Fourteenth International Conference on The Image

Abstract

Societies have used representational imagery for their political, social and religious mores; stayed averse to it; have had aniconic and iconoclastic responses to it. How the representational image has been used, misused and exploited to communicate the views of the power base in specific circumstances and if alternatives to replace this powerful form of communication worked equally effectively? Both altruistically and in self-serving contexts. I examine instances, conventional, political and religious, where images have been maligned, been a handmaiden to ideologies and as well manufactured to advance ideas and new horizons. I discuss the nature of visuality and the notion of ‘intent’ in visual expression in an illustrated presentation and how art and material culture is a response to human necessity. In short, we gaze into the abyss and it gazes back, for the better or the worse. Whether we fabricate our images or our images create us in their own likeness seems to be a binary position that merits a complicated response. The format is a slide-illustrated presentation of the above concerns.