Visual culture/representation. Travel notes

Abstract

The critical horizon of the paper is that which considers the ‘imaginary question’ as an essential premise for any reasoning on the culture of representation as it is declined in the cultural production of contemporaneity. In this context of reflection, the ‘question of images’ requires particular attention about the role of the viewer and the practices of fruition and consumption of visual texts; processes that include questions relating to the mechanisms of the gaze, to the different forms of visual effectiveness of a text, to the ‘performative’ value of images and that is, to the ability they have to induce us to do things, to suffer from them, to modify cognitive and tactical itineraries of behaviour. In the final analysis, the contribution intends first of all to ask questions about the meaning that today the delicate process that governs the transition from vision to representation and from this to the ‘attribution of meaning’ has, placing once again the topic of the reference link. That is to say the link between relevance signs and pragmatic factuality, as central for the culture of representation.