DFG-Workshop „Addressing each and every one: Popularisation/populism through visual arts“

DFG-Workshop „Addressing each and every one: Popularisation/populism through visual arts“

Workshop as part of the DFG research project „Everybody: A transnational Iconography“ (Prof. Anna Schober (ZMI-Sektion 1 Macht – Medium – Gesellschaft)), April 21st and 22nd 2016, Justus Liebig University Gießen, Main Building (Ludwigstrasse 23), 3rd floor, Seminar-Raum.

The workshop brings together scholars from art history, film studies, theatre studies, political theory, sociology and philosophy of religion from several European countries. It discusses the ways (iconic figurations, aesthetic styles, rhetoric figures etc.) through which visual culture addresses its audience and gets involved in the constitution of a public sphere. It is in particular interested in how the visual arts – understood as both visual popular culture as well as fine arts – becomes involved in popularisation practices and populist criticism. 

The workshop approaches this subject by focusing on the central iconic figure that these practices bring into play: the „everybody” (which stands for „all of us”, but is at the same time also a „nobody”, a „common man”, a „common woman” and sometimes even a „new man” or a „new woman”). It presents spotlights of a genealogy and an iconography of the everybody and discusses political and philosophical theories about how the mediating force of this iconic figuration can be understood and valuated. In doing so, the workshop pays particular attention to the ambivalent role this figure plays, especially in most recent history, in triggering both desire and enthusiasm as well as resentment and hate.