Workshop: Addressing each and every one: Popularisation/populism through the visual arts
April 21 and 22 2016, Justus Liebig University Gießen, Main Building (Ludwigstrasse 23), 3th floor, Seminar-Raum
The workshop brings together scholars from art history, film studies, theatre studies, political theory, sociology and philosophy of religion from several European countries. It discusses the ways (iconic figurations, aesthetic styles, rhetoric figures etc.) through which visual culture addresses its audience and gets involved in the constitution of a public sphere. It is in particular interested in how the visual arts – understood as both visual popular culture as well as fine arts – becomes involved in popularisation practices and populist criticism.
The workshop approaches this subject by focusing on the central iconic figure that these practices bring into play: the “everybody” (which stands for “all of us”, but is at the same time also a “nobody”, a “common man”, a “common woman” and sometimes even a “new man” or a “new woman”). It presents spotlights of a genealogy and an iconography of the everybody and discusses political and philosophical theories about how the mediating force of this iconic figuration can be understood and valuated. In doing so, the workshop pays particular attention to the ambivalent role this figure plays, especially in most recent history, in triggering both desire and enthusiasm as well as resentment and hate.
Programme below
April 21th
Writing an iconography of everybody
9:30-10:00 Anna Schober, Introduction
10:00-11:00 Michael Diers (Hamburg/ Berlin) Jemand, Jedermann und Niemand. Öffentliche Ges(ch)ichtsbilder von Konterfei bis Pixelporträt (chair: Raul Gschrey)
11:00-11:30 coffee break
11:30-12:30 Inigo Bocken (Nijmegen) Heterology – The perspective of the common man in Michel de Certeau (chair: Jens Kugele)
12:30-14:00 lunch break
14:00-15:00 Ursula Frohne (Münster) The Secret Life of ‚Everybody’: Paradoxes between Public Image and Confessional Exposure in Gillian Wearing’s Photographs, Videos and Films of Common People (chair: Katja Wehde)
15:00-16:00 Raul Gschrey (Gießen) Everybody here!? Composite Portraiture as Representation of a Common Face (chair: Katja Wehde)
16:00-16:30 coffee break
16:30-17:30 Veronika Zink (Gießen) Enstranging the Everyday. On the Creativity of Ordinariness (chair: Il-Tschung Lim)
17:30-18:30 Richard Dyer (London) Exceptional or Representative? Serial Killing in European Cinema (chair: Il-Tschung Lim)
20:00 Workshop-Dinner
April 22th
Mediating, translating, politicking: Grasping everybody in the public sphere
9:00-10:00 Wim Weymans (Antwerp) Visualizing the people in democratic societies: a historical perspective (chair: Veronika Zink)
10:00-11:00 Oliviero Ponte di Pino (Milan) A Stand Up Politician for Democracy 2.0: Beppe Grillo and New European Populism (chair: Veronika Zink)
11:00-11:30 coffee break
11:30-12:30 Susanne von Falkenhausen (Berlin) „Everyman“ is a spy: NSA´s aesthetics of internal cohesion in Simon Denny´s work „Secret Power“ (chair: Mara-Lisa Kinne)
12:30-14:00 lunch break
14:00-15:00 Christian Bracht (Marburg) Die Mensch-Maschine. Kraftwerk Ikonographie 1974 – 1986 (The Man-Machine. Kraftwerk Iconography 1974 – 1986) (chair: Mara-Lisa Kinne)
15:00-16:00 Nina Bandi (Lucerne) A deleuzian perspective on the everybody between visual culture and recent protest movements (chair: Thorn Kray)
16:00-16:30 Anna Schober Wrap-Up
Concept and organisation: PD Dr. Anna Schober
DFG-Eigene Stelle „Everybody. Eine transnationale Ikonografie“
Institut für Soziologie, Justus Liebig Universität Gießen
anna.schober@sowi.uni-giessen.de in cooperation with the Research Area 04 Visual and Material Culture Studies, GCSC, JLU Gießen.