FKW // Zeitschrift für Geschlechterforschung und visuelle Kultur
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Die Macht der Bilder – kritische Bildwissenschaften und feministische Kritik
Get PDFHildegard Frübis: “Olmert reconsiders withdrawal plans”. The Power of Images – Critical Visual Studies and Feminist CriticismIn current visual representations of Islamic countries in the mass media, including newspapers and periodicals, we can observe the emergence of an image of “the Orient” that forms part of the visual politics of a “new” Orientalism. In the photograph analyzed here, three main motifs come to light: the circle around the veiled woman; the religious symbols of Islam, including the mosque; and visible signs of violence. The article considers the relationship between the photographic images – as part of mass media reporting and as products of an artistic tradition – and the reality from which they arise. At the same time, the pictures are understood as contributing to the perception and constitution of that “reality”.
Reclaiming Female Agency. Feminist Art History after Postmodernism. Hrsg. Von Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard, London 2005
No full textNicht unmittelbar, sondern bedingt. Zum performativen Verhältnis von Subjekt und Bild am Beispiel einer Videoprojektion
Get PDFSigrid Adorf: “Not directly, but conditionally”: On the Performative Relationship between Subject and Image (Using the Example of a Video Projection)This contribution challenges the widespread belief that an effective, that is to say, performative encounter with art necessarily presupposes immediacy. It then deconstructs the assumption that such immediacy is contingent upon the “bodily co-presence” of actors and spectators. Using the example of video performance as a hybrid situated between an aesthetics of the moment and its recording, the paper questions the apodictic boundary drawn between presence and representation. Contemporary video projections, according to the claim posited here following the work of Mieke Bal, create an experiential space for spectators that embodies in hypothetical form as it were the interplay between image, language, affect, subjectivity, and memory. Direct address and confrontation turn the image palpably into a challenging counterpart, one who demands its opposite “to respond” and to take position. The paper discusses a concrete example, Elodie Pong’s “Je suis une bombe” (2006), to explore whether and how a relationship can be deduced from such encounters that might be described as having the power to effect change, not least in a political sense.
"Exotische Wilde" - Grenzfiguren als Symptome einer neoliberalen Bilderpolitik?
Get PDFKerstin Brandes“Exotic Savages”. Borderline Figures as a Symptom of Neoliberal Image Politics?In May and June 2006, an advertisement, published by Germany’s large TV magazine HÖRZU as part of its latest campaign, caused vehement and widespread protest. It represented a white man in a business suit and a scantily clad African woman with a lip plate, combined with the campaign slogan: “at some point, one doesn’t accept just anything”. Opposing the protest, the Deutscher Werberat, the self-regulatory body of the German advertising industry, insisted that the poster represented an emancipated relationship between two consenting adults. This article discusses the controversial opinions regarding the sexist and racist nature of the advertisement. It argues that the black woman portrayed functions as a borderline figure, challenging the precarious crossroads of neoliberal claims of visual normalization and the conditions of anti-sexist/anti-racist critique in the field of vision. Exploring the various images of black femininity and representational types that the image evokes – from the female (black) beauty to the African tribal woman to the monstrous female – the article provides an analysis of the interaction between a Western/European/White collective visual memory and the history of the mutual production of beauty norms and racisms
"... so bitter wie der Geschmack von Heißen gerösteten Kaffeebohnen..." - Trauma, Medialität und Hautfarbe in Kara Walkers Safety Curtain der Staatsoper in Wien
Get PDFBirgit Haehnel "…and pungent as hot roasted coffee beans…” Trauma, Mediality, und Skin Color in Kara Walker's Safety Curtain in the Vienna State Opera HouseThe traumatic memories of slavery persist and become visible in the shaping of skin color in visual culture, for example. The African-American woman artist Kara Walker grappled with these themes that point to the denial of memory and history in Austria. With her large-scale picture covering the safety curtain at the Vienna State Opera House in 1998, she raised new questions about the interconnections between slavery, racism, and fascism. Walker's silhouettes are defined as a specific design to overcome traumatic experiences with history that are enclosed in the figuration of racial stereotypes. The crucial factor is the effect of the medium: The blank space of the silhouettes is a sublime sign and has the power to break up the traumatic patterns of denial, which are inherent in European visual representations of black-and-white body images. As effectively charged signs touching the spectators’ senses as well as their mental and emotional states, they are able to change thinking or rather cause changes in awareness through perception. This thought refers to Gilles Delueze's concept of the “encountered signs”, Sigmund Freud’s “Erinnerungsspuren” (traces of memory), and Aby Warburg's “Pathosformeln / mnemische Energien”. Finally, the (art) historical creation of meaning is stimulated by the artwork and then entrusted to the spectators
Die Haut der Bilder. Oberfläche und Geschlecht in der Kunst des 18. Jahrhunderts
Get PDFMarianne Koos: The Skin of Pictures. Surface and Gender in Eighteenth-Century ArtUsing the example of the Genevan-born cosmopolitan painter Jean-Étienne Liotard (1702–1789), the article explores the relationship between surface and gender in eighteenth-century art. In his treatise on the principles and rules of painting (1781), Liotard explains his ideal of closed, stainless, and delicate surfaces by comparing the touches in painting with the ugly traces of smallpox distorting female beauty. With this bodily metaphor concerning (female) skin, Liotard draws the attention to the material, skin-like surface of painted female subject. As a consequence of the sustained focus on the paintings’ (humanistic) content, this is an aspect that was long neglected in the discipline of art history. Recent studies point to the fundamental analytic shift that occurs by exploring the material quality of art. However, even these studies often fail to reflect the gendered, cultural, ethnic, and ethical metaphors that charge (pictorial) surfaces with meaning. The article argues that the methodology of gender studies is particularly able to contribute to a more critical perspective on the semantics of pictorial surfaces.