Engaging with the Bible in Visual Culture

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 411-433
Author(s):  
Sheona Beaumont
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Art Practices

Abstract Increasingly articulate contemporary art practices are engaging with biblical representation, revealing new relationships with religion through the availability of the word in image. Taking as exemplary the photographic publication of Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin’s Holy Bible (2013), this essay considers the evidence for their hermeneutics between image and word that is characterized by open awareness of and expansive participation in the (rereading of the) Bible. Discussing this engagement, I explore imagistic readings of the Bible through the artists’ strategies of interpolation and repetition, as well as examining their chosen theme—catastrophe—for its revelatory power. Through the artists’ self-reflexive hermeneutics of indeterminacy, I argue that the discussion of the return of religion in art needs attuning to this kind of specific practitioner experience: a hermeneutical circle of imaginative, dialogical, and dynamic interpretative positions in which the notion of indeterminacy is persuasive for interpretative grist, historical accountability, and theological horizon.

A Glut Of Faces

Public ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (60) ◽  
pp. 142-155
Author(s):  
Kristina Fiedrich
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Facial Recognition ◽  
Art Practices ◽  
Visual Expression ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Singular Representation ◽  
Increasing Trends

The face is a bodily surface that visually, historically and politically locates identity. Under the scrutiny of facial recognition and biometric software, the face can take the place of a whole identity, becoming a rigid singular representation. This paper draws connections between the increasing trends in surveillance and biometric technologies, and their manifestation within contemporary art practices. Specifically, I look to artworks that engage traditional portraiture and representations of the face, all the while manipulating expectations of the face-as-portrait. Artworks included in this project are Ursula Johnson’s L’nuweltik (We are Indian), Gillian Wearing’s Self Portrait at Twenty Seven Years Old and Anthony Cerniello’s Danielle. How has the face come to be represented in contemporary portraiture, and might these representations suggest a shifting logic of identity, away from the face? Art as visual expression is considered in relation to surveillance as another outcome of visual culture that highlights a continuing desire to categorize the subject within a social order.

Screening Statues

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Jacobs ◽  
Susan Felleman ◽  
Vito Adriaensens ◽  
Lisa Colpaert
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Film History ◽  
Two Dimensional ◽  
Artistic Practice ◽  
Experimental Art ◽  
Broad Scope ◽  
Art Practices ◽  
Extensive Reference

Sculpture is an artistic practice that involves material, three-dimensional, and generally static objects, whereas cinema produces immaterial, two-dimensional, kinetic images. These differences are the basis for a range of magical, mystical and phenomenological interactions between the two media. Sculptures are literally brought to life on the silver screen, while living people are turned into, or trapped inside, statuary. Sculpture motivates cinematic movement and film makes manifest the durational properties of sculptural space. This book will examine key sculptural motifs and cinematic sculpture in film history through seven chapters and an extensive reference gallery, dealing with the transformation skills of "cinemagician" Georges Méliès, the experimental art documentaries of Carl Theodor Dreyer and Henri Alekan, the statuary metaphors of modernist cinema, the mythological living statues of the peplum genre, and contemporary art practices in which film—as material and apparatus—is used as sculptural medium. The book’s broad scope and interdisciplinary approach is sure to interest scholars, amateurs and students alike.

scholarly journals The Persistence of Primitivism: Equivocation in Ernesto Neto’s A Sacred Place and Critical Practice

Arts ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 111
Author(s):  
Camila Maroja
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Art History ◽  
Native People ◽  
Amazon Rainforest ◽  
Critical Practice ◽  
Sacred Place ◽  
Art Practices ◽  
Environmental Work ◽  
Global Art ◽  
Venice Biennale

During the 2017 Venice Biennale, the area dubbed the “Pavilion of the Shamans” opened with A Sacred Place, an immersive environmental work created by the Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto in collaboration with the Huni Kuin, a native people of the Amazon rainforest. Despite the co-authorship of the installation, the artwork was dismissed by art critics as engaging in primitivism and colonialism. Borrowing anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro’s concept of equivocation, this article examines the incorporation of both indigenous and contemporary art practices in A Sacred Place. The text ultimately argues that a more equivocal, open interpretation of the work could lead to a better understanding of the work and a more self-reflexive global art history that can look at and learn from at its own comparative limitations.

