Algemene Theorie 27 februari 2014

The language of images

Introduction to semiotics how meaning arises

Things are not actually the way they are just buy chance/fate/etc. its engineered with a specific
purpose. Original demand of the object (hacking).
Magritte - Ceci nest pas une pipe.
Representation is the production of the meaning of the concepts in our minds through language or
images or signs. It is the link between concepts and language which enables us to refer to either the
real world of objects, people or events, or indeed to imaginary worlds of fictional objects, people
and events.
The Artist - Michel Hazanavicius
Images can speak for themselves, even without sound.
Anything can talk, even if its not text.

Linguistic turn after WOII. Linguistics becomes important in other disciplines.

John Heartfield Series of collages of Hitler

Way of seeing is always formed and you need to be aware of that process.
Ideology
Slavoj Zizek about Ideology
Two systems/levels of representation
1. System of mental representations (set of correspondences or chain of equivalences between
things, people, objects, events, abstract ideas etc.)
2. Language (which has as a material support written words, spoken sounds, or visual images
i.e. signs). This system depends on constructing a set of correspondences between our
conceptual map and a set of sign, arranged or organized into various languages which stand
for or represent those concepts.
Culture binds conceptual maps, language systems and codes which govern the relations of
translation between the in a specific way: and this is what we share.
To belong to a culture is to belong to roughly the same conceptual and linguistic universe, to know
how concepts and ideas translate into different languages, and how language can be interpreted to
refer to or reference the world. To share these things is to see the world from within the same
conceptual map and to make sense of it through the same language systems. Meaning does not
inhere in things, in the world. It is constructed, produced. It is the result of a signifying practice a
practice that produces meaning that makes things mean.
Louis van Gasteren Waarneming film
The Presentation of Self in everyday Life Erving Goffman
This means this, this means that: A users guide to semiotics
Grondlegger semiotiek Ferdinand Saussure:
Sign is made up of a signified and signifier
Signifier: things that give meaning (word/image)
Signified: What s evoked in the mind (mental concept)
There is no true meaning, meaning changes.
Production of meaning: Sequentiality and Difference
He showed that representation was a practice and not a transparent medium.
Roland Barthes Mythologies

I Object for example a chair (just the naming: first level of signification)
II Symbol (like passion for a rose)
III
Denotation: 1
st
lvl, descriptive level
Connotation: 2
nd
lvl, narrative, symbolism within the culture (passion/love etc)

Algemene Theorie 27 maart 2013
Discourse, power and the subject

Michel Foucault
Stewart Hall Cultural representation and signifying practices (first chapter)
http://www.curateafrica.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/HallRepresentation.pdf
Denkeserenn over kunst hoofdstuk over semiotics
Edward Said Stereotypes discourse of Arabic people in western culture / Orientalism (also
his most famous book)
http://www.odsg.org/Said_Edward(1977)_Orientalism.pdf
http://plaza.ufl.edu/icon2480/academia/essays/orientalism.pdf
Repertoire Orientalism: a list of motives/patterns, timeless image of how Arabic people look
like/their culture. The stereotypes: violent men, sensual women, snake charmers, rational,
unreasonable, all want to kill you, they are all the same, worthless, only understand the
language of force, dumb, threatening to charm white women etc. romanticizing.
Susan Sontag Illness as a metaphor
Highlight how normal everyone is
Real bad Arabs documentaire

Dinsdag 10 april 2014
Structuralism
Jaqcues Derrida is associated with poststructuralism.
Deconstruction Heidegger
http://cf.hum.uva.nl/benaderingenlk/lw/poststruc/lw-poststruc-index.htm
Derridas theories lead to thinking and writing of an unfamiliar kind: undoing, undermining,
destabilizing, decomposing, desedimenting.


15 mei 2014
Jean Baudrillard -> impossibility to name things
Reality -> function that appears as we describe it, but there can be different realities.
Postmodernisme: how much can I know about reality? Instead of modernisms what is
reality?

Plato asked himself what is reality -> allegory of the cave. Theory of reality

20
th
century:
1960:
Guy Debord: Situationist International (kunstenaarscollectief)
la Societe du spectacle:
- beschrijving van consumentisme, massamedia en behoefte aan spektakel
- gaat niet meer om gebruiksvoorwerpen maar om dat wat ze representeren
Artistic techniques that were founded by Situationist International:
- Drive -> drifting/afdwalen -> drift around the city, just go where you want, form of
freedom in urban planning
- Dtournement -> appropriation/naar je hand zetten -> collages (John Heartfield father of
collage) You take images together, another meaning arises (can also be critical)

Situationist International Documentary
Debord: people are living a life that is not there. Spectacle of life.

Louis Althusser: definition of ideology. Imaginary relation to real life.

Jean Baudrillard: Simulacra and simulations (1985)
Important terms:
- Simulacra and simulations:
- Desert of the real
- Hyperreality & Disneyfication
- Nostalgia
- Fungament
Simulacra: A copy without an original
Simulation: to feign to have what you dont have
Life of signs. Its loose from what it seeks to represent.
Baudrillard for dummies search


4 orden van het simulacrum
1. Het is een verwijzing naar een fundamentele werkelijkheid
2. Het maskeert en perverteert een fundamentele werkelijkheid
3. Het maskeert de afwezigheid van een fundamentele werkelijkheid
4. Het heeft geen relatie met welke werkelijkheid dan ook: het is zijn eigen, pure simulacrum
The map (the representation of the world) has become more important than reality (you
biking in real and looking at the map)
Documentary Return to the source
Harun Farocki

Hyperreality: part of our world we havent seen before. Like the world we know from the
media.
Nostalgia: longing for something thats not there.

Blue Velvet David Lynch FILM (nostalgie)
Fungagement: Een tegengestelde ontwikkeling die vergelijkbaar is met de nostalgie, is een
hernieuwd sociaal en politiek engagement, maar met een pretelement. Huizen bouwen in
afrika bijv.
To escape hyperreality in search of political engagement -> terrorism
Dial History FILM
Double Take
Waking Life

Orlan
Inez van Lamsweerde
Matthew Barney