Addressing each and every one:
Popularisation/populism through the visual arts

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.

PROGRAM

April 21th
Writing an iconography of everybody

9:30-10:00
Anna Schober, Introduction

10:00-11:00
Michael Diers (Hamburg/ Berlin) Jemand, Jedermann und Niemand. Öffentliche Ges(ch)ichtsbilder von Konterfei bis Pixelporträt (chair: Raul Gschrey)

11:00-11:30
coffee break

11:30-12:30
Inigo Bocken (Nijmegen) Heterology - The perspective of the common man in Michel de Certeau (chair: Jens Kugele)

12:30-14:00
lunch break

14:00-15:00
Ursula Frohne (Münster) The Secret Life of ‚Everybody’: Paradoxes between Public Image and Confessional Exposure in Gillian Wearing’s Photographs, Videos and Films of Common People (chair: Katja Wehde)

15:00-16:00
Raul Gschrey (Gießen) Composite Faces: Photographic Constructions of Human Faces between Average and Type (chair: Katja Wehde)

16:00-16:30
coffee break

16:30-17:30
Veronika Zink (Gießen) Enstranging the Everyday. On the Creativity of Ordinariness (chair: Il-Tschung Lim)

17:30-18:30
Richard Dyer (London) Exceptional or Representative? Serial Killing in European Cinema (chair: Il-Tschung Lim)

20:00
Workshop-Dinner

April 22th
Mediating, translating, politicking: Grasping everybody in the public sphere

9:00-10:00
Wim Weymans (Antwerp) The relationship between generality and singularity in contemporary French political theory (Lefort, Gauchet, Rosanvallon) (chair: Veronika Zink)

10:00-11:00
Oliviero Ponte di Pino (Milan) A Stand Up Politician for Democracy 2.0: Beppe Grillo and New European Populism (chair: Veronika Zink)

11:00-11:30
coffee break

11:30-12:30
Susanne von Falkenhausen (Berlin) "Everyman" is a spy: NSA´s aesthetics of internal cohesion in Simon Denny´s work "Secret Power" (chair: Mara-Lisa Kinne)

12:30-14:00
lunch break

14:00-15:00
Christian Bracht (Marburg) Die Mensch-Maschine. Kraftwerk Ikonographie 1974 – 1986 (The Man-Machine. Kraftwerk Iconography 1974 – 1986) (chair: Mara-Lisa Kinne)

15:00-16:00
Nina Bandi (Lucerne) A deleuzian perspective on the everybody between visual culture and recent protest movements (chair: Thorn Kray)

16:00-16:30
Anna Schober Wrap-Up

If you are interested to participate, please write to: anna.schoberdegraafgmail.com

Concept and organisation:
PD Dr. Anna Schober
DFG-Eigene Stelle "Everybody. Eine transnationale Ikonografie"
Institut für Soziologie, Justus Liebig Universität Gießen
anna.schobersowi.uni-giessen.de

in cooperation with the Research Area 04 Visual and Material Culture Studies, GCSC