How do we picture time? This lecture series hosted by USC's Visual Studies Research Institute explores the category of “temporal” images: pictures, shapes, diagrams, and metaphors that render time visual. These images freeze the present, speculate on the future, and re-order the past. They at once remind us of our own mortality and conjure time scales whose duration dwarfs a single human life. In attempting a critical iconology of time, we will explore the tension between logocentric and mythic temporalities, comparing the possibilities and limitations of linear chronology to those of other narrative patterns or “shapes of time” such as spirals, fractals, cells, and explosions. The VSRI presents this series in conjunction with the summer 2021 VISS 599 course “Iconology of Time” led by Professor W.J.T. Mitchell and USC Postdoc Ruth Ezra.

RSVP to vsriusc.edu for Zoom info or to be added to the VSRI Slack channel. Open to all.
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WEDNESDAY, JULY 14
9:30-11:00am PST
"Anxious Time: How Do We Make Images in the Digital Age?"
OMAR KHOLEIF, Director of Collections and Senior Curator, Sharjah Art Foundation

WEDNESDAY, JULY 21
9:30-11:00am PST
"The Octopus of Time"
MIEKE BAL, Cultural Theorist and Critic; Professor Emeritus in Literary Theory, University of Amsterdam

WEDNESDAY, JULY 28
9:30-11:00am PST
"Dream Time"
MICHAEL TAUSSIG, Professor of Anthropology, Columbia University

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 4
9:30-11:00am PST
"Time Re-divided"
JACQUES RANCIÈRE, Professor of Philosophy, The European Graduate School; Professor Emeritus, Université de Paris, VIII