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Nachrichten, Termine, Experten
Nachrichten, Termine, Experten
This lecture aims at a diagnosis of the return of idolatry and its "evil twin," iconoclasm, in con¬temporary global political culture, and especially in the contemporary tendency to conceive of war in religious, Manichean terms, as a struggle between Good and Evil. Working through the transvaluations of the idolatry/iconoclasm complex in the philosophy of Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols and Thus Spake Zarathustra) and the paintings of William Blake, the lecture stages a re-reading of Nicholas Poussin's classic "scenes of idolatry" in The Adoration of the Golden Calf and The Plague at Ashdod. This reading is designed to overturn the canonical view of Poussin as a conventional moralizer whose pictures endorse the brutal iconoclasm mandated by the Second Commandment, and reveal him (as in Blake's description of John Milton) as "a true poet, and of the devil's party." The lecture concludes with a return to contemporary scenarios of ethnic cleansing in the war for possession of the "holy land" of Israel-Palestine.
Moderation: Jan Soeffner (ZfL)
Zur Person
W. J. T. Mitchell ist Professor fuer Englisch und Kunstgeschichte an der University of Chicago (seit 1977), seit 1978 Herausgeber der Zeitschrift Critical Inquiry. Er ist eine der wichtigsten Stimmen in der Diskussion um Wesen und Funktion von Bildern, seine Buecher Standardwerke der aktuellen Bildwissenschaften. 1992 praegte Mitchell den Begriff des pictorial turn fuer die auffaellige Wende zum Denken in Bildern in Wissenschaft, Kultur und Gesellschaft.
Mit diesem Vortrag stellen wir W. J. T. Mitchell als Honorary Member des ZfL vor.
Publikationen (Auswahl)
Bildtheorie (Frankfurt am Main 2008, Orig. Picture Theory 1994), Das Leben der Bilder. Eine Theorie der visuellen Kultur (München 2008), The late Derrida (Hg. Critical Inquiry 33:2 2007), What Do Pictures Want? (Chicago 2005), The Last Dinosaur Book: The Life and Times of a Cultural Icon (Chicago 1998).
Mehr Informationen zu W.J.T. Mitchell: http://humanities.uchicago.edu/faculty/mitchell/home.htm
Information on participating / attending:
Date:
05/06/2010 20:00 - 05/06/2010 22:00
Event venue:
KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Auguststraße 69, 10119 Berlin
10119 Berlin
Berlin
Germany
Target group:
Scientists and scholars, Students
Relevance:
local
Subject areas:
Art / design, Cultural sciences, Media and communication sciences
Types of events:
Entry:
04/12/2010
Sender/author:
Sabine Zimmermann
Department:
Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung Berlin (ZFL)
Event is free:
yes
Language of the text:
English
URL of this event: http://idw-online.de/en/event30881
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