Tenth International Conference on The Image

Abstract

Eastwood and Dunne’s practice-based research explores the evolution of an identifiable aesthetics of propaganda, politics and protest. Analysis of a wide range of visual imagery reveals the development of an international visual language of propaganda and political PR containing of classifiable archetypal elements and image-text combinations. The aesthetics of propaganda and political PR has informed an equally politicised aesthetics of protest. Protest imagery created specifically to counter state, institutional and corporate propaganda messages has its own visual language. The aesthetics of protest utilises and subverts many of the visual signifiers of propaganda and political PR while also drawing upon and extending the visual language of urbanism, the inner-city and post-industrial decay. Post 2016, the international political landscape has dramatically shifted. The swing from neoliberal globalisation towards populism and protectionism reveals an explosion of political imagery and state sponsored PR / propaganda designed specifically to evoke and promote emotive, protectionist, nationalistic agendas. This has unsurprisingly stimulated an equally significant counter-reaction in the form of a rich and diverse culture of protest. Eastwood and Dunne examine the aesthetics of propaganda, politics and protest explaining how this visual language continues to evolve and how it may be utilised in a post-truth era.