igényt támasztanak velünk szemben és mi hogyan válaszolunk erre az igényre" (Mitchell 2005. XV. saját ford). ...
A vizuális és irodalmi literáció kezdeti szakaszában megjelenő képeskönyv-befogadásra akkor nyílik lehetőség, amikor a kisgyermek bizonyos figyelmi képességekkel rendelkezik. A tanulmány bevezetésében először áttekintem a figyelmi folyamatok és a képeskönyvbefogadás kapcsolatát a legfiatalabb befogadók körében, mert már itt találhatók olyan összefüggések, amelyek a későbbiek során is szerepet játszanak (habituáció - diszhabituáció, a figyelem alakításának, motiválásának társas, kulturális keretei). Majd a figyelemirányítás médiumspecifikus eljárásaival foglalkozom a narratíva reprezentációja, illetve a foregrounding és az irodalmiság összefüggései vonatkozásában. Ezen belül abból indulok ki, hogy a képeskönyvben a kép és a szöveg külön-külön is hozzájárulnak a kognitív hangsúlyok megteremtéséhez, a közöttük lévő kapcsolatok a stilisztikailag semleges párhuzamos elbeszéléstől a stilisztikailag előtérbeállított ellenpontozó vagy ellentmondó kapcsolatokig terjed. Mivel az utóbbiak esetében az eltérő narrátori szólamokhoz ellentétes nézőpontok is társulnak, a sajátos nézőpontok alkalmazása az egyik legelterjedtebb eszköze a gyerekképeskönyveknek arra, hogy a célközönségben jelentős kognitív változást érjenek el. A vizsgált példák egyrészt azt támasztják alá, hogy a képeskönyvek általában igyekeznek a még tapasztalatlan befogadó figyelmét egyértelmű módon irányítani, ugyanakkor egyes darabok arra is törekszenek, hogy a befogadói elvárásokat, rutinokat szokatlanabb technikák használatával újítsák meg és nagyobb teret engedjenek a befogadói aktivitásnak. Mivel a szokatlan stiláris elemek figyelemkoncentrációt váltanak ki a befogadókban, jelentős szerepet játszanak az értelmezői készségek, az irodalmi kompetenciák elsajátításában is.
... ¿Qué tanto el consumo de este tipo de imágenes involucra otras prácticas de violencia y de poder (SONTAG, 2005;; abre posibilidades para expandir el compromiso político y "contratos civiles" a partir de la mirada y de la circulación de imágenes (AZOULAY, 2008); o bien permite redistribuir las posibilidades de la representación ante la "imagen intolerable" (RANCIÈRE, 2008)? ¿Qué nos piden mirar estas imágenes (MITCHELL, 2005)? ¿De qué formas "se mueven y conmueven" (SPYER;STEEDLY, 2013;RANCIÈRE, 2008), o qué tanto éstas constituyen, en sí mismas, "eventos" o "imágenes-evento" (STRASSLER, 2020)? ...
Este artículo analiza cómo se disputan y resignifican sentidos comunes sobre la violencia desde la experimentación formal y narrativa en torno a la intimidad en algunas producciones audiovisuales recientes de México y Latinoamérica. Para ello, examina ejemplos de producciones, así como dinámicas de producción y circulación en torno a tres modalidades de violencia: narcoviolencia (vinculada a desaparición forzada y violencia de estado), memoria histórica, y violencias raciales y de género. Concluye que desde estas propuestas se desafía la noción convencional de esfera pública como algo separado de lo privado y principalmente racional, para pensar en la incidencia de estas obras en la transformación de sensibilidades y subjetividades que, aunque generalmente se relegan al ámbito de lo privado, en realidad son cruciales para la vida pública y para la reconfiguración de lo común. Se trata de formas íntimas de mirar, desear, anhelar, imaginar futuros, producir sentido y significado que, al tornarse colectivas, inciden en la transformación de ‘estructuras de sentimiento’.
