I am most interested in the optional topic of image and text, which relates to some readings done for various classes last year. A tentative proposal for my seminar:

Lessing in Laocoon wrote down the fundamental difference between painting and poetry as the difference between the spatial and temporal arts -- painting, he said, had no concept of time inherent within it, while poetry with its sequential presentation of symbolic forms necessarily has a temporal element. By a process of metonymy these distinctions have been applied across the board to distinguish between the visual arts and literature as distinct and oppositional categories; further advances in both poetic and visual form have done little to question this distinction. And given that memory is a function of both time and distance, this would lead one to believe that the visual image is uniquely unsuitable for recording past experience. Guibert and Barthes both follow this line of thought, damning photography in particular for its failure to adequately capture (or stimulate) memory; Guibert, in writing about a "lost photograph", notes that he has the memory precisely because he failed to photograph it and thus fix it in a time-defying frame.

(continued, because I exceeded the character count in the last post)

Robert Morris in "The Present Tense of Space" goes along with this notion so far as photography is concerned, but he calls into question the notion that all forms of visual art -- and thus visual experience -- are inherently equal. Instead, he argues in favor of distinguishing between visual forms on the basis of the viewer's "presence", or ability to actually experience the image, rather than merely reflect on it. Indeed, far from opposing "spatial" and "temporal" as Lessing did, he would argue that it is only art which can be experienced spatially (in the sense of the body actually moving through it) that has a temporal value; photography cannot represent space, and thus fails to adequately capture time. I would like to build on Morris' gradation of the temporal qualities of various types of visual art, starting from his two extreme examples (opposite ends of the spectrum) of photography and architecture. While he has clearly established that different types of experience accompany these two very different visual forms, I would like to further analyze the relationship between perception and memory in regard to these experiences, in an attempt to understand the dynamics of space, time and memory.

I am delighted that some comments a propos of research papers are beginning to appear on the site. For others than Rebecca: you simply need to log in and you can intuitively navigate the site and add comments.

For Rebecca, regarding Lessing and Image / Text and the Lessing and Morris essays. Let me say first that while I do indeed know Lessing well I do not know the Morris essay itself (could you post a reference, here or in the bibliography). Nonetheless it's interesting that he would argue for the unequal nature of the visual arts. I do admire the interest in attending to the qualities of aesthetic experience in e.g. architecture and photography. But the comparison seems to introduce a red herring. I'd also caution against making a categorical cut between "experience" and "reflection." Your ambition to get at perception in relation to memory nonetheless strikes me as worthwhile. but again it would be important to think beyond the ways in which they are opposed and also to imagine how the one is necessary for the other. The idea of a *dynamics* of space, time, and memory is very perceptive, so I would suggest using lessing and Morris as foils. One further thing: to think about the location of memory, space, and time as both in the viewer/perceiver and as in the artefacts themselves. If you know the chapter in Deleuze's book "What Is Philosophy?" on 'Percept, Affect, and Concept' this could help.

AJC

I have added bibliographic details for the Morris essay and uploaded it in pdf form to this site. The essay is mostly about architecture and sculpture; Morris cites photography as the antithesis of his view of architecture, but really does not spend a lot of time developing this distinction; he simply says that someone could (or should) do it (pg. 182) -- so that's why I thought I could undertake this task :) I don't know the Deleuze chapter but am interested in reading it -- however, it doesn't seem to be available in Slovenia, at least not in the library system. If you happen to have it in pdf (or any fellow students happen to own the book personally), I would appreciate a copy.

I guess a slovenian version doesn't help?

Thanks, Maja -- I have a hard enough time understanding Deleuze in English, though, so I am afraid the Slovene would be a bit much for me :)

