[Bilimsel Haber] CFP: Seeing Perception: Images & Texts (Germany) (1/31/06; 11/24/06-11/26/06)

[Sule Tarakcioglu]

From: "Dr. Silke Horstkotte" <horstko@uni-leipzig.de>

Seeing Perception: Images & Texts
Universität Leipzig, Germany,
24-26 November 2006


Over the past two decades, matters of seeing and visual perception have 
garnered
increasing critical attention.  With good reason, the visual has come to 
feature
in several different disciplines as well as in inter- or transdisciplinary
perspectives (such as "visual studies" or "visual culture"): vision can 
be, and
has been, conceptualised as a philosophical category, as cultural medium of
expression, as instrument and technology of visualization as well as a 
means of
communication.

Turning away from the "denigration of vision in twentieth-century French
thought" (Jay 1993), studies such as Norman Bryson's (1983) monograph on the
"Logic of the Gaze," Brennan and Jay's (1996) collection of essays on 
"Vision in
Context" and Jonathan Crary's (1999) book on attention have contributed to
highlight the centrality of visual perception in all areas of Western 
culture.
A majority of contributions to the field follow a Foucauldian trajectory in
stressing the constructed and ideological nature of seeing. As Crary 
puts it,
"vision ... is embedded in a pattern of adaptability to new technological
relations, social configurations, and economic imperatives" (13). On the 
other
hand, however, James Elkins has described seeing as irrational, 
inconsistent,
and undependable. It is immensely troubled, cousin to blindness and 
sexuality,
and caught up in the threads of the unconscious. Our eyes are not ours to
command; they roam where they will and then tell us they have only been 
where we
have sent them. No matter how hard we look, we see very little of what 
we look
at. ... Seeing is like hunting and like dreaming, and even like falling 
in love.
It is entangled in the passions "jealousy, violence, possessiveness; and 
it is
soaked in affect" in pleasure and displeasure, and in pain (11).

As Elkins' title, "The Object Stares Back," implies, there exists a 
reciprocal
and indeed dialogical relation between spectator and object: 
"Ultimately, seeing
alters the thing that is seen and transforms the seer" (11f).  Seeing is
therefore closely related to matters of power, of sexuality (Rose), and to
identity itself (Silverman).

The conference Seeing Perception attempts an overview over the main 
historical
lines of methodological research on vision and perception, and on the 
multiple
"practices of looking" (Sturken and Cartwright), as well as proposing new
directions of research which are in continuation of, but nevertheless 
distinct
from, those approaches offered by the visual studies/visual culture 
paradigm.
Not the image as visible object, but the visual perception framing and
surrounding it with its restless motion and performance constitutes the 
focal
point of this conference. Visual perception as we conceive of it need not be
limited to the realm of optics and to optical media; it also determines
processes of reading and constructions of time and space, as well as bodily
experience and processes of cognition. The multiple and varied 
treatments these
topics have received make it necessary to take stock of the current state of
debates surrounding seeing and perception, and to inquire into their 
underlying
bases. Thus, we are interested in papers focussing on questions of 
theory and
method (rather than mere case studies). Participants are invited from the
following disciplines and fields of study: visual studies; art history; film
studies; media and communication; theory of photography; literature; 
semiotics;
narratology; philosophy.


We currently envision four conference sections:

The relation of spectator and object
Conceptualizing the relation of spectator and object raises questions of
identity and alterity, self and other, as well as inquiring into the 
specific
nature of seeing and looking. Formulations such as the "gaze," Lacanian
(Silverman) or not (Bryson 1983, 1988), fixate that relation by describing
looking as a voyeuristic desire that forcefully moves towards the image 
and only
partially replaces a desired touch with looking. Bryson's "glance," on 
the other
hand, describes a respectful and self-reflexive way of looking and thus 
keeps
the relation of spectator and object in an unfixable motion. Going one step
further, theorists such as George Didi-Huberman, James Elkins and W.J.T.
Mitchell have furnished the image with its own set of eyes when they 
imply that
images can be organisms with their own peculiar life and an at times 
threatening
activity. Gottfried Boehm's (2004) recent postulate of a new definition 
of the
image no longer orients itself towards a frame, limiting part or detail, but
rather centres on the intentional focus which the spectator directs at an
imaging field. Conversely, images, with their ordered visuality, can 
seem to be
"alive" or even "look back" at the spectator. We invite papers that 
critique the
dynamic and dialogical formulation of the relation between spectator and 
object,
or papers focusing on the questionable agency of the object.

Pragmatics of the image
It is well known that images can not only be looked at or perceived, but 
also
touched, used, painted over or destroyed (Freedberg). This line of 
research has
received increased attention through the study of new media and media 
art, of
computer games and every kind of interactive image use. Such a 
pragmatics of the
image is concerned with images as objects, as well as images as action, 
event or
experience, as creation, configuration or as a deconstruction of 
identity (and
of alterity). At the same time, this approach stresses that logical
differentiations between image and medium rely on a concept of 
perception which
includes imagination, memory, and other practices of image production in 
which
all meaning-making processes relating to images are based. In this 
context, we
would like to query how far images can be said to steer or control 
perception,
and how images translate perception into physical reactions, social 
gestures and
pragmatic actions.

Perspectives on focalization
The concept of focalization, drawn from narratological theory (Genette), 
is one
of the key issues in theories geared towards a transmedial narratology 
in the
sense of a set of universal, media-independent tools of interpretation. 
Through
its basis in the notion of perspective, focalization is associated with 
matters
of vision; it has therefore been proposed as a concept bridging 
textuality and
visuality (Bal), and has been tentatively used as a tool for analyzing 
visual
artifacts (Yacobi 2002) as well as ones that combine the visual and the 
verbal
(Horstkotte). However, it remains to be seen in how far focalization can 
serve
to grasp the inherent problematic of seeing and the visual, or if it 
remains a
metaphor for more traditional (or simple technical) concepts such as
perspective. In particular, concepts of a "visual" focalization will have to
explain how different narrative agents (author, narrator, focalizor) can be
separated if we move from the textual to the iconic paradigm. The 
distinction
between focalizor and narrator is crucial in narrative; in visual art, 
however,
it is not always possible to clearly discriminate between a narrative 
agent and
the represented perspective. How, then, can we move beyond the constrictions
inherent in an overtly technical concept of perspective, and how can
narratological categories such as focalization help us in analyzing modes of
perception both within the image and circulating around it?


Describing seeing, describing images
The ways in which images are perceived in Western culture are inextricably
linked with verbal and textual structures and ways of thinking. If words can
"cite," but never "sight," as W.J.T. Mitchell (1994) has it, how can the 
verbal
paradigm deal adequately with matters of vision and perception? We invite
participants to inquire into what Tamar Yacobi (2000) has termed "interart
narrative"; moreover, we are interested in approaches linking images and 
texts,
as each other's "other," beyond classical traditions of ekphrasis.



Please email paper proposals (300 words), accompanied by a short bio, by
31 January 2006.

Dr. Silke Horstkotte, Universitaet Leipzig (s.horstkotte@uni-leipzig.de)
Dr. Karin Leonhard, Universitaet Eichstaett-Ingolstadt
(karin.leonhard@ku-eichstaett.de)




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