הקבוצה תעסוק בהיסטוריה והתיאוריה של התרבות הוויזואלית מהמאה ה-19 ועד היום. מטרתה המרכזית היא העמקת הידע וההיכרות עם הסוגיות המרכזיות ביותר בשדה מחקר זה.
הקבוצה מכוונת ליצירת מרחב של למידה הכולל קריאה משותפת של טקסטים וכן פלטפורמה לדיון במחקרים האישיים הנוגעים בנושא זה. המשתתפים והמשתתפות, ממגוון תחומי המחקר, מוזמנים ומוזמנות להציע טקסטים או יצירות אמנות בהם נדון יחדיו.
במרכז כל פגישה יעמוד טקסט העוסק בתרבות ויזואלית בו נדון תוך התייחסות לדוגמאות ספציפיות של יצירות קולנוע, צילום, ארכיטקטורה ואמנות פלסטית. נעסוק בשאלות של אסתטיקה, תיאוריות צפייה, מגדר, פוסט-קולוניאליזם ועוד. מבין התיאורטיקנים שבטקסטים שלהם נבקש לדון, יהיו לדוגמא: זיגפריד קראקוור, רולאן בארת', ז'אק רנסייר, סטיוארט הול, מוריס מרלו-פונטי, אירית רוגוף ואריאלה אזולאי.
את אופי המפגשים ומועדיהם הקבועים לאורך הסמסטר נקבע יחד במפגש הראשון, שיתקיים בספרייה המרכזית בקמפוס הר הצופים בשבוע האחרון של נובמבר. המפגשים יתנהלו בשפה שתאפשר השתתפות פעילה לכל המעוניינים (עברית/ אנגלית או שילוב ביניהן).
במפגש אחד או שניים נארח חוקרים בכירים שישתפו את הקבוצה במחקרם העכשווי וייקחו חלק בדיון הקבוצתי. האורח הראשון יהיה פרופסור מארק סילברמן (אוניברסיטת וויסקונסין, מדיסון), אשר כתב רבות על קולנוע גרמני ועל אסתטיקה פאשיסטית.
נשמח לפניותיכן ושאלותיכן באימייל, ונשלח למתעניינים moodle באמצעותו נקבע את פגישתנו הראשונה.
נא כתבו ל:
רבקה גרוסמן - rebekka.gro@gmail.com
הילה לביא - hillalavie@gmail.com
This group is designed to be a research and reading group on the theory and history of Visual Culture in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. Its primary purpose is to foster a solid knowledge of the central debates and topics of the scholarly field of Visual Culture Studies and it shall present a platform for both discussions on different scholarly questions or texts and our own research projects. For those who would like to present their topic the group shall present an intimate and friendly space to receive helpful feedback.
In the centre of every meeting will be a text of the field of literature, film, photography, architecture, the fine arts, geography, archaeology, popular culture, the history of science, theories of gender or post-colonialism that has shaped the way we talk about visual culture and that has profited from new methodological approaches of visual culture studies. Among the thinkers and theorists whose texts and ideas we will we will focus on are Siegfried Kracauer, Roland Barthes, Jaques Rancière, Stewart Hall, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Irit Rogoff and Ariella Azoulay.
For one or two of our meetings we will be joined by scholars who will discuss with us their particular field of interest. One of them will be Professor Marc Silberman (University of Wisconsin Madison) who has written extensively about German film and the phenomenon of a fascist aesthetics.
The exact nature of our meetings as well as the dates will be decided upon our first meeting, which will take place at the Mount Scopus central library in the last week of November. The meetings will take place in a language (or mix of languages: Hebrew/English) that allows for the inclusion of everybody who is interested.
If you are interested in joining, please send us an email and feel free to ask questions. We will include you into the moodle to set up the date of our first meeting.