Axis: broadening the constituency and extending the sphere of influence of visual art

1998 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 8-11
Author(s):  
Doug Sandle
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
Visual Art ◽  
Information Resource ◽  
Text Data ◽  
Widening Access ◽  
Visual Text ◽  
Sphere Of Influence ◽  
National Information

The Axis database is the only national information resource on British artists and craftmakers. It contains visual-text data on over 2,500 contemporary British practitioners and is a rapidly growing source of data for researchers, students, curators, commissioning agents, architects, planners and patrons and purchasers of visual arts. Axis also has an important national role in promoting contemporary art and artists and widening access to visual culture.

scholarly journals «The Great Neurosis» of Jacques Loysel and Alfred Kubin

2020 ◽  
pp. 144-149
Author(s):  
D. O. Martynova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
Visual Image ◽  
Lost Generation ◽  
Disciplinary Power ◽  
Graphic Artist ◽  
Art Practices ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Pathological Image

On the example of the work «The Great Neurosis» by the French sculptor Jacques Loysel and «Europe» by the Austrian graphic artist Alfred Kubin, it is described and analyzed how artists gave characteristics of changes in their eras, using the same visual image associated with a mental illness. It is proved that while Loysel’s artwork was associated with the latest discoveries in medicine, then Kubin’s artwork was reinterpreted in a new way, reflecting the problems and experiences of the «lost generation». From this it follows that the example of the works «The Great Neurosis» and «Europe» by Loysel and Kubin can be traced not only to evolution, but also to the introduction of the pathological image of the “hysterical body” both in the art of the XXth century and in contemporary art practices. Such a study demonstrates the relevance and signifi cance of studying the links between, as well as the analysis of the impact of mechanisms of institutions of disciplinary power on the visual arts of various eras.

scholarly journals Issue of Integrity of Art Education in the Context of Changes in Art and Visual Culture

Pedagogika ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 114 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-179
Author(s):  
Edita Musneckienė
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Art Education ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Arts Education ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Thinking Skills ◽  
Education Programs ◽  
Creative People ◽  
Wide Range

This article examines a paradigmatic change of contemporary art education in the context of visual culture and focus to the integrity of arts in formal and informal art education. The article is based on an international research “Contemporary art and visual culture in education” which reveals the problematic aspects of contemporary arts and visual culture in education in general. The research method was the discourse analysis of the participants and researchers, who presented the insights in reflective groups and during the interview with teachers and educators.This paper explores how contemporary cultural context and the spread of visual culture provide preconditions for changes in art education. The aim of the article is to analyze theproblems and perspectives of integral arts education in formal and non-formal education: what the educational challenges and opportunities appear in the context of contemporary art and visual culture? How the integral arts could be realized in art education practice in different arts disciplines and areas of education?Contemporary art and visual culture is increasingly multidimensional, the wide range of visual art forms integral with per formative arts, new technologies and media merge the limits between the arts disciplines. That becomes relevant pedagogical problem with the fact that arts education is traditionally allocated to the separate arts subjects such as music, art, theatre, dance, which also can also be divided into separate areas. This subject segregation of the school curriculum and strong subject orientation limits multimodal contemporary arts education. Secondary Education programs provide opportunities for several options of arts education disciplines (photography, cinema art, graphic design, contemporary music technologies), but it needs special resources for the schools and professional teachers. Many schools follow on traditional model of teaching art and still focusing on simple interpretation of modern artworks, different media and technical skills.Contemporary model of teaching integrated arts and visual culture in education is challenging, because it is based on visual literacy and critical thinking skills, it emphasizes inquiry-based education, a critical understanding of contemporary art practices, problem solving and creating new valuable ideas. Knowledge and experiences came from various sources: formal, non-formal, accidental, individual.Great potential for contemporary art education has non-formal art education programs and projects. Successful project-based initiatives in art education have been excellent examples of arts integration.Artists and other creative people involved into a process of education, their collaboration with schools and communities could initiate some interdisciplinary and collaborative practices. Non-formal arts education environment creates more space for creativity, freedom and diversity. Additional arts education programs, museum and gallery education, artistic competitions and international projects allows for the wider development of arts education. Art education in the new age requires changing attitudes towards learning and teaching, changing roles of the educator and new learning environments.

