CULTURES OF CONVERGENCE ONGOING NOTES

How Cultures Merge w Media 

The Frankfurt School - Max Horkheimer (Critical Theories Selected Essays, 1984), Adorno

Pre critical theory science was defined by the times and the biases, Biocentrism

Traditional theory has to operate within a fixed framework, eg the nature of the cosmos is unattainable bc physicists are looking for answers they don’t have awareness of

Critical theory acknowledges the existence of a framework created by people

Traditional- what makes this appealing, Critical why would this appeal to certain viewers

James Gordon Finlayson said Horkheimer thought critical theory was interdisciplinary, reflective and self aware, acknowledging agendas, dialectical - in dialogue with the world that is ongoing

The Enlightenment - The Age of Reason

Heliocentric- measured or considered as being seen from the centre of the sun, having or representing the sun as a centre: the heliocentric concept of the universe.

We need evidence

We extract knowledge through use of vision, our society is shaped by visual testimony

Supposedly, vision is a direct portal to truth

Mieke Bal His Master’s Eye 1993 - vision is a unified mode of perception and interpretation.

But perception and interpretation are different, x vs context and preexisting experiences

Bantam’s Panopticon: all seeing eye prison circle - he was a social reformer of the late 19th century - utilitarianism : the doctrine that actions are right if that are useful or for the benefit of the majority

1984 George Orwell bb surveillance

Ocularcentrism: the privileging of vision over other senses

Michelle Fucoualt, Discipline and Punish book

Camera Obscura Hegel quote

Rene decat celebrates the camera bc we have a more objective form of vision

We prefer 2D rectangles eg maps vs globes

Photography condenses information eg WHF Talbot Latticed Window 1835 to count the squares of glass, eg when drawing still life vs gridding out a photo

Scopophilia: voyeurism but sexual pleasure of looking

Traces & Indexicality

Signs, Symbols, Index

Anish Kapoor, Svayambh ‘created out of itself’ - direct physical and causal relationship between the wax and the archway aka index

Read Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes 1980 770.1 BAR

Truth vs veracity is authored

The Other
Objective vs subjective: factual vs interpretation based on opinions
Simone de Beauvoir - The Second Sex (1949) explains oppression due to othering
"No group ever sets itself up as the One without at once setting up the Other over against itself"
Master-bondsman dialectic - a theory by G. Hegal, Phenomenology of Spirit (1807)
Master: self-conscious but living a lie, Bondsman: sees self as an object
"Self-consciousness attains its satisfaction only in another self-consciousness" Hegel Phenomenology of Spirit (1807)
The power to see in expert ways
Edward Said, Orientalism (1977) known - invaded - possessed - recreated
"Stereotyping reduces, essentialness, naturalises and fixes 'difference'." Stuart Hall (2007) The Spectacle of the 'Other'
Craig Owens (1983) The Discourse of Others "Among those prohibited from Western representation, whose representations are denied all legitimacy, are women."
"One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman" de Beauvoir (1949) The Second Sex an artificial construction by society
The Bechdel Test, needs two women, they need to talk to each other, and it has to be about something other than a man to prove it's not oppressive towards women
Paul Gauguin, (1892) The Spirit of the Dead Keeps Watch fetishises the other subjects have no agency and are inactive. Nashashibi and Skaer (2017) remade it in film to deliberately confront the issue. No movement in film is much more dramatic than in a painting.
"The photographer inevitably functions as an agent of the system of power that silences those people in the first place. Then, they are twice victimised: first by society and the by the photographer who presumes...  Craig Owens (1983) The Discourse of Others
Martha Rosler (1974-5) The Bowery in Two Inadequate Descriptive Systems
"The indignity of speaking for others," Deleuze in conversation with Michel Foucault (1972)
Dana Schutz (2016) Open Casket

Portraiture & Identity

John Tagg Burden of Representation

Mug shots The stereotype of a criminal portrait = identity

David Bate The Key Concepts

Plato’s Cave what we see can’t be believed

Tomoko Sawada Photo Booth ID fakeness - Cindy Sherman

Greta Garbo closeups making her face an object, people watch to 'own' understand, Ronan Barthes wrote an essay on her face, her face is an idea not reality

Recognition is important to us bc we like things being the same

Echo and Narcissus/The Metamorphosis of Narcissus Dali

Sarah Bernhardt by Nadar, first celebrity photography enabled celebrity culture.

The Mirror Phase Babies recognising themselves in a mirror with a parent but it's flipped

The Gaze is two way and therefore makes a portrait more interesting than a landscape

John Berger Ways of Seeing "men act and women appear. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman In herself is male; the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object..."

Laura Mulvey Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema " an erotic object for the characters within the screen story, and as erotic object for the spectator wishing the auditorium, with a shifting tension between the looks on either side of the screen"

Girl on Girl in the 21st Century Charlotte Jenson

Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize Shortlist 2018 The White Gaze problematic the exotic being more interesting than the familiar, allowing us to stare

James Edwin Mason Tweet Nothing is new we have already seen the racial other in this way

Somnyama Ngonyama Hail the Dark Lioness - Zanele Muholi
"Be imaginative, be provocative, and teach us something"