Critical practices of images

Teacher : Diego Thielemans

Reproduced, printed and digital images, both still and moving, are the subject of this course. As omnipresent media of mediation in our lives, images are configured both in their construction and in their circulation by the relations between the social instances of the world. How does this actually happen? How do these discourses affect the way we look at things? And how can we in turn influence them? In the course of the sessions, the collection of images, the meticulous investigation into them and their organisation within categories will in fact merge them into an archive of the gaze, which bears witness to the historicity of the social relations that affect them and the way in which we view them from our respective places of enunciation. The aim of the course is to study this. This will be based on the use of practical and critical tools for dealing with archives, on visits to different places where images are conserved and disseminated, on group readings of major texts on these different issues, and on the development of strategies for disseminating our findings.

In this course, particular attention is paid to the issues of representation raised by minorities. These issues, and the methodologies that stem from them, are likely to call into question the continuity and homogeneity of dominant representations, in order to make room for our multiple expressions. The challenge is to give ourselves the opportunity to develop a unique relationship with images and methods that can provide long-term support for our artistic practices and aesthetic issues.