I am interested in the relationship between visual culture and music, which was also the main topic of my seminars done in the previous year. The proposed topic for this seminar is about film music, about the way it works in the film. Unless it represents a central component of cinema its functions are little understood. Michel Chion argues that film music is a new topic in cultural and film studies although it seems well known. Normally the study of film music has two approaches: semiotics and musicology, but as K. J. Donnelly says “there is little common ground or consensus when it comes to music analysis across academic disciplines”. According to cultural coding I would analyze the use of popular music in the films of the American director Quentin Tarantino, best known for his successful “subversion of popular culture”. The music in his films is not-composed for this unique occasion, it is more or less “popular”, but its pre-existence has not simple commercial implications. It forms an integral part of every single Tarantino’s film, it also indicates the identities of the characters in his stories. The so called diegetic music (music from within the world of the film) is unusual. Ken Garner says that the selection of music by the actors is specially celebrated; this process is foregrounded. Regarding to Simon Frith, music is something that has the power to take us “out of ourselves” ; it is a "jumble of references and assumptions". Instead of rationality music offers “experience that involves ideal time, an ideal of what routinely kept separate – the individual and the social, the mind and the body, change and stillness, the different and the same, the already past and the still to come, desire and fulfillment”. This is even more evident in the combination with visual images and I think Tarantino is perfectly conscious of this fact.

I will try to have a pdf of the Deleuze chapter made and will upload. It's not so well known, and I doubt it exists in Slovenian translation, alas.
AJC

Although I already wrote you a personal e-mail with a topic proposal, I finally made up my mind and here I come with a new one:
I am beginning to work on a topic which I have named the "oblivion of imagination" (l'oubli de l'imagination). I am working mainly on Deleuze's philosophy, and in this essay I would try to take his theory of the simulacrum and the critique of common sense (compared with some writings from Baudrillard and Debord) as a tool for an analysis of the globalized capitalist system through popular culture. As I said, I would mainly focus on Deleuze, but trying to invent a theory leaning also on Marx and Wallerstein, making a Deleuze-Marx combination, a transcendental empiricism blended with old time hardcore materialism, for the new age of the world-system, which is approaching (or is it?).
My main argument is that in the era of the decline of the american systemic cyclcus (from the late 90s onward) there has been the upspring of what I call "oblivion of imagination", which could be mainly seen in popular culture (but can be also taken as a critique of postmodernism). It is exactly the death of creativity (or creation, if we want to say it a la Deleuze) that could be linked to the decline of a systemic cyclus, or as Mocnik describes the working of a world-system:
"For Braudel, the market mechanism of offer and demand in every moment defines 'normal' profits, which can not be increased. But the capital looks exactly for 'abnormally high' profits. This is why it focuses on market niches, where abnormal gains can be achieved. In the raising cyclic phase the niches can be found with the offer of new or higher quality products, ie. in production and trade. Because everyone seeks niches, these possibilities run out sooner or later, the phase of decline arises."
Agents of popular culture have filled all the niches, being now left with little possibilities (I still don't dare say no possibilities), making the era the time of the oblivion of imagination.

For Barbara Kocjancic:
Yours is a topic that cross-cuts many fields (aesthetics, phenomenology, media studies, etc.). I presses us to ask what an "image" in fact it. (It need not be visual.) And with that, what a medium is. Film music has a long history (Shostakovich wrote film music). The topic may invite questions about the "culture industry," though that might not be the direction you want to go in. This is OK. I might then suggest reading the book by my colleague Kaja Silverman entitled "The Acoustic Mirror."

For Matei Vacovec:
This is huge--admirable, but huge! How can we get it in a scale that would be manageable for a seminar or course paper? Is there a way to draw on this background to concentrate on the image in this context? Could you think about the role of the image in the imagination, and its roots (fantasia, for one)? Then perhaps this would be a way to bridge some questions about contemporary/post capitalism. That state of affairs is very much something I hope we will get at in session #3. But I am detecting a lot of interest in Deleuze, so maybe we can find a way to highlight his work more. I will post the pdf from "What Is Philosophy?" But what about something from the book on Francis Bacon? And think also about Debord.

I would probably start from Debord and his "commodity fetishism of the image" (mainly in the first two chapters of The Society of the Spectacle) and then make a link with Deleuze but probably (or mainly) from Difference and Repetition. I would, for our seminar, focus on the status of the image in the contemporary society of commodities, taking in regard your observations.
Here is my plan for the paper:
1. a brief introduction to capitalism (Marx) and the theory of world-systems (Wallerstein)
2. image as commodity (some Marx, Debord, Deleuze)
3. the status of imagination in late capitalism and proposals for a way out (still Deleuze)

I will post part of my bibliography on the bibliographical references page.

mv

Thanks for your suggestions. The perception of image, which is not visual, raises many other questions (including media questions). I am not sure that my seminar could give proper answers, but it is a very interesting topic to develop.