Please write
Hilla Lavie: hillalavie@gmail.com
Or
Rebekka Grossmann: rebekka.gro@gmail.com
At our third meeting we discussed the text "Rhizome" by Gilles Deleuse and Felix Guattari (1979). Naama Zussmann, one of the members of the group, had chosen the reading and sent out questions before that would help to discuss the text. For the meeting she prepared a presentation of Deleuse's and Guattari's text and its implications for the study of visual culture. The discussion was a succesful example of how theory can and should be combined with the study of visual culture and politics. The meeting was inspiring and stimulating in many ways
הפגישה הרביעית נערכה מיד עם תחילת סמסטר ב', ובה דנו בטקסט של תיאורטיקן האמנות והקולנוע הצרפתי, ז'אק רנסייר. הטקסט עוסק בשאלות הנוגעות באמנות ופוליטיקה, ומציג את המושג Dissensus (אי-הלימה) מתוך ניסיונו של רנסייר לקבוע מהי הצורה האמנותית שהיא גם מעשה פוליטי אפקטיבי. במסגרת הדיון הצגנו כל אחת דוגמאות שונות למפגש בין אמנות ופוליטיקה מתוך מחקרנו וגם מהעולם שסביבנו, בעיקר הישראלי, וניסינו לבחון האם תפיסתו של רנסייר מצמצמת דווקא את מנעד המעשים האמנותיים הפוליטיים מתוך ניסיון פרטי שלו להפרדה בין תרבות גבוהה לנמוכה.
הטקסט אותו קראנו (בתרגום לעברית):
הפרדוקסים של האמנות הפוליטית/ ז'אק רנסייר (תרגום לעברית מתוך כתב העת של בצלאל)
הספר במקור:
Jacques Rancière, Dissensus, On Politics and Aesthetics, Bloomsbury Academic, 2015 (2010)
The 4th meeting took place on the 4.3.2017 at 14.30.
For our fifth meeting we went to see the exhibition "Behold the Man. Jesus in Israel Art". We were guided by the exhibition curator Amitai Mendelsohn.
Mendelsohn explained how the figure of Jesus is reflected in various pieces of art of Israeli artists who all expressed in their works the complicated relationship between the Jewish people and the figure of Jesus who has been seen as redeemer and Jewish victim on the one hand and representative of a Christian tradition that for centuries has been hostile to Jews on the other hand. Accordingly, Jesus appears in the guise of different figures throughout Israeli art, showing that it he signifies both division and bridge between both artistic traditions, the Jewish and the Christian one. While Chagall, for example, in his "The Crucifiction" presented Jesus as a Jewish victim of political terror, early Zionist painters saw the resurrected Christ as the 'new man' to symbolize the resurrection of the Jewish people. As a symbolf of pain and sorrow Jesus eventually found entrance into critical art, presenting the hardships of Palestinians and illegal immigrants to Israel. The exhibition shows that there is an ongoing discourse of Jesus and Christianity in Israeli Art that is aware of the tension between both cultures and histories but also seeks to find its similarities and that the figure of Jesus is a symbol of a large variety of experiences in Israeli history and culture.
The fifth meeting took place on the 22.3.2017 at 12.00.
During our 6th meeting we discussed the introduction and the first chapter of the book "Cutures in Orbit. Satellites and the Televisual" by Lisa Parks.
The book deals with the question of global televisuality and its political implications by exploring the presence, the techniques and and the functions of satellite observation and the implications their existence has for the creation of an alleged "Global Presence". We discussed the first chapter at length in which Parks, by means of the example of the first global satellite television program "Our World", shows that satellites helped to decrease distances between places while at the same time also incrasing them: While "Our World" did widen the trenches between a cold war East and West and helped to make aware of a broader spectrum of global themes it was also a highly colonial and paternalistic undertaking that today can be criticised as such.
We then connected the reading to other texts of post-colonial studies which each of us had read before and tried to distinguish between them and Parks' emphasis on visibility and visuality as a colonial practice. Especially attractive to us was the concept of a "Global Presence" as analytical category which we might apply in further research but which should not be remained uncontested altogether because it is itself a concept that idealizes programs such as "Our World".
Eventually we connected Park' book to what we had read before on the question of exerting power by directing the gaze at a distinct point on the globe.
The meeting took place on the 22.3. at 14.30 at the Koebner Centre for German History.
In our 7th meeting we discussed the film "La Habanera" which each of us had watched at home before.
