ART AND THE IMAGE: INSIGHTS FROM MERLEAU-PONTY AND THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL TRADITION
A Sense of Space Group event
Wed 23rd October, 2013, 1 – 4.30pm,
University of Nottingham (main campus), Highfield House, Room A11 – map of University campus here, Highfield House is building number 10 on the map

I will be giving one of the four presentations in the Sense of Space Group’s ‘Art and the Image’ workshop, at the University of Nottingham on Wednesday 23rd October. My talk, ‘Witness the Gift of Seeing’, will use my current studio practice and the writings of Martin Heidegger to explore the role of the given and the gift in the creation of art. All welcome
Workshop Description
What is an image? What does an artist do when she creates one? Images are of things. However, there are different ways for one thing to be of another. Names, for example, are of their bearers. But images don’t seem to be of things in the same way that names are. Images are likenesses of their objects. Yet not just any likeness of an object will count as an image. An accidental likeness, such as a crack in the rock that resembles a crow, is not an image. Neither is an image an object that is qualitatively identical to another – a stamp bearing the Queen’s head is identical with another such stamp, but this does not make one an image of the other. Images instead translate their objects into different media (a portrait of the Queen translates this flesh and blood person into canvas and paint). An understanding of images requires a grasp of what it is for one object to translate another, and what is involved in this process of translation. This workshop takes Merleau-Ponty’s work on the image as the starting-point from which to explore these ideas.

Speakers:
Jonathan Hale (Architecture)
Derek Hampson (Artist)
Aimee Purser (Sociology)
Komarine Romdenh-Romluc (Philosophy)

Please email me if you have any questions about the workshop. It would also be useful if you could email to say you are attending. Thanks, Derek