A Driving Force
On the Rhetoric of Images and Power
a cura di
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.
Religious submission • Macedonia • Autotheory • Italy • Power of the images • Visual Culture • Poor power Images • Renaissance • Sex • Folklore • Technology • <p>Kustar • Propaganda • Melodrama • Vittorio Viale • Nicolas Ibrahim Sursock • Scuole Grandi • Paraesthetics • Un’Ambigua Utopia • Speculative design • Authority • French Revolution • New media installation art • Alternative press • Post-Representation • Second Post War Period • Venice • Kodeń • Wearable technologies • Kustar • Fascism • Byzantine Empire • Byzantine sculpture • Modern art history • Speculative Design • Sapieha family • Historiographical bias • Dissidence • Semiology • National image • Metaphor • General intellect • Arts and crafts • Byzantine empire • The Bureau of Melodramatic Research • Coronation of Miraculous Images • Salon d'Automne • Labour of love • Occupational realism • Painted facade • Visual identity • Sixteenth-century Italian art • Image • A/traverso • Aby Warburg • Iconography • Pietro Aretino • New Formalism • Countersurveillance fashion • Directory • Decoloniality • Power representation • The Peggy Guggenheim Collection • Symbols • Political iconology • Cittadini originari • Lebanon • Optic Nerve • Geographical personifications • Public sphere • Image and power • Portrait de la jeune fille en feu • Holbein • Image theory • Visual culture • Sursock Museum • Latin faith • Arts • Drone • Russian Empire • Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth • Contemporary art • Surveillance • Socially engaged art • New Media Installation Art • Neoliberal imaginary • John V Palaiologos • Power • Saint George • Exhibition • Venice Biennale • Jan Fryderyk Sapieha • Portrait de la jeune fille en few • Palazzo Madama, Torino • Distorted portrait • Lucerne • Countersurveillance Fashion • Russian style • Politics • Postcolonialism • Warfare • Revolutionary festival • Feminist art • Our Lady of Kodeń • Beirut • Gendered bodies • Poor power images • Post-representation • Gaze • Modern Art History • Palaiologan Renaissance • Allegory • Rhetoric • Political iconography • Design • Wood • Materialism • Salon dʼAutomne • Crossmapping