[ecrea] Visual Culture as Paradigm of Power in the Blurred Eastern Limits of Europe

14th International Conference of ISSEI (International Society for the

Study of European Ideas). Porto, 4-8 August 2014: "Images of Europe:
Past, Present, Future".

Workshop: "Visual Culture as Paradigm of Power in the Blurred Eastern
Limits of Europe"

Chairs:
Jorge Latorre, University of Navarra (Spain). Email:(jlatorre /at/ unav.es)
Oleksandr Pronkevich, Petro Mohyla Black Sea University (Mykolayiv,
Ukraine).
Email:(oleksandrpronkevych /at/ yahoo.com)
Joanna Bielska-Krawczyk, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń (Poland).
Email:(lebroso /at/ poczta.onet.pl)

The reshaping of the world is now done by visual culture and not by the
force of weapons. The old-fashioned wars are not efficient. Today the
symbolic victories are much more important than triumphs on the
battlefields.Under such circumstances, audio and visual arts have become
a tool of indoctrination, or at least propagation of different values
and different visions of Europe.

Urban painting and sculpture, book illustrations, cinema,
advertisements, digital media products, parades, flash-mobs and other
mass performances are involved in the paradigm of ideology and power.
Europe is a one of the key concepts in the battle for the symbolic
reality. Much money is invested into cultural industries, which
construct new identities –within or outside Europe-, reestablish old
empires, and reinvent new mythologies of nationalism. Today’s cinema,
the most important kind of art, as once Lenin described it, is a much
more subtle and efficient way of manipulating people’s minds than it
used to be some decade ago.

For instance, following the Hollywood standards, the most expensive
Russian cinema today rewrites the history of Russia in term of renovated
Imperial narrative, which proclaims the priority of the traditional
Russian Orthodox faith and restores the images of the well-known enemies
– French, Germans, and more recently, Poles: 1612 (Vladimir Khotinenko,
2007) or TarasBulba (Vladimir Bortko, 2009). They are movies which
provoke fear of the West, especially against Poland, whose economic
welfare could seduce former URSS countries–Ukraine, Belarus, Moldavia,
Georgia- to join the EU.

The European Union responds to this challenge by coining new stereotypes
about the East, such as homophobes, conservative, not civilized
people... In this situation it makes sense to ask the question if the
audio and visual products, which are created at the moment, are works of
art which laid bridges or they are just tools of propaganda and commerce
which raise new walls in the Eastern border of Europe. It is also
important for the researchers to focus their attention on audio and
visual arts as manifestations of ethics of hospitality and ethics of
hostility in the relations between the West and the East.

Thus, we invite the participants of the workshop to speak on one of the
following subjects:
1. The Image of Europe in the contemporary audio and visual arts of the
former socialist countries.
2. The former USSR under today’s Central European and Western European
eyes: making new clichés or going beyond stereotypes.
3. Rhetoric of the audio and visual political and commercial propaganda
in the nation-building of Europe: advertisement, mass performances,
commemorative monuments of street art, etc.
4. Rethinking events of the European history in contemporary audio and
visual arts, video art, animated cartoons, etc.
5. Audio and visual arts as a school of free critical thinking: utopia
or reality?
6. The Christians roots of Europe in recent film: are Russia and
orthodox countries their only defenders? How does cinema show this
paradox of nowadays?
7. Look at Yourself! Social and Cultural Transformation in the
contemporary audio and visual arts in the Baltic and former Warsaw
Treaty Countries.



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