Points of view.

Politics of Perspective in the Age of Post-Truth

“It’s all a matter of viewpoints”.

In the Age of Post-Truth and of ‘alternative facts’, the argument of plurality often serves to justify the vilest individual relativism and the rule of brute force.

Is there an ‘objectivity’ in perspectivism, in spite of all? An answer to this question could be found in the artistic practices of perspectival representation, and in the tradition of optics known as perspectiva communis which ranges all the way through Nietzsche. Insisting on situated knowledge could be the only viable response today against the denial of reality. By introducing and comparing different theoretical moves that can be made with regard to the issue of perspectivalness (phenomenology, developmental psychology, literature and contemporary anthropology), the workshop will analyze three modalities where alternative takes on reality coexist: the coexistence of time, the coexistence of species and the coexistence of beings.

[Emmanuel Alloa]

In 2015, the United Nation inaugurated their Virtual Reality Project on the precarious conditions in some of the Global Southern countries, with the ambition of making the spectator “step into the frame and feel what it’s like for the individuals on the ground”. Beyond the promotional slogans chosen to launch these projects, it is necessary to investigate how the humanitarian ‘immersive’ virtual experience is constructed. What strategies are put into effect so as to produce an empathic point of view? And at what points does the illusion of continuity between the “here” and the “elsewhere” get interrupted? By proceeding along a preposterous, anachronistic path, a comparison is drawn between VR cinema, the model of the Albertian window, and the Baroque tradition of “candlelit painting”. In developing this cross-analysis, a few answers are suggested to the main questions regarding virtual reality as a space for aesthetic, ethical, and political experimentation.

[Francesco Zucconi]

Emmanuel Alloa

has been teaching at the Universities of Paris 8, Basel and St. Gallen, and will serve as Professor of Aesthetics at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) from Fall 2019. He is the author of various books and numerous articles at the intersection of continental philosophy, aesthetics, and social theory. He has held Invited Visiting Professorships at various international universities (Columbia University, Belo Horizonte, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, UC Berkeley and University of Vienna) and was recipient of the Latsis Prize 2016 for his early scientific achievements and of the Aby-Warburg-Wissenschaftspreis 2019. Among his recent publications: Resistance of the Sensible World. An Introduction to Merleau-Ponty (New York 2017); Penser l’image III: Comment lire les images (Dijon 2017); Das durchscheinende Bild (Zurich/Berlin 2018); Partages de la perspective (Paris, forthcoming 2019)

Francesco Zucconi

is currently a research fellow at Iuav University in Venice - Interdisciplinary research infrastructure IR.IDE. He has been a Lauro de Bosis fellow at Harvard University, and a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellow at the Centre d’Histoire et de Théorie des Arts, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, where he remains an associate member.

He is a member of the editorial staff of “L’Avventura. International Journal of Italian Film and Media Landscapes”, “Carte Semiotiche. Rivista internazionale di semiotica e teoria dell’immagine”, “Fata Morgana. Quadrimestrale di cinema e visioni”, “K. Revue trans-européenne de philosophie et arts”, and a founding editor of www.lavoroculturale.org/.

He is the editor and author of a number of books and articles on the theory of cinema, image theory, and contemporary visual culture.

His recent publications include the volume Displacing Caravaggio. Art, Media and Humanitarian Visual Culture (Palgrave 2018).