Ways of Seeing in Visual Culture

Dystopian vision/ “Black Mirror,” clairvoyance, the concept of the gaze in psychoanalysis, the male gaze in feminist theories, intersubjective gazes in phenomenology, and the gaze as an ethical practice – all of these are ways of observing visual culture and its various products. The pro-seminar will be conducted as research and writing workshop, in which we will examine the relationships between the creator and the observer, while emphasizing the ways in which "optical devices" construct different modes of seeing and how viewing is perceived as an action within ideological discourses that are constructed in optical ways. What is common to the different perspectives and modes of seeing we will engage with is the opposition to the position of the "innocent eye," naive realism, that is, the claim of the viewer's non-involvement in the visual field. Against this position, we will examine the position of the observer as one who is always already involved in the observed world. In addition, we will deal with questions of visibility, optics, appearance, and reflections. Finally, we will ask, with Derrida, whether the painter is always blind.