Historical painting creation stands as a significant intersection of art and history, valuing the reproduction of historical truth and the conveyance of historical spirit through artistic means. This paper delves into the historical and artistic truth in historical painting creation, arguing that historical truth forms the cornerstone while artistic truth embodies the personalized expression of artists. Moreover, both historical and artistic truth coexist in opposition and unity in historical painting creation, and their balance is crucial for producing exceptional works. By analyzing specific historical paintings, this paper proposes principles and practical methods for balancing historical and artistic truth, offering theoretical guidance and practical reference for historical painting creation.
The aim of the article is to prove the hypothesis that the use of naive art in visual design enhances the emotional impact on the audience and creates more effective communicative messages due to its immediacy and associative depth. The article examines naive art from the perspective of its figurative and emotional expressiveness. It considers ways to adapt naive art in graphic design, advertising, and illustration. The research methodology is based on a comprehensive analysis of theoretical sources in art history, design, and visual communications, structural-semiotic analysis of the artistic features of naive art, as well as a comparative study of the principles of its adaptation in graphic design. The study found that naive art, with its simplified forms, bright colors, and intuitive composition, creates a powerful emotional impact on the viewer. Its immediacy and lack of academic canons allow it to reflect deep archetypes of human perception, making it an effective means of visual communication. For the first time, a comprehensive study of the emotional expressiveness of naive art as an element of contemporary visual design has been conducted, including an analysis of its impact on various forms of visual communication, such as graphic design, advertising, illustration. The results obtained have practical significance for designers, advertising agencies, illustrators, and digital media specialists, as they provide an opportunity to integrate the principles of naive art into the development of visual concepts that meet the needs of the modern audience. This will allow you to design emotionally charged and understandable communication products for marketing campaigns, advertising materials, and other types of visual communication.
Représenter le territoire permet de le saisir, pour décider de ses évolutions (Corboz, 1983) ; représenter l’infrastructure routière permet d’appréhender matériellement son rapport à l’environnement traversé (éléments de composition, positionnement topographique, etc.). La restitution de cette matérialité est nécessaire pour accompagner des perspectives de transformation, voire de « transition » (Birch, 2016 ; Barles, 2018). Peu de travaux font état de représentations graphiques d’infrastructures de mobilités routières. Parmi eux, l’ouvrage America’s National Park Roads and Parkways : Drawings from the Historic American Engineering Record (Davis et al., 2004) présente 331 dessins à la main de plans, coupes, axonométries de parkways et park roads. Ces dessins sont issus d’un inventaire de douze voies paysagères, réalisé entre 1988 et 2002, par des instances pluridisciplinaires des parcs nationaux américains (ingénieurs et landscape architects, notamment). L’exploration de ce recueil met en évidence le rôle de la représentation graphique, comme un médium pluriel dans le processus d’aménagement et de transformation (Söderström, 2000) : médium de mise en lumière et de production de connaissances ; de construction d’un regard pluridisciplinaire et d’un langage commun ; d’action et d’accompagnement de nouvelles pratiques.
Along the coast of Gujarat, nineteenth-century merchant houses or havelis still stand in historic cities, connecting ports from Durban to Rangoon. In this ambitious and multifaceted work, Ketaki Pant uses these old spaces as a lens through which to view not only the vibrant stories of their occupants, but also the complex entanglements of Indian Ocean capitalism. These homes reveal new perspectives from colonized communities who were also major merchants, signifying ideas of family, race, gender, and religion, as well as representing ties to land. Employing concepts from feminist studies, colonial studies, and history, Pant argues that havelis provide a model for understanding colonial capitalism in the Indian Ocean as a spatial project. This is a rich exploration of both belonging and unbelonging and the ways they continue to shape individual and social identities today.
This article presents a multidimensional analysis of the work of the Māori artist Hori from postcolonial, cultural, and autoethnographic perspectives. Drawing on the researcher’s experience as a visitor in Ōtaki, Aotearoa/New Zealand, an environment deeply rooted in Māori heritage, the text demonstrates how Hori’s art becomes a field of negotiation over identity, visual decolonization, and dialogue with global currents of socially engaged art. Particular attention is given to Matariki, the Māori New Year, as a context for cultural renewal, community strengthening, and the emphasis on values such as whakapapa (genealogy) and whenua (land). Through the author’s autoethnographic reflexivity, interpretation emerges as a relational process that takes into account local meanings, universal experiences of resistance, as well as the ethical and epistemological challenges involved in researching Indigenous cultures. In effect, Hori’s work appears as a transnational visual language in which aesthetics intertwines with politics and local epistemologies engage with global discourses on power, memory, and identity.
