Filippo FIMIANI | Program Aesthetics and Visual Culture 2023/2024

Generalities: FILIPPO FIMIANI

Academic Year: 2021/2022

Study Class: Master Corporate Communication and Media

Teaching Activity: AESTHETICS AND VISUAL CULTURE (9 CFU = 60 HOURS)

EDUCATIONAL GOALS

The educational purpose of the course is to provide the elements and tools necessary to understand the main methods and themes of contemporary visual culture studies, from an interdisciplinary perspective really attentive to re-mediation practices and transmedia narratives.

Students will be methodologically able to know the main currents and categories of visual culture field and to orient themselves with awareness in the debate on the iconic phenomena of their time and everyday life, with particular regard to languages, technological devices and experiences in the mediascape in the age of digital literacy and convergent culture, as well as to processes of subjectification and material and immaterial production and consumption. They will also be able to creatively test and stress their knowledges and critical skills by proposing and discussing audio-visual or media and textual labours during the course and the workshop.

PRE-REQUIREMENTS

Would be desirable notions of semiotics, aesthetics, modern and contemporary art history, history of cinema and media.

CLASS CONTENTS

The course will provide students with a historical and thematic reconstruction of the main proposals and interpretations, in contemporary visual culture studies, of the practices, poetics and aesthetics of the selfie. such images are not only an updated version of the self-portrait but, by their very origin and networked nature, are complex and ambiguous assemblages and intermediary gestures with a powerful social Agency: their horizon of production and consumption is in fact both the identitary (individual and collective) and the medial, the embodied and singular experience of the becoming of the self, of its subjectivization, and its public and viral aesthetic narrative also through practices of appropriation and remix. the digital viewing and visualization devices available to us, such as smartphones and mobile devices, with their material and formal qualities - high or low -, imply new figures of spectator and performer-consumer and new genres of narration and representation of self and others, the world and objects: the course aims to provide the appropriate interdisciplinary tools to critically read such contemporary media practices. the student will himself be able to experience and test the implications and effects in consumer cultures--from fashion to tourism--the ideological rhetoric and emancipatory potential of such practices and images during the verification activities planned for the course together with the Festival Linea d'Ombra.

REFERENCES TEXTS 9CFU

Students who attend classes and participate in the workshop

- André Gunthert, Immagine condivisa, Contrasto 2016

- Nicholas Mirzoeff, Come vedere il mondo, johan&levi 2017,cap.1

- Juan Fontcuberta, La furia delle immagini, Einaudi 2016,capp.5, 9

- Marsha Berry, Performing selfies with smartphones, in Creating with mobile media, macmillan 2017,pp.45-64

- Julia Eckel et alii, The selfie as image (and) practice, in id. (ed), Exploring the selfie, macmillan 2018,pp.1-23

- Edgar Gómez Cruz, Helen Thornham, Selfies beyond self-representation, «journal of aesthetics & culture», 7(1),2015,pp.1-10

- Aaron Hess, The selfie assemblage, «international journal of communication»,9,2015

https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/3147

For the WS, 1 of following topics

1)consumptions/formats

- Joonas Rokka, Robin Canniford, Heterotopian selfies, «european journal of marketing»,50(9/10),2016,pp.1789-1813

- Dave Neal, Miriam Ross, Mobile framing, in Max Schleser, Marsha Berry (eds), Mobile story making in an age of smartphones, mcmillan 2018,pp.151-160

2)places/out-of-the-place

- Jens Ruchatz, Selfie reflexivity, in Julia Eckel et alii (ed), Exploring the selfie, macmillan 2018,pp.49-82

- Dean Keep, Smartphones and evocative documentary practices, in Marsha Berry, Max Schleser, Mobile media making in an age of smartphones, cit.,pp.41-50

3)fashion/celebrity

- Anne Jerslev, Mette Mortensen, What is the self in the celebrity selfie?, «celebrity studies»,7(2),2016,pp.249-263

- Samita Nandy, Persona, celebrities, and selfies in social justice, in José Ricardo Carvalheiro, Ana Serrano Tellería (eds), Mobile and digital communication, labcombooks 2015

https://labcom.ubi.pt/livro/141

4)body/intimacy

- Amparo Lasén, Digital self-portraits, ivi

- Paul Frosh, The gestural image, «international journal of communication»,9,2015

https://www.ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/3146

5)technics/production

- Kata Szita, New perspectives on an imperfect cinema, «NECSUS»,9,2020,pp.31-52

- Max Schleser, Connecting through mobile autobiographies, in Marsha Berry, Max Schleser, Mobile media making in an age of smartphones, cit.,pp.148-158

STUDENTS WHO DO NOT ATTEND CLASSES AND THEN DO NOT PARTICIPATE IN THE WORKSHOP, PLUS THE REFERENCES TEXTS, 2 OF TOPICS INDICATED ABOVE

REFERENCES TEXTS 6CFU AND ERASMUS

Students who attend classes and participate in the workshop

- André Gunthert, Immagine condivisa, contrasto 2016

- Nicholas Mirzoeff, Come vedere il mondo, johan&levi 2017,cap.1

- Juan Fontcuberta, La furia delle immagini, Einaudi 2016,capp.5, 9

- Marsha Berry, Performing selfies with smartphones, in id., Creating with mobile media, macmillan 2017,pp.45-64

- Julia Eckel et alii, The selfie as image (and) practice, in id. (eds), Exploring the selfie, macmillan 2018,pp.1-23

- Aaron Hess, The selfie assemblage, «international journal of communication»,9,2015

https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/3147

For the WS, 1 of the topics above

Students who do not attend classes and then do not participate in the workshop

- André Gunthert, Immagine condivisa, Contrasto 2016

- Nicholas Mirzoeff, Come vedere il mondo, johan&levi 2017,cap.1

- Juan Fontcuberta, La furia delle immagini, Einaudi 2016,capp.5, 9

- Marsha Berry, Performing selfies with smartphones, in Creating with mobile media, macmillan 2017,pp.45-64

- Julia Eckel et alii, The selfie as image (and) practice, in id. (ed), Exploring the selfie, macmillan 2018,pp.1-23

- Edgar Gómez Cruz, Helen Thornham, Selfies beyond self-representation, «journal of aesthetics & culture», 7(1),2015,pp.1-10

- Aaron Hess, The selfie assemblage, «international journal of communication»,9,2015

https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/3147

- Amparo Lasen, Self-(re)presentation in mobile communication practices, in Rich Ling et alii (eds), Oxford handbook of mobile communication, OxfordUP 2020,pp.355-368

- Max Schleser, Connecting through mobile autobiographies, in Marsha Berry, Max Schleser, Mobile media making in an age of smartphones, cit.,pp.148-158

- Edgar Gómez Cruz, Photo-genic assemblages, in Edgar Gómez Cruz, Asko Lehmuskallio (eds), Digital photography and everyday life, Routledge 2016,pp.228-242

- Nanna Verhoeff, Mobile screens, AmsterdamUP 2012,cap.2