“Studies in Visual Arts and Communication – an international journal”Volume 11 – Nr 1, 2024 |
Table of Contents
June 2024; 11(1)
1. Lila Insúa Lintridis
Caring for what is extinct. Arts creating alliances with nature
Studies in Visual Arts and Communication – an international journal / June 2024 11(1)
ABSTRACT
The purpose of this article is to experience knowledge, to put oneself in a state available to collect, to place, to feel; to be ready of decyphering the signs. This paper is based on the exhibition of the Portuguese artist Gabriela Albergaria, entitled A Natureza Detesta Linhas Retas (Nature Abhors a Straight Line), curated by Delfim Sardo at the Culturgest Foundation, Lisbon, Portugal, in 2021. The article begins with a description of the contextual framework involved in conceiving her artistic practice as a study case in relation to the environmental emergency. It then goes on to speculate on the role of nature as the only territory – crossed by essential elements – in her work. A nature manipulated, planted, transported, set in hierarchy, catalogued, studied, felt and recalled through the ongoing exploration of gardens with photography, drawing and sculpture, which Albergaria has experimented for the last 20 years.
The article ends with a speculation on the strategies of transformation, reconstruction and assemblage in contemporary art. A reflection on the mark left by extinct creatures in human cultures and the artistic practices -action, performance- that are also becoming vanished. Occasional kinships mobilized by Vinciane Despret (Living as a Bird) and José Luis Viñas (on the extinction of lepidoptera – butterflies and moths) will serve to support some of the ideas of this study.
Keywords: change-makers, extinction, visual arts, contemporary art, legacy, ecofeminism, art exhibition, Gabriela Albergaria.
2. Eugenia Roldán, Manuel Molina
Iconoclasm as a Critique of the Digital Scopic Regime
Studies in Visual Arts and Communication – an international journal / June 2024 11(1)
ABSTRACT
When faced with the diagnosis of a digital scopic regime defined by the ubiquity of images, iconoclasm emerges as a possible critical approach. By adapting what Spanish author José Luis Brea (2010) called “The three eras of the image”, this paper outlines three eras of iconoclasm. The first era defines iconoclasm as an act of destruction in the age of matter-images. Since Byzantium, iconoclasm has been understood as the destruction of images as-sociated with the plastic supports of iconic paintings, sculptures, and architecture, as well as the prohibition of their worship and the blocking of their material circulation. The second era describes iconoclasm as a montage procedure in the history of film-images. As a tech-nique, we would be facing a way of making films out of fragments that destroy the unity of the cinematographic image. In the third era, that of electronic-image, we are dealing with a contradiction regarding iconoclasm. On the one hand, images are now superabundant, to the point of their self-cancellation insofar as they become unconsumable: they are not many, they are infinite, ungraspable to any human gaze. Besides, in this iconoclasm turned system, the image loses its specific qualities, i.e. its aesthetic potential, and is impoverished to sur-veillance technology. On the other hand, at the end of the article, we trace perspectives to recover in the dialectic of iconoclasm its critical potential. Each era presents a case of local iconoclasm, allowing the exposition of the unequal north/south geopolitics immanent to the ocularcentric regime of modernity.
Keywords: Iconoclasm, scopic regime, matter-image, film-image, electronic-image, digitization, screens, critique.
3. Olivia Nițiș
Labour, precarity and hierarchies in the arts. Case study: the decorative art of Victoria Nădejde Beldiceanu (1878-1969)
Studies in Visual Arts and Communication – an international journal / June 2024 11(1)
ABSTRACT
The article is based on a case study with layered relevance within the local art history meant to analyse contexts that have shaped the gap between applied and fine arts, art hierarchies and gendered classifications as well as the complicated intersectional trajectory of a woman artist in relation with political regimes, ideological background, gender expectations, age and precarity. The research is focused on the forgotten and marginalised Romanian decorative artist Victoria Nădejde Beldiceanu, who was Maître suppleant of national embroidery, weaving atelier in Bucharest (1906-1938) and whose art practice spans more than a half century and had a significant role in the art from the beginning of the 20th century Romania by transitioning the craft of embroidery to the individualized visual art discourse.
Keywords: decorative arts, art hierarchies, intersectional feminism, art and politics, 20th century art, Victoria Nădejde Beldiceanu, Nădejde family.
4. Sonia Emilia Mihai
Towards a definition of digital body interactive installations
Studies in Visual Arts and Communication – an international journal / June 2024 11(1)