Twelfth International Conference on The Image

Abstract

In art education a critical awareness and approach of images as part of visual culture is of utmost importance. The Bilderatlas operates as a mediation, and offers new ways of seeing and knowing. It is mainly known as result of the groundbreaking work of the cultural theorist Aby Warburg, who intended to present an art history without words. His Mnemosyne Bilderatlas shows how the arrangement of images - and the interstices between them, offers new perspectives and ways of seeing. In order to examine the use of the Bilderatlas as a tool in art education, several experiments with art students have been conducted. These experiments have led to an exploration of different pedagogies, especially critical pedagogy - which help to offer new perspectives and trajectories of learning. To use the Bilderatlas as a tool to develop criticality towards visual culture, I developed and tested a new pedagogy; a Pedagogy of Difference and Repetition, based on the concepts of the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. The concept of criticality is developed by Irit Rogoff (professor of Visual Culture, University of London) and connects perfectly with the Bilderatlas as a medium to offer new ways of seeing and looking at what is produced in our visual culture.