‘What is the meaning of a safety-pin?’ Critical literacies and the ethnographic turn in contemporary art

2013 ◽  
Vol 16 (5) ◽  
pp. 507-520 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kris Rutten ◽  
An van. Dienderen
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Literacy Practices ◽  
Ethnographic Methods ◽  
Literacy Practice ◽  
Symbolic Representations ◽  
Art Practices ◽  
Critical Literacies ◽  
Situated Literacy ◽  
Safety Pin

In this contribution we address the concept of critical literacies by analyzing how symbolic representations within subcultures can be understood as an engagement with specific literacy practices. For some time now, cultural studies researchers with an interest in literacy have depended upon ethnographic methods to document how members of subcultural communities mobilize literacy practices to achieve critical ends. But the extent to which ethnography actually grants researchers access to subcultural perspectives on literacy has come into question. In this article, we aim to problematize and thematize the ethnographic perspective on literacy in general – and subculture as a situated literacy practice in particular – by critically assessing contemporary art practices that focus on the representation of subcultural identities. We therefore specifically look at artwork by Nikki S. Lee, who focuses on subcultures in her work through ‘going native performances’.

The practice of multispecies relations in urban space and its potentialities for new legal imaginaries

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (0) ◽  
pp. 148-161
Author(s):  
Teresa Dillon
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Human Species ◽  
Art Practices ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
Urban Commons ◽  
Liberal Individualism ◽  
Ontological Position

This article explores what it means to enact multispecies relations in urban space. This exploration is rooted in contemporary art practices that create living frameworks through which encounters with non-human animal cultures, histories, rituals and justice are manifested. Such works play with the legalities and categorizations of ‘animal’ and ‘nature’ by exposing the nested reasonings and protocols that continue to propagate hierarchical species logics. Consequentially such work, alongside scholarship on earth-bound legalities, looks to how law can foster more just multispecies orderings, which aspire to create more equitable conditions for all. To scaffold such transitions the article makes the case for how a constant, public, educational and social rehearsal that unknots histories of liberal individualism is required in order to shift the ontological position of the human species. This rehearsal is set against the backdrop of climate emergencies and the call for a more expansive notion of the urban commons. The closing reflections point to how the Earth’s inviolability must necessarily be placed at the centre of an approach to urban making that is complemented by an intersectional set of innovative cosmologies, actions, manners and ways.

scholarly journals Parallelotopia: Ottoman transcultural memory assemblages in contemporary art practices from the Middle East

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 493-513
Author(s):  
Gabriel Koureas
Keyword(s):  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Ethnic Violence ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Ethnic Communities ◽  
The Past ◽  
Art Practices ◽  
Etel Adnan ◽  
Dynamic Exchange

This article engages with the conversations taking place in the photographic space between then and now, memory and photography, and with the symbiosis and ethnic violence between different ethnic communities in the ex-Ottoman Empire. It questions the role of photography and contemporary art in creating possibilities for coexistence within the mosaic formed by the various groups that made up the Ottoman Empire. The essay aims to create parallelotopia, spaces in the present that work in parallel with the past and which enable the dynamic exchange of transcultural memories. Drawing on memory theory, the article shifts these debates forward by adopting the concept of ‘assemblage’. The article concentrates on the aesthetics of photographs produced by Armenian photographic studios in Istanbul during the late nineteenth century and their relationship to the present through the work of contemporary artists Klitsa Antoniou, Joanna Hadjithomas, Khalil Joreige and Etel Adnan as well as photographic exhibitions organised by the Centre for Asia Minor Studies, Athens, Greece.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document