No. 7 (2024): Remediations of the Image: Audiovisualizations and (Dis)Appropriations of the History of Art and the Visual Culture

The appearance of the television series Ways of Seeing in 1972, and the subsequent book of the same name, represented a radical intervention in the canonical narratives of art history that quickly became a project as admired as it was criticized. More than fifty years later, Ways of Seeing continues to arouse interest for the irreverent strategies it implemented: image remediation and montage, collaborative writing, modes of (dis)appropriation, and other non-linear ways of narrating art history from critically situated experiences.

Although these characteristics positioned Ways of Seeing as a crucial reference in the English-speaking world, in the Spanish-speaking context this influence does not seem to have had the same extent. In order to contribute to the debate on the relevance and validity of Ways of Seeing, the seventh issue of Umática integrates a set of reflections on different remediations of images, especially from Latin America and Spain. These are investigations based on exercises and experiments that dodge the conceptual and institutional architecture of authorship, ownership, genius and the male gaze, among other characteristics of the canon of Western art history.

In order to approach the remediation of images from this particular perspective, we have situated the debate around two fundamental notions: the audiovisualization of art history and the (dis)appropriation of visual culture. As complementary processes, these notions operate transversally throughout the different discussions of this monograph. Following Ways of Seeing, this issue brings together works that go beyond disciplinary boundaries and admit approaches such as the political philosophy of the image, feminist positions, reflections on audiovisual ecologies, reconceptualization of archives, critical pedagogy initiatives and other theoretical and methodological perspectives that, from their hybridity, venture into the various experiments opened up by the processes of audiovisualization of art history and (dis)appropriation of visual culture. This is neither a tribute nor an exhaustive review of Ways of Seeing, but rather the exploration of its possible remediations, contradictions and readjustments, more than fifty years after its appearance and in latitudes that surpass its frame of origin.

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Editors:
Marilyn Payrol Morán (Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla)

Alma Cardoso Martínez (Universidad Iberoamericana Puebla)

Renato Bermúdez Dini (Universidad Iberoamericana Ciudad de México)

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Cover image: TRES (ilana boltvinik + rodrigo viñas), Starlette incrustado en órbita, 2024, collage.

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With the support of:
Research group Tensiones superficiales. Estudios críticos de la imagen y la representación, Universidad Iberoamericana Ciudad de México.

Research project MCIN/AEI PÚBLICOS - Los públicos del arte y la cultura visual contemporáneas en España Nuevas formas de experiencia artística colectiva desde los años sesenta (Ref.  PID2019-105800G) and research group Devisiones. Discursos, genealogías y prácticas en la creación visual contemporánea, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid