“Studies in Visual Arts and Communication –
an international journal”
Volume 7 – Nr 2, 2020
Table of Contents
Dec 2020; 7(2)
1. Lora Markova, Independent Researcher
Leonora Carrington’s Imaginary Homelands: On the Documentary Construction of the Artist’s Cultural and Artistic Identity
Studies in Visual Arts and Communication – an international journal / Dec 2020 7(2)
ABSTRACT
This article explores the under-researched documentary (re)mediations of the British-born/Mexican Surrealist, Leonora Carrington (1917-2011) and the construction of her cultural and artistic identity on screen. The study employs Salman Rushdie’s conceptualization of imaginary homelands to address Carrington’s self-imposed exile to Mexico and her fragmented perception of home as represented in a range of arts documentaries, produced on both sides of the Atlantic: Leonora Carrington o el sortilegio irónico (Felipe Cazals 1965, Mexico), Leonora Carrington and the House of Fear (Kim Evans 1992, UK), The Flowering of the Crone: Another Reality (Ally Acker 2008, USA), Leonora Carrington y el juego surrealista (Javier Martín-Domínguez 2012, Spain), Leonora Carrington: The Lost Surrealist (Teresa Griffiths 2017, UK). The analysis reflects on the documentaries’ discursive and aesthetic strategies that render Carrington’s multifaceted artistic identity as a hybrid entity beyond a single national, cultural or disciplinary origin. The documentaries often feature recurring footage from Carrington’s domestic spaces and studio that evoke her senses of displacement and finding refuge in art. Carrington’s flight from patriarchy and artistic liberation are conveyed via animated episodes, dramatizations, and remediated archival images, such as Lee Miller’s 1930s portraits (that have marked the visual grammar of all Carrington’s documentary representations), as well as remixed fragments from experimental surrealist films as Hans Richter’s Dreams That Money Can Buy (1947), Germaine Dulac’s The Seashell and the Clergyman (1928) and René Clair’s Entr’acte (1924). The analysis of the documentaries’ representational and aesthetic strategies is supported by theoretical perspectives on Carrington’s oeuvre and examples from her literary and visual works that signal the formation of her cross-cultural imaginary.
Keywords: Leonora Carrington, surrealism, arts documentary, cultural identity, archive
2. Bárbara B. León, University of Aberdeen, UK
The Visual Imagery of the Disney World: Between Theory and Practice
Studies in Visual Arts and Communication – an international journal / Dec 2020 7(2)
ABSTRACT
Postmodern cities are dreamed, dreamlike places that are not intended to house the individual, but rather to distract society. In this way and in the manner of Augé, they are a “non-place”, making them a place of transit and enjoyment through symbols and their own experience. The noise, the lights, and the succession of dark and luminous spaces, distract the visitor, making him wander from one side to the other, without a predetermined course. It will be necessary, in turn, to associate all these representative symbols of Postmodern ideology with the visual materialization itself, in order to meet the basic objective of these constructions, which is to create a city as an image of Postmodern culture and society.
Disney World is generally understood as a mere amusement park with the appearance of a fantastic city, however, its meaning goes further. Philosopher Jean Baudrillard considers the utopia of the Postmodern city to be, in fact, Disney World. In this sense, it does not represent the simple fantasy of a theme park since it cannot be false, it cannot be a lie because it is the model of a real idea, it is an idealized model, an image of society itself.
The aim of this article is to explore how society accepts the manipulation of Disney World through the different visual elements contained in it. But not only that, also the similarity and similarities of that world with American society itself and how Disney World exemplifies the heart of the American Way of Life, this being not only the exemplification of the American way of life, but also of how they should live, since this place is the reflection and image of their society.
Keywords: Visual Culture, Postmodernism, Aesthetics, Art Theory, Art Practice, Critical Theory
3. Cristian Eduard Drăgan, Center of Excellence in Image Studies, University of Bucharest
The same thing over and over again: single-shot repetition as cinematic metareference in Spaceballs (Mel Brooks, 1987)
Studies in Visual Arts and Communication – an international journal / Dec 2020 7(2)
ABSTRACT
Repetition is a staple of cinematic practice. From the Russian Montage School to the French New Wave, repetition has been used for a variety of reasons, from adding a poetic touch to a scene, to highlighting certain aspects pertaining to its content. This paper will focus on the device of cinematic repetition, more specifically, on single-shot repetition within the same sequence, in an attempt to ascertain its metareferential potential. The inquiry will be both semiotic and narratological in nature, but with an added focus on notions derived from film theory. It will employ Werner Wolf’s theoretical model of metareferentiality, understood (1) as a particular type of self-reference (the opposite of all instances of heteroreference – i.e. all manner of references to the ‘reality’ outside of the representation), and (2) as an umbrella-term for all manner of instances that, in one way or another, produce a higher-level discursive statement on the work that contains them (or, indeed, on the entire medium).
The prime aim of this paper will be to demonstrate the relevance of such a technique in the context of metareferential cinema. Thus, I shall take into account various examples of such instances of multiple repetitions of cinematic shots. My prime interest will be one of the most notorious metafilmic parodies of all time: Spaceballs (1987), directed by Mel Brooks – a spoof of the sci-fi blockbuster, Star Wars (1977).
Keywords: cinematic repetition, single shot repetition, metareference, self-reference, metacinema, parody, aesthetic illusion.
4. María de los Ángeles Almirón Sabá, Estudiante, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina
Significación, audiovisualidad y subjetividad en el cine-ensayo. Análisis de caso: Imágenes del mundo e inscripciones de la guerra (Harun Farocki, 1989)
Studies in Visual Arts and Communication – an international journal / Dec 2020 7(2)
RESUMEN
El objetivo del presente trabajo es argumentar el carácter diferencial, singular, que posee el cine-ensayo frente a otros géneros y/o dispositivos cinematográficos –e incluso literarios, como el ensayo mismo- respecto de la producción de significación en los espectadores, sobre la base de su uso de la imagen. Para ello, se presenta un análisis de la significación audiovisual del film-ensayo Bilder der Welt und Inschrift des Krieges (Harun Farocki, 1989) -traducido entre otras versiones como Imágenes del mundo e inscripciones de la guerra-. Para el desarrollo de este análisis se abreva de la teoría de los actos de imagen de Horst Bredekamp, de reflexiones teóricas en torno del cine de Farocki escritas por el mismo realizador y por Georges Didi-Huberman, de aportes de un texto clásico de Christa Blümlinger sobre el cine-ensayo, y de herramientas analíticas socio-semióticas. Se sostiene que las películas ensayísticas producen subjetividad a través de la fabricación de operaciones de pensamiento activas y creativas en quien audiovisualiza, y que aquellas que versan sobre acontecimientos sociales como la analizada participan de la construcción de la memoria de una sociedad a través del traccionamiento de estas operaciones cognitivas, cuya configuración crítica es dejada a y motorizada en el espectador de una forma singularmente libre.
Palabras clave: imagen, cine-ensayo, significación, narratividad, memoria social, Farocki.