“Studies in Visual Arts and Communication –
an international journal”
Volume 5 – Nr 1, 2018
Table of Contents
June 2018; 5(1)
1. Fabio Colonnese, Sapienza University, Rome
Collage and Photomontage in 1930s: Piero Bottoni’s Architectural Designs
Studies in Visual Arts and Communication – an international journal / June 2018 5(1)
Abstract
By the end of 1920s, photomontage was adopted throughout Fascist Italy first as a tool for stylistic and fashion criticism, then as a teaching and exhibition device, and lastly in the practice of architectural visualization. While most of architects used it only as an occasional tool to communicate the entries for the major competitions called by the regime, others such as Giuseppe Terragni and Piero Bottoni adopted photomontage as an innovative tool for their enquiries and critical activity as well as a field of mutual exchange and influence. The former used it as a medium to integrate Fascist values into rationalist architecture, while the latter adopted it to evoke figurative references from the cinema – such as the very idea of the cameo – that were useful to visually negotiate the project space and take distance from the regime at the same time. Despite the importance the Futurism and its photographic works had had in the formation of Fascist ideals, around 1936 photomontage began to be considered as a subversive activity close to communism. This article focuses on the use of photomontage in Bottoni’s design representation – particularly of human figures and other details in perspective views – in connection with both its figurative and political agency.
Keywords: collage, photomontage, Rationalist Architecture, design communication, Piero Bottoni, Giuseppe Terragni.
2. Konstantina Drakopoulou, University of Athens
Athens Centre is Burning: Political Stencils as Art and Activism in Dystopian Times
Studies in Visual Arts and Communication – an international journal / June 2018 5(1)
Abstract
Stencil is a work of street art; however, it has strayed from the classic graphics of New York style graffiti and is distinguished for its figurative character and its narrative content. Stencils often serve as alternative political posters and offer a way to awaken the less privileged and encourage them to resist. The directness and graphic simplicity of this unofficial urban iconography and the fact that it may be reproduced quickly make stencil an extremely appropriate means to feature political issues. Political stencilled pieces in the centre of Athens after the outbreak of the financial crisis and the implementation of severe austerity measures, have been turned into experimental, uncensored and collaborative spaces by artists and activists. Stencilled images by PAUL, MAPET, D!, Bleeps and the HIT crew are very characteristic forms of art activism or artivism in their ability to maintain a position of consistent opposition against austerity; to raise questions of the European Union itself and its terminal democracy deficits; to interrogate whether Syriza, the ruling party that signifies the most important advance of the Left since the mid-1970s in Greece, has further entrenched the very processes of neoliberal austerity imposed by the earlier memorandums since 2010; to resist against negative opinions and stereotypical images about the “corrupt Greeks”; to bring to the fore the unwritten traumatic history of the city, driven out of the official picture, but prone to erupt at any time.
Keywords: political stencils, urban iconography, artivism, neoliberal austerity, trauma.
3.
Susan Liggett, Wrexham Glyndŵr University, North Wales, UK
Mike Corcoran, independent consultant and curator
Interdisciplinary Research Unmasked: a new curatorial model for multi-audience engagement
Studies in Visual Arts and Communication – an international journal / June 2018 5(1)
Abstract
This paper proposes a new curatorial model, presenting research as practice and combining publication with discussion and public exhibition, as a valuable tool in overcoming the communication challenges of contemporary interdisciplinary research, when the following criteria are met:
1. That the information to be communicated is technical and discipline specific.
2. That communication is between technical and non-technical multi-discipline audiences.
3. That high-level analysis of interdisciplinary opportunities is required.
4. That public and stakeholder engagement with interdisciplinary research is required.
The proposed model is situated with respect to theoretical models of communication and assessed with respect to its application at Carbon Meets Silicon, curated by Liggett and Corcoran at Oriel Sycharth, Wales, UK as part of the International Technologies and Applications Conference 2017. Three of the works presented through Carbon Meets Silicon are examined with respect to their alignment to the model’s criteria, and performance against its intended outcomes. The paper suggests applications of the new curatorial model, and further research required to support its development.
Keywords: Art/science, collaboration, communication, curating, interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, public-engagement, trans-disciplinary, research as practice.
4.
Felix Rebolledo Palazuelos (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil/UFRGS)
Tania Galli Fonseca (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil/UFRGS)
Andreia Machado Oliveira (Federal University of Santa Maria, Brazil/UFSM)
A Philosophical Perspective on Intuition as a Method within Artistic Process
Studies in Visual Arts and Communication – an international journal / June 2018 5(1)
Abstract
Intuition is commonly understood as knowledge acquired directly, immediately, self-referentially, non-conceptually, without the intercession of the intellect, unmediated by academic or scientific methodologies, or formal, disciplined, logical discourse. In this paper we examine how intuition works within creative process, particularly artistic, by way of Henri Bergson’s initial theorisation of intuition in Creative Evolution (L’Évolution créatrice, 1907, trans. 1944) and A Study in Metaphysics: The Creative Mind (La Pensée et le mouvant, 1934, trans. 1970) and its subsequent elaboration by Gilles Deleuze in Bergsonism (Le Bergsonisme, 1966, trans. 1991). We explicate how intuition as a method results from a progressive reduction of the separation between the virtual and the actual as the convergent movement of thought which brings together the ideal and the material as pure process within artistic practices. We posit intuition in terms of appropriate problematising, differentiating and temporalising within the creative procession into novelty and the advancement of invention. We consider the immediacy of intuitive knowledge as the adequation of the positing of the problem and its fitting solution as well as the pedagogical aspects of intuition which emerge immanently actualised through the reproduction and transmittal of knowledge.
Keywords: intuition, art, problem, method, creation.
5. Eduardo Dias Fonseca, UNILA (Universidade Federal da Integração Latino Americana, Brazil)
The narration of the nationhood in Brazilian Cinema da Retomada: The imagined community and territoriality in Foreign Land (Terra Estrangeira, 1995) and How the angels are born (Como nascem os anjos, 1996)
Studies in Visual Arts and Communication – an international journal / June 2018 5(1)
Abstract
This paper aims to discuss the processes of the nationhood narration present in two films of a very significant period in Brazilian cinema history called Cinema da Retomada. What kind of nation is narrated in the Brazilian Cinema during the 1990s? This Brazilian cinema period is characterized by a shift in the way the nation is portrayed. The relationship between the political and economic scenery and some of the films produced in the 1990s might be the key to the public, critics, and scholars’ interest for the films produced and released in the period. Our proposal seeks to outline the way that the nation is narrated based on Homi Bhabha (1990). Understanding that the various ways of portraying the nation might be a possible key for building the imagined community (Benedict Anderson, 2006), the images and sounds produced in the 1990s are a singular way for us to analyze the nationhood. The becoming-world in the Brazilian cinema is once more present here, but in a completely different way from the Cinema Novo, for example. Through the analysis of the films ‘Foreign Land’ (Terra Estrangeira, 1995), directed by Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas, and ‘How angels are born’ (Como nascem os anjos, 1996), directed by Murillo Salles, we would like to highlight the filmic procedures that suggest a very particular reading of the nationhood in this period of the Brazilian cinema. In the debate around the local and the global, our goal is to find characteristics of the national presence in the face of the globalization.
Keywords: Brazilian cinema, Cinema da Retomada, narration, nationhood, globalization.