Filippo FIMIANI | Aesthetics and Visual Cultures 2018/2019 program

Study Class: Master Corporate Communication and Media

Teaching Activity: AESTHETICS AND VISUAL CULTURE (6 CFU = 40 HOURS)

Educational goals

The educational purpose is twofold: to provide the methodological and hermeneutical tools to understanding of the contemporary "visual culture"; to introduce and allow an analysis of the images, the viewing devices and new spectatorship’s figures living our times. They will be introduced the key coordinates of this iconic and media landscape, always historically determined and technically changeable; they will discuss the dynamics involved by the material and the symbolic production of images, everyday more and more pervasive and invasive, performing in contexts and very different places. The student has to acquire an appropriate and up to date interdisciplinary knowledge to interpret the images as matter of an incessant process of remediation and pre-mediation, that he can experiment during verification activities provided by the course itself.

Pre-Requirements

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

Class Contents

Sensorium societatis. From philosophy af art to visual culture.

The course will have a strong interdisciplinary attitude. It will to capitalize on the tools of various disciplines –aesthetics, semiotics, anthropological and sociological studies, art history, mediology, cultural studies– to question the effects and the affects caused by the contemporary images and their proliferating and multiple symbolic and material productions, and their multiple uses and experiences. The interdisciplinary nature of the method depends on the impure nature of its object: what we call "image", it is a precarious result and a chance for a possible process of inter-, re-, and even pre-mediation. This process is not abstract and neutral, cannot be described in general terms, supratemporal and supra-historical, but it is always sensitive and it is always embodied in a story and culture, in a society and economy, in an ideology that distribute distinctions and institutions, inclusions and exclusions, shares and discrimination. Each image, is never alone: whether material and medial, real and public, ie Picture, or mental or psychological, imaginary and intimate, ie Image, an image is a multitude, a multiversum, constructed and regulated in different contexts of use and experiences, always located in a sensitive relationship culturally connoted –not only specific, operational and instrumental, but also open, plural and controversy– with institutions and devices, bodies and speeches, experiences and knowledge. Of this coexistence of heterogeneous and conflicting elements must be understood the origins, reasons and causes, and the meaning effects and the emotional affects in a particular historical-cultural momentThe course will illustrate a few of paradigmatic examples and provide the main methodological coordinates to approach this iconic complexity.

References Texts

• Andrea PINOTTI, Antonio SOMAINI, Cultura visuale. Immagini sguardi media dispositivi, Torino, 2016, capitoli III, IV, V, pp. 107-220, e VI, pp. 221-231, 240-256:
• William John Thomas MITCHELL, «Quattro concetti fondamentali della scienza delle immagini», in Scienza delle immagini. Iconologia, cultura visuale ed estetica dei media, Milano, Johan & Levi, 2018, pp. 25-32;
• ID, «Estetica dei media», ibid., pp. 119-130;
• Joan FONTCUBERTA, La furia delle immagini. Note sulla postfotografia, Torino, Einaudi, 2018, capitolo V: pp. 31-46, capitolo XII: pp. 141-154, capitolo XIV: pp. 163-182.

Recommended Reading

• Emmanuel ALLOA, Iconic Turn. Alcune chiavi di svolta, «Lebenswelt. Aesthetics and Philosophy of Experience», 2 (2012), pp. 144-151: http://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/Lebenswelt/article/view/2664

Students who do not attend classes, are obliged to study these texts too:

• William John Thomas MITCHELL, «Realismo e immagine digitale», in Scienza delle immagini. Iconologia, cultura visuale ed estetica dei media, cit., pp. 59-74;
• Hito STEYERL, In Defense of the Poor Image, «E-Flux Journal», 10/11 (2009), pp. 1-9.

http://www.e-flux.com/journal/in-defense-of-the-poor-image/;

• Joaquin Zerené HARCHA, Paula Cardoso PEREIRA, Revolutions of Resolution, «Triple-C», 12/1 (2014), pp. 315-327: https://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/510;
• J.T. MITCHELL, Mark B.N. HANSEN (eds.), Critical Terms for Media Studies, Chicago, University Of Chicago Press, 2010.