No cenário de transformações das narrativas visuais do acontecimento, algumas práticas comunicacionais instauram um ritmo desacelerado de leitura. Nesse horizonte, este estudo pretende discutir as conseqüências que as séries visuais nomeadas pelo World Press Photo, na categoria projetos de longa-duração, podem sugerir à égide da particular formatação referencial e temporal dos acontecimentos. O alvo desta discussão envolve os horizontes poéticos e estéticos desses testemunhos regulados, por vezes, sob paradigma absortivo, a partir da representação de actantes em estado de espírito e atividades absortos, sugerindo uma atmosfera enigmática e distanciada de aspectos canonizados das matrizes fotojornalísticas, condicionando um agenciamento de leitura calcado em ritmo de duração mais lento e atento.
The intention of this article is to analyse some of the different ways in which the interactivity of inanimate objects has been discussed, with particular reference to images. In this context, it will be also proposed to consider a type of images, here called imagin-actions, which have specific characteristics different from those already considered in the debate. There is an extensive literary tradition according to which agency has since time immemorial been attributed to inanimate objects. Indeed, thanks to the imagination, human beings naturally relate to objects, and this would in fact constitute one of the fundamental elements for the development of the human mind. Now, with the advent of digital technologies, the actions of objects and images have acquired an operational quality, since they are capable of acting directly and concretely on the living world, and also of determining specific imaginative processes that entail the responsivity of things. However, in addition to having their own agency and operativity, imagin-actions do something more: they keep users in constant motion. By responding to a series of requests, they ask for something in return, intensifying the level of interactive exchange between people and things and inevitably reconfiguring human creative processes.
This article explores how anime contributes to the creation of a culture that attracts autistic individuals and supports their lives. We identify three aspects that may explain why it becomes a special interest that is both deeply personal and widely shared: visual tactility, or animation stimming; layers, or moving through estranged worlds; and unmasking, or emerging neurocultures and languages. Tentatively presenting anime as ‘stim culture,’ we uncover new directions in autism and fan culture research.
This special section of Current Swedish Archaeology explores the relationship between figuration, animacy, and abstract imagery within the archaeology and ethnography of figurines. Departing from traditional representationalist approaches that have long been the modi operandi in the study of figurative imagery, as well as in the archaeology of figurines, the papers adopt ontological, new animist, and new materialist perspectives, viewing figurines not as mere depictions but as active entities affecting their makers, users and environments. They discuss non-representational theoretical approaches in relation to archaeological materials from middle Neolithic Fennoscandia, Neolithic and Iron Age Britain and Ireland, and ethnographic approaches focused on the recent past and present of Indigenous groups in Northwestern Siberia. Together the contributions seek to highlight the complexity of figurine research and the need for interdisciplinary methodologies and innovative treatments to properly reanimate both research and the figurines themselves.
Anthropomorphic clay figurines comprise an enigmatic category of finds associated with Pitted Ware culture sites during the latter part of the middle Neolithic period (c. 2900–2300 BC) in the Baltic Sea region. As with most figurative objects, previous research has often been preoccupied with questions of representation, for example focusing on what the figurines might depict. In this paper, the anthropomorphic figurines are instead explored through their physical properties, primarily their ability to look back at their human makers, handlers and onlookers. Considering these figurines as clay beings that have the ability to look back at their viewers shifts the perspective from representation to presentation. This conceptual shift results in a more dynamic picture of human-figurine interactions at Pitted Ware culture sites.
