by Lucia Ott, on Oct 25, 2017 4:53:06 PM
On Thursday 19 October "Fresh Eye" organised a conference called "SEE YOU – Visual Culture, Research, Study, Collaboration" here in Prague. "Fresh Eye" is a platform for visual culture studies, founded by Andrea Průchová.
Besides organizing the versatile projects of "Fresh Eye", being a doctoral student of sociology at the Faculty of Social Sciences at Charles University and working as a head researcher at the National Film Archive in Prague, Andrea also teaches at Prague College. With "Fresh Eye" she provides space for young theorists, journalists, artists and curators to develop and promote the phenomenon of visual culture.
"Visual culture studies are to do with the critical analysis of visual phenomena from everyday life: anything that is created, perceived or disseminated by both professionals and amateurs in the field of visual communication", explains Andrea.
The open conference created a meeting point for discussing the state of visual culture studies in the Czech Republic. The programme ended with special guest Marquard Smith, who can be called a pioneer of the field of visual culture. He made a name for himself with "Journal of Visual Culture" and has a long experience working mostly in an art school context.
In his lecture "Don’t Reinvent the Wheel: What is to be Done?" he stressed that his approach to visual culture should go far beyond arguments about whether it is a proper 'field', 'discipline' or 'subdiscipline'. Visual culture studies combine so many areas in an interdisciplinary way; if practitioners stick to what is important to them, there is no need to explain and defend themselves.
The speaker criticized the 'institutionalization of knowledge', in which education has become more and more about just the outcome. He regretted that we simply don’t have time for slow looking and thinking anymore. He also posed the question whether theory even has a future in art and design education. As a teacher at different education programs, he sustains the field of critical historical studies, which give the student a comprehensive background of knowledge. It does not matter if you focus on art, design, architecture or film; discussing past and current tendencies is always inspiring and a valuable way to gain new experiences. In the end, visual culture studies can help to understand the various facets and help to develop the forward direction, of our society.