In this seminar I would like to discuss the contemporary (art) exhibition practice and its ability and persistence to expose images and convey visual experience in our visually superabundant ambience;
As a historical phenomenon, exhibition is closely linked to emergence of modern worldview, the rise of capitalism, appearance of civil society, art market, etc. It has significantly contributed to the understanding of art and its images ever since 19th century and it still represents the central event of the artworld, detecting and displaying contemporary perceiving of art, its representatives, its image. Still, in contemporary view, it has altered in correspodence and competition with other impulses of our omnivisual, over-aestheticized, interdisciplinary, multi-medial, perceptually overloaded world, in a way of appropriating the form of spectacle, trademark , trendy show, art fair. Artword adapted itself to the principles of consumer society, with art being made specifically for the exhibition, in replacing the importance of the presented authors with the contrivers’ reputation (curator, custos, art-critic as an artist), designing experiences... and contemporary art galleries and happenings today again reminiscent of pra-forms of museum: wunderkammers, places of entertainment, or sensation parks.
I'm interested in such modalites of art and art institution, so there’d be review of exhibition as a cultural phenomenon in contemporary (post-modern) society, thinking of its characteristics and the capacity for exposing and ‘making visible’ certain images / situations inside the wide flux of imagery and visual experience.

My general area of interest is the perception of architecture in contemporary world and society; and the role of the five senses in the realm of projecting architecture.

In this respect I would like to focus my seminar on the linkage of architecture to the image or maybe is better to say on an architecture of visual images that predominates the actual and virtual space nowadays. Architecture has adopted the psychological strategy of advertising and instant persuasion, where buildings have lost their plasticity, materiality and sincerity to become mere image products. I thought I could take into account Debord's notion of "the commodity as spectacle" and try to apply it to the architecture as an art of the printed image.
Nevertheless, this kind of image representing architecture has liberated itself from the fixed construction defined by Renaissance theory of perspective and has expanded the boundaries of the Albertian window. A new "unfocused vision" is happening, where the hegemonic eye is replaced by a participatory gaze. The new technology of contemporary world has strengthen the hegemony of the eye, but at the same time it has helped us (also through a variety of mass media) to experience a new way of looking at images: to perceive and sense the FLOW of images, where no analytic observations are possible. The 'new' spectacle is multiple, pluralistic, continuous, contextual etc., where the architecture-commodity is presented as a series of visual images, which are constructed with deceitful methods just to obtain the real 'capitalistic' goal.
I would like to present this point of view on architecture - as an image, commodity; from linear perspective construction to multi-layered focus; the realm of the virtual space.

nl

Hi!

A great deal of my work is based on studying younger contemporary artists within Slovenian (or maybe former Yugoslavia - I will see about that) art scene. The main focus of these creative young people is on urban and street culture, visual arts, photography, comic strip art, etc. Works of particular artists are based on street art - they "work outdoors" (but also "indoors"), in outdoor public spaces, most frequenty illegally and by individual initiative. It is very important that in their background is commitment to street art. And for so... To an art that doesnt want to be art, which we see wheather we want it or not; it is made, literally, overnight and can disappear overnight, it is on display to everyone in the urban landscape but only a very specific public takes notice of it and truly "gets" it. In the dominant discourses there reigns total ignorance about it; for them, it practically doesn't exist. The "artistic community" views it with disdain: in the street there is no "lyric subject", no "metaphysical considerations" - the kind of criteria the cultural establishment requires of "art". This issue I have described now was my primary concern for the last two years. But now I would like to expand my field of study to interpretations and theory of their work "indoors". Paintings on canvases, exhibiting, fine art execution...
I would like to derrive major clues from writings of Adorno (and not to be so critical about culture industry) :) I am also reading Guy Debord's La Societe du spectacle, Commentaires sur la societe du spectacle and Panegryrique.
What do you think? I am open to suggestions.

