Tenth International Conference on The Image

Abstract

Although black metal gained its popularity among audience and mass media as a consequence of its expressive symbolism and directness of the performative discourse, the central part in this process may be without a doubt assigned to the visual level of the genre communication, both in image and in form of stage presence, which serve as a direct materialization of the abstract genre’s ideology. Considering the ideological and metaphorical concept of genre’s progression, the article investigates the logic behind the mechanisms of dual interactions between image and text, pointing out and defining the aesthetic and rhetoric trends structuring the genre’s endo-medial transformation and evolution. Explaining such self-absorbed construction of black metal-scene with consideration of research of Goffman, or Fischer-Lichte, based on the description of image-text-dependences designated by Lessing, the text evaluates the communicative, performative, and medial dimension of the semantic image-text unification in genre and subculture. The article defines the manner in which the abstract ideological concept is being transformed by scene into the medium of word/image and which role does such re-worked topic play in the whole symbolic genre-constellation. On example of certain motifs, artworks or re-occurring symbols, the text offers an exemplary insight into the subcultural interpretation of genre’s textual and visual manifestations. The study’s aim is to develop a multi-dimensional network of connotations between performative/visual and narrative levels of the genre, analyzing black metal’s mechanisms of graphic communication and the way the constant reworking of text-image scheme affects the genre’s medial and subcultural presence.