20.6.2016
PAS #47 | ICON
20. - 30. June 2016
Workshop with BBB Johannes Deimling and guest teacher Veronika Merklein
in cooperation with PAS Performance Art Studies
WHERE: NEXT DOOR galerie michaela stock, Schleifmühlgasse 18, 1040 Vienna
ICON
"An Icon is a usually pictorial representation for an image. This can be on the one hand an object of uncritical devotion like an idol, traditional belief or ideal or on the other an emblem or symbol."
A conceptual framework is constructed, based in critical theory from arts disciplines, notably from the thought of Barthes , Panofsky and Peirce . As Barthes himself points out, the photograph, for instant is a message without a code. It is a sign because it looks like that which it depicts: Barthes calls it an "analogon". Regarding to Peirce "there are three kinds of signs. Firstly, there are likenesses, or icons; which serve to convey ideas of the things they represent simply by imitating them". In the semiotic theories of Peirce the icon signifies by resemblance. Panofsky understood iconology to be more a search for symptoms and claimed "symbolical" values might, in fact, radically differ from the conscious intention of the artist.
Regarding to them the icon is a primary denotation or representation. Iconography is a secondary level of coded meaning. Iconology is an interpretation that calls on the unconscious. The icon can be a portrait and resembles or imitates its object. The icon has a certain character or aspect, one which the object also has or is supposed to have and which lets the icon be interpreted as a sign or an symbolical value even if the object does not exist.
The American philosopher Kendall Walton once distinguished between two aspects of photographic images: They are both photos and pictures. It is a matter of the dual relationship between objects and photographs: the photographic relationship is the index and the illustrative relationship is the icon. Often these two relationships coincide with each other. Walton claims that photographs are transparent, so they allow us to see their subjects only indirectly.
The American philosopher Kendall Walton once distinguished between two aspects of photographic images: They are both photos and pictures. It is a matter of the dual relationship between objects and photographs: the photographic relationship is the index and the illustrative relationship is the icon. Often these two relationships coincide with each other. Walton claims that photographs are transparent, so they allow us to see their subjects only indirectly.
According to the topic of PAS #47 we will research performance art practices and create an experimental setting in which we will work towards an individual performance which will be presented as part of DOPUST/Days of open performance VIENNA at Galerie Michaela Stock.