Thanks,
Katja

For Katja--I think the examples pose very difficult problems for both the methodologies of Adorno and Debord. (What clues would you derive from them?) Neither one was really thinking about these kinds of cases, and more important both presuppose a kind of "subject" which seems very different from the one who as producer, or transitory spectator, would witness these kinds of works. What about looking into performance theory to try to approach some of these things??
AJC

For Matej,

The outline of the presentatoin looks very good. Perhaps this would go very well with session 2 or 3 (especially re. Benjamin). It helps fill out important things for which there was not time in the lectures.
Many thanks for this and for posting the bibliography.
AJC

For Barbara Kocjancic,
Can you post source references to the works you mention on your posting in the Comments here on the bibliography page? Links (pdf files or web URLs) would be helpful too if you have them available.
AJC

Thank you for your comment, it makes sense cause I was facing a lot of problems connecting some things. Actually my goal was not to derive from them, just to clear up and research a few things which are (I think) also very important. I will certainly take it into consideration. Any suggestions for literature maybe?
Thanks, katja

For Katja Jordan--I will try to get you some bibliographical recommendations. It is pretty far afield form my own work but I will try to see what there is.
AJC

For Natasa,

This is a wonderful and also enormous field. Its roots are in the image of architecture in aesthetic theory, long-term. (As it turns out, a colleague of mine in the States is working on this very topic in its historical and philosophical dimensions.) Why for example did Heinrich Wolfflin develop a theory of the baroque beginning with architecture? Why does Hegel begin the Lectures on Aesthetics talking about the pyramids? Why does Heidegger call langauage the house of being? And why did the theory of postmodernism begin with architecture (Venturi, Frampton, et al.)? I will be interested to learn more about your specific questions and points of reference.
AJC

So, to precise a bit; strategies of production and presenting images, as well as ways of their perception have obviously changed significantly in post-modern culture. As I see it, transformation of historical gallery space into contemporary exhibition site is closely related to other alterations and redefinitions, namely that of the artwork, the artist and the viewer/visitor's function/appearance;
1) artwork > exhibited object (stressed exhitibtion value, shift form image/object to process, subordination of autonomous work to wider exh. concept etc.),
2) replacement of traditional image producers with new kind creators (artist>curator, 'concept exh.', 'exhibition as artwork'), and
3) shift towards the audience (in a way of building and creating interactive experiences - 'experience designing', reducing distance, establishing communication...).

Contemporary (post-modern) exhibition practices propose (and detect, I guess) a different - visual-sensory-cognitive perception, and quite some revaluations of traditional comprehension; I'd be interested to question the nature of image (in relation to its producer and receptor) in such context, as well as the ‘spectacular’ potential of above-mentioned practices. Considering literature, there are ‘Thinking of exhibition’ volume, Sarival Sosič’s ‘Vizualni nagovori’ (Visual harangues(?)), and few other texts (Benjamin, Barthes, Manovich, Šuvaković, also Debord) for theoretical background. Any recommendations?

Matej,

Yes indeed, all of the above. The questions remaining are not merely ones of description, but of the "theoretical" constitution of images--i.e. of the larger discursvie space of possibilities in which they occur. I think this will be a very interesting question in the lectures and discussion. It is not a question at all if there is no ground other than that established by image practices. But if there are other grounds, even co-conspiring ones, then we have to do more than reflect shifts in modes of production (while of course still including those). One of my favorite books is entitled "Hegel Contra Sociology." It's not the end of the story, but it is an important thing to keep in mind. Difficult but important.

If this does not make sense now I understand, and we will in any case talk more in mid-May.
I hope others read this comment too.

AJC

Hm, I'm not sure to understand the last post... it is possible you mixed names?
Anyhow, Rose's 'Hegel contra society' is available in Slo, but I'm not sure I'll manage all till mid-may... And yes - you'll have to explain some more;). For now I'm concentrating on proposed , more or less descriptive survey of displaying conditions - from which hopefully I'll be able to derive some conclusions on actual state of image/art/story... Ok with you?

Maja

So sorry, Maja, I did indeed mix names!

For Benjamin Virc,

Thank you for suggesting a paper topic, which is very broad and fascinating, and about which I do have some observations and questions. Mussic is extremely important because it steers us away from one paradigm of representation, truth, and falsehood in relation to vision, and insofar as it can still be brought into these discussions that is wonderful. I do think you want to understand music in a non-literal sense. But what remains unclear in your brief outline is how "ideology" fits into this context, what it means here, how it relates to Bergson's "intuition." If you reference the Bergson in the original (French) I can try to access it, though time is now drawing to an end before I leave. I do regret that I have no abilities to work in Solvenian, but we should be able to refer to the French original.
AJC