In the territory of post-isms also visuality has been debated in terms of its post condition, where it was essentially associated with the digital era in which images have proliferated to the stage at which everything must be made into an image and is consumed as an image. Such image and information overload and constant alertness have produced a certain “visual extinction” and invisibility, not only as a form of resistance to prevailing visual politics but also as a perceptual and cognitive response to excessive exploitation of (mediated) visuality. In contemporary visual culture the superficiality of the visible superseds the concerns of pictorial and reduces imaginary and metaphoric power underlying visual form. Digital media culture has made a fundamental shift in our relation to the external world, sensory perception and, most importantly, in our visual awareness and understanding of images. The new phenomenology of the image decisively altered looking practices, the relationship between the observer and the observed and also cognitive and affective dimensions of images. The image has transformed from representation into a fleeting and instant visual event which is in the ongoing convergence of media no longer ocular-centric. Automated processes of production marked by various image customization tools, accelerated speed and immediacy by which images are produced and distributed changed the concept of creativity and introduced »cut and paste« as a paramount model of image-making. Tech-aesthetics and cyber visuality not only change cultural and anthropological role of images but also rearticulate the ontology of the image itself, its materiality and the way we experience images. Flusser claimed that whoever is programmed by technical images lives and knows reality as a programmed context. I examine how the algorithmic logic of the programmable (screen) image affects other types of images, particularly focusing on aesthetic, phenomenal and representational properties and distinctions between contingent screen images and other, mainly art image-objects. I argue that egalitarian approach towards images and accessible image-making technologies impede our cognitive abilities to control and process images. This raises further question of our capacity for critical reflection on visual systems and image agency, specifically regarding complex connections between formal, material and technical components and the construction of meaning. A range of issues arising in this framework are to be tackled. Do rapid changes in image technologies (assembling human and nonhuman elements) along with AI make images self-contained and human intervention eventually dispensable? What methods should we use in deciding which images should be archived, interpreted and historicized? And last but not the least, how and if do images in the era of visual commodification relate to imaginary and make possible, as Deleuze woud say, “thinking in images” beyond the legible signs and normative technologies?
Com crescentes casos de ataques a monumentos no passado recente, o tema da iconoclastia voltou a ser debatido. Mas a iconoclastia que testemunhamos hoje é de fato análoga àquela de períodos distantes no tempo, estudada por autores consagrados como Freedberg e Belting? A hipótese que procuro apresentar é a de que atravessamos um período de transformação epocal na relação com a imagem, e que o próprio conceito de imagem, subentendido de modo genérico à noção de iconoclastia, precisa ser repensado e historicizado. Para tanto, revisito rapidamente a iconoclastia de maio de 68, momento de emergência da sociedade do espetáculo, e proponho, em seguida, algumas indicações teóricas que podem nos ajudar a diferenciar a iconoclastia contemporânea.
A world, real or fictional, the entities that compose the world, and their relations with each other exist and undergo changes in space and time. The paper explores the interactions between space and social structures that affect the lives of the inhabitants of a narrative world; the effects of a narrative environment on the subjectivities and social lives of characters. R. K. Narayan's short stories reveal multifarious relations within space; socially produced, politically re-shaped, and inherently contested. Autonomy and belonging of the characters are either facilitated or threatened by the existence of varied spaces, the inherent contemporaneous heterogeneity, scrutinized at distinct levels in different narratives. The short stories highlight how the life of an individual in Narayan’s fictional town Malgudi is transformed due to the changes in the narrative environment, when space is reshaped by personal, societal, or, political motives. The narratives critically explore the sacralization (a reversal of profanation) of spaces that suddenly excludes the ordinary, representing the transformation of public spaces freely used by people into exclusionary, or sacred, spaces. The paper investigates how the transformation of spatial relations and its dynamic impact in the narrative environment reveals the complex interplay between space, power, identity, and autonomy.
