A Driving Force
On the Rhetoric of Images and Power
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abstract
The volume comprises a selection of papers presented at the 5th Postgraduate International Conference organized by the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage of Ca’ Foscari University of Venice (Venice, 4-6 October 2023): A Driving Force. On the Rhetoric of Images and Power. In the introduction to his well-known The Power of Images (1989), David Freedberg claims not only that images hold power over us, but they are also, inevitably, related to ‘power’ itself. Art is therefore a powerful and non-neutral tool. Its forms and expressions influence and manipulate the realm of the real. Throughout human history, the artist’s creative power gave form, substance, and meaning to otherwise inert matter. This process turned the artist into a demiurge. Furthermore, once images are given their final form, they circulate and live a life of their own. The 5th Postgraduate International Conference was aimed at investigating the rhetorical nature of the intersection between image and power. In 1979 Yuri Lotman claimed that “rhetoric” is the displacement of the structural principles of a given semiotic sphere into another semiotic sphere. The Tartu semiologist’s approach implies that the “correlation with different semiotic systems gives rise to a rhetorical situation in which a powerful source of elaboration of new meanings is contained”. In exploring these meanings from a multidisciplinary perspective, this volume investigates two main themes: the power of the image, as an autonomous device, endowed with a pervasive and persuasive character; the image as a form for representing power which addresses questions concerning the sense of authority, and its negation, namely a sense of dissidence and counter-narrations.
Rhetoric • Second Post War Period • Neoliberal imaginary • Arts • Exhibition • Visual Culture • Power of the images • General intellect • Socially engaged art • Kustar • Speculative design • The Bureau of Melodramatic Research • Macedonia • Coronation of Miraculous Images • Distorted portrait • Allegory • Speculative Design • Holbein • Surveillance • Countersurveillance Fashion • Dissidence • Contemporary art • Symbols • Revolutionary festival • Wearable technologies • Warfare • Modern art history • Design • Melodrama • Metaphor • Aby Warburg • Saint George • Paraesthetics • Iconography • Russian style • Sapieha family • National image • Technology • Venice • Salon dʼAutomne • Poor power Images • Palaiologan Renaissance • Renaissance • Geographical personifications • New Formalism • Politics • Portrait de la jeune fille en few • Materialism • Beirut • New Media Installation Art • Palazzo Madama, Torino • Optic Nerve • John V Palaiologos • Autotheory • Crossmapping • The Peggy Guggenheim Collection • Italy • Modern Art History • Russian Empire • Drone • Vittorio Viale • Historiographical bias • Power representation • Pietro Aretino • Authority • Jan Fryderyk Sapieha • Religious submission • Feminist art • Salon d'Automne • Propaganda • Directory • Public sphere • Decoloniality • Post-representation • Portrait de la jeune fille en feu • Scuole Grandi • Byzantine empire • Our Lady of Kodeń • Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth • <p>Kustar • Cittadini originari • Image theory • Postcolonialism • Image • Semiology • Lucerne • New media installation art • French Revolution • Fascism • Nicolas Ibrahim Sursock • Sex • Kodeń • Painted facade • Latin faith • Byzantine sculpture • Alternative press • Folklore • Labour of love • Countersurveillance fashion • Sursock Museum • Visual identity • Political iconography • Gendered bodies • Poor power images • Post-Representation • Image and power • Lebanon • Byzantine Empire • Occupational realism • Wood • Political iconology • Un’Ambigua Utopia • Gaze • Venice Biennale • Visual culture • Sixteenth-century Italian art • A/traverso • Power • Arts and crafts