Twelfth International Conference on The Image

Abstract

In the introduction to their book ‘The Life and Death of Images’, Diarmuid Costello and Dominic Willsdon offer a definition of “engaged art” as one of the most predominant tendencies of the last few decades in contemporary art. They outline a predominant practice inscribed in the political use of digital imagery and images (such as broadcast media, mainstream film and photographic representations), for which the primary aim is the ‘possibility of representations and counter-representations of points of political fracture’. They underline ‘a concern with how the mode or manner in which the work treats its content, and the point of view from which it is addressed, disposes its viewers to see the world.’ The aesthetic solution of such work is not merely rhetorical but ‘is the way in which it presents what it presents.’ There is, then, a coexistence of ethical and aesthetic tensions, where the content and the way it is handled are inseparable. Costello and Willsdon distinguish the perspective chosen by the artist who situates the viewer’s political outlook. Thus, the art of engagement is a potentially “counter-representation”, where the use of image accounts for the dualistic and ambiguous relationship between representation and reality. The concern with how, specifically the way in which the artwork can act as a threat to the content, and the point of view from which it is addressed are mutually included in a balanced relationship between ethical and aesthetic considerations. In my paper, I define the difference between spectator and viewer.