En 1939, tras el inicio de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, la política de no concordancia adoptada por el gobierno Vargas, bajo el Estado Nuevo, puso las imágenes en la disputa. El conflicto ideológico entre democracia y fascismo se demostró en fotografías que también capturaron las transformaciones sociales y culturales de la época, con nuevas percepciones discordantes sobre lo que debería ser Brasil como país en el escenario del hemisferio occidental. El artículo analiza dos lados de ese período de conflicto por medio de las imágenes: de un lado, el país blanco, masculino y ordenado, demostrado en las fotografías del Ministerio de Educación y Salud (MES), producidas por fotógrafos alemanes refugiados contratados por el gobierno para producir el monumental álbum de propaganda que se llamaba Obra Getuliana; de otro, un país lleno de vida, místico, sexualizado y carnavalizado, fotografiado por la prensa estadounidense, como los corresponsales de la revista Life y algunos contratados por el Departamento de los Estados Unidos, entre ellos, Genevieve Naylor. Designada por el Office of Inter-American Affairs, su misión era retratar Brasil como un buen vecino y persuadir al público estadounidense de que los brasileños, en su día a día, estaban mucho más cercanos del liberal "american way of life" que de la rígida disciplina fascista.
Memory and visuality are two trajectories of the modern world that have led to a regular change of culture. From the second half of the 20th century nostalgia combines with repentance, memories with reminiscences, turning our gaze back to the past, collective and individual experience, but at the same time the supply of various images, expanded by creative engineering, increases. The processes of memorialisation are gradually overshadowed by the mediation and industrialisation of memory, supported by globally operating techno-liberalism. The overwhelmed culture of images also experiences significant transformations. Global visuality has influenced the field of culture, not only by captivating the attention, changing the trajectories of the sight, but also shifting the meanings of memory, cultural reflections and institutional practices. Memory and visual culture studies are usually explored in different theoretical fields, so this article aims to discuss their interactions and synergies that reveal a wider spectrum of socio-cultural transformations.
Cet article explore le potentiel d’un dispositif à 360° pour documenter l’exposition permanente du Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille et offrir un accès numérique aux peintures exposées, en les reliant à d’autres documents fonctionnant comme autant de paratextes (à propos d’une œuvre) et d’intertextes (d’autres œuvres). Nous considérerons ce dispositif à 360° comme un moyen de réduire et d’interroger les frontières entre l’œuvre d’art et ces autres documents. Un des enjeux consistera à problématiser les différentes formes d’implémentation et de (re)médiation des peintures dans le musée lui-même et en contexte numérique, notamment sous l’angle de leurs dimensions matérielles et symboliques.
This article examines images taken inside El Salvador’s prisons and released in April 2020, just as the then-new president, Nayib Bukele, was making drastic changes to Salvadoran social policy and further concentrating power in the presidency and military. It investigates the social qualities of these staged images, of nude prisoners forced into large blocks, and what affective resonances the Bukele administration is exploiting and producing through them. The author argues that these images focalize the trauma and anxiety of years of dispersed violence in El Salvador and grant their audiences conditional access to the death making they perform while also threatening them with inclusion. The article proposes that attendant affective responses and media circulation constitute a form of infrastructure essential to rationalizing the expanding carceral project in El Salvador, which has seen its prison population more than double, and to the eroticization of that project’s structural and personal violence, of which these images are an extreme and informative example. It proposes these images are in dialogue with other archives of sexualized carceral violence and a history of the representation of El Salvador through death, while also indicative of new techniques of image production and circulation in settings of confinement in the twenty-first century. Using theories of hierarchies of the flesh and being from Black studies, as well as the critical geography work of Ruth Wilson Gilmore, the author argues that, within the space of the images, disease, chaos, and criminalized land and body converge.
This chapter examines the impact of drone technology on visual culture, using Frozen Planet II as a key example. It opens with a narrative on how advanced drone footage offers immersive, unprecedented perspectives on natural phenomena, such as avalanches, reshaping viewers’ experiences. The chapter discusses the evolution of drone technology and its expanding role in areas like filmmaking and environmental monitoring, highlighting how drones provide novel vantage points that influence our understanding of the world. It also addresses the ethical considerations surrounding drone visuals, including privacy concerns and the responsible use of technology. By integrating insights from digital media, visual communication, and cultural studies, the chapter explores how drone-generated imagery alters visual narratives and enhances creative expression. It argues that understanding these visuals is essential for engaging with the future of visual culture in an increasingly digital world.
