Pool 3: Art & Image (gLV)

We are surrounded by images. They fill and dominate our visual culture.
By drawing on various discourses from art history, visual studies, media studies and gender studies, the seminar aims to take a closer look not only at the 'what', but above all at the 'how' of artistic image practices then and now. For images - understood here in the broadest sense - can be interpreted as "media instruments" that change human modes of perception, cultural meanings, and subjectivity.

By looking at selected examples from different centuries, this seminar will therefore, in a first step, practice the methodical approach to a systematic image description and image analysis in order to, in a second step, practice the formulation of further questions and theses based on such a 'close reading', around questions concerning the relationships between word and image as well as image and gaze. How and in what relationship do images, bodies and cultures relate to each other and how do perception processes change over time?

This course will feature close readings of images of discursive texts as well as practical group assignments that will help students to reflect in a critical and creative manner their own artistic practice.

About the lecturer:

Marie-France Rafael, holds a PhD in Art History. She studied Art History and Film Studies in Berlin and Paris. From 2011 to 2015 she was a research associate at the Free University of Berlin and until 2019 at the Muthesius University Kiel, Department of Spatial Strategies/Curatorial Spaces. Her monograph, “Reisen ins Imaginativ. Künstlerische Displays und Situationen” (Cologne: Walther König, 2017), was recently published. Other publications include “Brice Dellsperger. On Gender Performance” (Berlin: Floating Opery Press), “Ari Benjamin Meyers. Music on Display” (Cologne: Walther König, 2016), and “Pierre Huyghe. On Site” (Cologne: Walther König, 2013).