A Driving Force
On the Rhetoric of Images and Power
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abstract
The volume comprises a selection of papers presented at the 5th Postgraduate International Conference organized by the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage of Ca’ Foscari University of Venice (Venice, 4-6 October 2023): A Driving Force. On the Rhetoric of Images and Power. In the introduction to his well-known The Power of Images (1989), David Freedberg claims not only that images hold power over us, but they are also, inevitably, related to ‘power’ itself. Art is therefore a powerful and non-neutral tool. Its forms and expressions influence and manipulate the realm of the real. Throughout human history, the artist’s creative power gave form, substance, and meaning to otherwise inert matter. This process turned the artist into a demiurge. Furthermore, once images are given their final form, they circulate and live a life of their own. The 5th Postgraduate International Conference was aimed at investigating the rhetorical nature of the intersection between image and power. In 1979 Yuri Lotman claimed that “rhetoric” is the displacement of the structural principles of a given semiotic sphere into another semiotic sphere. The Tartu semiologist’s approach implies that the “correlation with different semiotic systems gives rise to a rhetorical situation in which a powerful source of elaboration of new meanings is contained”. In exploring these meanings from a multidisciplinary perspective, this volume investigates two main themes: the power of the image, as an autonomous device, endowed with a pervasive and persuasive character; the image as a form for representing power which addresses questions concerning the sense of authority, and its negation, namely a sense of dissidence and counter-narrations.
Speculative design • Pietro Aretino • Byzantine empire • Occupational realism • Dissidence • Salon dʼAutomne • New Formalism • Venice Biennale • Design • Countersurveillance Fashion • Crossmapping • Revolutionary festival • Symbols • <p>Kustar • Cittadini originari • Sixteenth-century Italian art • Image theory • National image • Second Post War Period • New media installation art • Visual Culture • Post-representation • Alternative press • Allegory • Metaphor • Visual culture • Salon d'Automne • Semiology • Saint George • Nicolas Ibrahim Sursock • Paraesthetics • Beirut • Contemporary art • Optic Nerve • A/traverso • Modern Art History • Technology • Arts and crafts • Socially engaged art • Kodeń • Vittorio Viale • Venice • Rhetoric • Portrait de la jeune fille en feu • Sursock Museum • Coronation of Miraculous Images • Power • Sex • New Media Installation Art • Fascism • Gendered bodies • Palazzo Madama, Torino • Arts • Portrait de la jeune fille en few • Autotheory • Drone • Lebanon • Materialism • The Peggy Guggenheim Collection • Neoliberal imaginary • Gaze • Image and power • Image • French Revolution • Speculative Design • Folklore • Scuole Grandi • Painted facade • General intellect • Directory • Religious submission • Italy • Propaganda • Latin faith • The Bureau of Melodramatic Research • Authority • Decoloniality • Surveillance • Russian Empire • Lucerne • Post-Representation • Geographical personifications • Poor power Images • Aby Warburg • Byzantine sculpture • Exhibition • Holbein • Byzantine Empire • John V Palaiologos • Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth • Politics • Kustar • Countersurveillance fashion • Russian style • Political iconology • Political iconography • Wood • Modern art history • Warfare • Sapieha family • Labour of love • Our Lady of Kodeń • Un’Ambigua Utopia • Renaissance • Distorted portrait • Iconography • Jan Fryderyk Sapieha • Melodrama • Feminist art • Visual identity • Macedonia • Wearable technologies • Poor power images • Historiographical bias • Palaiologan Renaissance • Public sphere • Postcolonialism • Power representation • Power of the images