This chapter asks what the Anthropocene means for a new science of man. The idea of the Anthropocene clearly goes far beyond the widespread concept of “anthropogenic,” which is elucidated by the clarification of the difference between geological and historical or archaeological periodization concepts. Only by connecting the materially open concept of culture in cultural anthropology with the concept of planetarity will the fundamental material entanglement of man and nature become clear. For a causal explanation of transgenerational change and especially the dynamics of the Anthropocene, I connect the idea of the Anthropocene with the concept of niche construction from evolutionary ecology. This reveals a threefold heritage that is crucial for understanding the Anthropocene: the genetic heritage, the cultural heritage, and the anthropogenic geospheric heritage.
The aim of the article is to explore how describing works of art and artistic practices enables a deeper understanding of the political dimensions and effects of art. Drawing on visual and documentary analysis, the article explores two artworks: Azúcar Rabiosa (‘Rabid Sugar’) (2018) by Cerrucha which addresses the justice system’s inaction regarding femicides and transfemicides in Mexico and Remain (2018) by Hoda Afshar, which documents the experiences of a group of stateless men who were left to languish when the Australian government closed its offshore immigration detention centre. Two key arguments emerge. First, making visible through description different aspects of artistic objects and practices helps account for what these artworks do politically. Second, taking description seriously enables us to understand how these artworks make claims to human rights.
The last decade has witnessed an increased interest in outer space among non-expert citizens of London; many astronomical societies have expanded, and telescopes and astronomical magazines have experienced pronounced growth in sales. Anthropology, as a discipline focused on the study of human culture, has recently provided new insights into the cultural dimensions involved in contemporary experiences of the universe. After spending two months among amateur astronomers at two London astronomical societies, I argue that pictures – understood from a material culture perspective – play a key role in shaping people's relationship with the universe. This relationship is currently influenced by new technologies that offer more accessible ways to capture and share pictures of the skies. Simultaneously, new social media apps have opened new digital platforms for sharing outer space pictures, introducing innovative visual ways to engage with it.
The purpose of this study is to identify the potential of visual culture in contemporary studies of ethnocultural identity. The author examines in detail visual images, which he considers not only as ways of representation of ethnocultural identity, but also as important mechanisms of its construction. At the same time, the potential of the so-called images of identity becomes especially important due to the fact that visual images play an increasingly important role in the modern globalized world. Understanding and using their potential becomes a key aspect in the study of ethnocultural identity today, when visual culture is a powerful tool for understanding how images reflect sociocultural realities and how they interact with a wide range of social and cultural processes, and the study of ethnocultural identity becomes especially relevant in the light of globalization and digitalization of modern society. The author uses visual studies as the main research methodology, where the unit of research is the image as a carrier of meanings and an active participant of sociocultural processes. The main conclusions of this study are the following: visual culture is a dynamic space where visual practices and images not only reflect, but also actively shape ethnocultural identity, contributing to the critical rethinking of cultural interactions. Images of ethnocultural identity may include not only signs and symbols that are decipherable when perceived by a representative of a particular ethnocultural group, but also meanings that have a special potential hidden in visual images. Images of ethnocultural identity create a unique visual impression that reflects and shapes the values and traditions of a certain ethnocultural group. The study of the role of the visual in the context of identity allows us to conclude that visual images play a key role in its research to date.
Dans le cadre des études sur l’atmosphère, interroger – de manière à la fois technique et esthétique – les forces actives plus ou moins invisibles dans l’air qui nous entoure, et surtout les différentes manières dont ces forces peuvent être rendues explicites, semble d’un intérêt capital. À partir de l’étude de deux films photochimiques expérimentaux contemporains – Zillertal de Jürgen Reble (1991/1997), sound of a million insects, light of a thousand stars de Tomonari Nishikawa (2014) – et un documentaire des années 1980 – Tchernobyl, Chroniques des semaines difficiles du cinéaste ukrainien Vladimir Chevtchenko (1986) –, que nous appelons « sylphiques » en référence aux écrits de l’alchimiste Paracelse pour leur capacité matérielle à rendre visible de manière étonnante le « chaos » ou « espace vitale » des atmosphères avec lesquelles ils entrent en contact, nous proposons d’explorer la manière dont la notion d’atmosphère devient centrale dans les nouvelles approches des théories des médias.