The film deals with a young woman who during a trip to Costa Rica falls in love with one of the locals, Don Pedro de Avila, and decides to stay and marry him much to the chagrin of her Swedish aunt who returns to Sweden without her. After some years however, the marriage grows dull in spite of the fact that the couple has a son. The young women, Astrée grows tired of Costa Rica and its inhabitants whom she has never succeeded to entirely connect with and she longs for her old home Sweden which she describes to her son, Juan, in all its grandeur. On the other side of the Ocean two Swedish medical doctors embark on a trip to Costa Rica in order to solve the riddle around the infamous Costa Rica fever and to find a cure for it. Just upon their arrival the fever breaks out again but they succeed to develop a drug against it. However their explorations are sabotaged by Astrées husband Don Pedro and some other Island dwellers who want to conceal the information about a newly outbreak of the fever. They break in the doctors' hotelroom and steal and destroy the suitcase the necessary medicine. One of the doctors knows Astrée form his high school days and has promised her aunt to find her. During a party at Astrée's house he meets her and realizes how unhappy she is. She, however, fearing the wrath of her husband ignores his attempts to convince her to return to Sweden. When Don Pedro suddenly collapses because he, too, has caught the fever, the doctor's are being told that the cure has been destroyed and are therefore unable to safe him. Don Pedro dies and Astrée takes her son Juan back home to Sweden.
The film is a German production from the year 1937. The director was Detlef Sierck who after completing the film immigrated to the United States where he continued to work as a director. In the group we discussed the implications of a film exalting the "developed" Western homeland on the one hand but also playing, sometimes sutbly, sometimes overt, with the trope of a male suppressor who prevents Astrée from being happy and choosing her own destiny. We discussed what it meant to a director to produce a movie in late 1930s Germany and what it could have meant for the spectators to watch it.
In addition we discussed the first chapter of Linda Schulte-Sasse's book "Entertaining the Third Reich.Illusions of Wholeness in Nazi Cinema" and examined how Schulte Sasse conceptualized Nazi Cinema, its functions and its effects.
The meeting took place on the 17.5. at 14.30 at the Koebner Centre for German History.
Our 8th meeting was an open meeting in which we discussed the topic "Totalitarian Aesthetics and Photography" and which therefore presented a continuation to the topic of arts and totalitarian aesthetics. The meeting was prepared by own of the members of the group, Alumah Florsheim, who in her MA-thesis deals with the topic of oppression by photography in the GDR. We first discussed the article of Susan Sontag "Fascinating Fascism" before then looking at some of the material Alumah works with and making out treats and patterns in the photographs the Stasi, the GDR's secret service, used as means of intelligence and surveillance.
While Sontag discusses especially the photography of Leni Riefenstahl and therefore deals mainly with fascism, Alumah's work and the photographs she presented helped us to widen the field of arts as tools of oppression and indoctrination in totalitarian regimes.
We agreed with many of the traits Sontag presents in her texts as being inherent to fascist photography but contested her notion that they can be found exclusively in fascist contexts. Instead we found that what she presented as being fascist photography could appeared in photographic propaganda in other regimes as well and, at times, even in democracies and we thus questioned her idea of an inherently fascist aesthetics.
The meeting took place on the 28.5. at 14.30 at the Koebner Centre for German History.
In our 9th meeting we discussed the photo exhibition "The Family of Man" which was curated by the photographer Edward Steichen and was first exhibited in 1955 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The history of the exhibition and its politics was presented to us by one of our members, Evelyn Runge, who in Germany has taught extensively on the topic and is a specialist on both the politics around an exhibition called "Family of Man" at a time as politically tense as the Cold War and the aesthetics and political and social effects of the various photographs exhibitied as well as the exhibitions afterlife.
For example, one of the additional topics alongside the cold war binary between East and West were the categories of race and gender the outlook of which were criticised especially during the 1970s and 1980s. While some of the criticism has been agreed upon as being justified the exhibition has also found new advocates in history and art history pledging for a reconsideration of the aspect of presenting a very broad spectrum of people from all walks of life as one large family. Moreover, while at the time of its exhitbition the pacifist notion of curator Steichen was largely ignored today his activism is recognized and lauded. The exhibition which today is located in Luxemburg, the birth place of Steichen, continues to attract visitors - Evelyn showed us impressions of her own visit - but the large costs of its preservation and conservation and the little financial means spent also show a lack of recognition for the exhibition as a cultural heritage and historical source.
The meeting took place on the 14.6. at 14.30 at the Koebner Centre for German History.
For our 10th and last meeting we are planning to visit an exhibition either in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv for the first week of July. Details will follow.