The aesthetics and emotional and affective manifestations that stir the sensitive life of a political community are central to the knowledge production repertoire of the IR discipline. Among the concepts mobilized by IR to try to explain or understand the phenomena of international politics, these categories, as we will see, have historically occupied no more than a place on the margins of the field.
Taking as our point of departure the Situationist intellectual Guy Debord’s broad characterization of psychogeography—that is, “the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals”—we argue that our collaborative research project entitled Coast of Teeth (2023) has revealed some coordinates for a new textual-visual psychogeography of English seaside towns. This multidimensional model of psychogeography includes liminal features of littoral spaces that are distinct from those of ‘inland England’ regions that have typically monopolized the attention of mainstream psychogeographers, in addition to some novel metaphorical lenses through which contemporary English seaside towns can be usefully studied. Finally, we explain how our coastal psychogeography has been enabled by a somewhat improvisational, flexible and contingent artistic practice-based methodology that pertains to the disciplines of both written reportage (Tom Sykes) and reportage illustration (Louis Netter).
This article examines the worship of Dr José Tomás Sousa Martins, a 19th‐century physician revered as a lay saint and healer in Portugal, attracting devotees from diverse backgrounds. Some devotees come in search of healing and leave votive offerings at his statue in front of the NOVA Medical School in Lisbon. Others view him as a spirit guide who manifests through mediums in Umbanda practices and the healing rituals of the Spiritualist Christian temples of the Vale do Amanhecer in Brazil. Dr Sousa Martins bridges the domains of spirituality and biomedicine. This article explores the materiality of devotional practices through the circulation of things and images and the intersection of therapeutic itineraries in shaping places of worship. It examines how healing is sought through devotion during health crises, emphasizing the importance of the senses and religious and diagnostic images in devotees’ healing narratives.
This chapter speculates about photographs that act as potential fields of projection, inviting imaginary processes through which a sense of otherness and lived experience enters into the image. Processes through which the photograph becomes other-than-itself. Using a performative style of writing, the essay directs questions at its readers to involve them into a conversation about viewing photographs as mental, remembered, and imaginary images alike. Actual photographs are reinterpreted by inscribing them with internalized images. Expanded self-portraits are moulded and contextualized with latent images stored in our visual memory. The chapter argues that these kinds of non-referential photographs are simultaneously imbued with seemingly paradoxical faculties-object-ness and image-ness, here-ness and there-ness, now-ness and then-ness-which can be used to test the attachability and elasticity of the image. I had a flashback of something that never existed (Louise Bourgeois) 1
The Bronze Age (1700–500 BCE) petroglyphs of southern Scandinavia comprise a unique tradition of rock art in northern Eurasia. Despite a limited repertoire of motifs such as cupmarks, boats, anthropomorphs, zoomorphs, podomorphs and circles, it shows great variability in design, elaboration and articulation. This book is a study of the Mälaren region in southern-central Sweden that includes one of the most prominent rock art clusters of southwest Uppland as well as the hinterland of Södermanland county. The rock art in this region is studied on three scales: regional, local and particular. This allows for comparisons between dense and small sites, an exploration of how the Bronze Age rock art tradition developed over time in the area, and equally how the design and articulation of certain motifs relate to contemporary settlements, waterways and varying environmental settings.
Patterns and structures in the distribution and articulation of the petroglyphs show that the different motifs are not only visual expressions but very much material enactments. The motifs often physically relate to each other, the flows of water, and the microtopography and mineral contents of the rocks. The study is therefore not as much about rock art as images and symbols as it is about the ecology of rock art – the web of social and physical relations in which it was enacted and employed. From this perspective, the petroglyphs are seen as petrofacts, that is something akin to tools or devices articulated in various ways to affect humans, other-than-humans and the animacies of the coastal milieus where they were made.
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