Touching pictures

UBACyT 2014-2016

Team

Marina G. De Angelis – Universidad de Buenos Aires-CEISS
Gorka López de Munain – Universidad de Buenos Aires-CEISS
Ander Gondra Aguirre – Universidad de Buenos Aires-CEISS

Touching Images is a project of the IRUDI Image Studies research team of the Visual Anthropology Department of the University of Buenos Aires and the Sans Soleil Image Studies Center (CEISS).

Starting from the perspective of image anthropology, this project uses the audiovisual medium to explore a particular relationship, that of image and touch, as well as the behaviors linked to these practices.

From theological thought, iconoclastic disputes, the Protestant Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, to social networks such as Facebook, YouTube or Twitter, the image has been the subject of reflection, political disputes and various attacks. The emergence of the image as an unavoidable focus of reflection in the contemporary context was undoubtedly driven by the emergence of new digital media. Cameras, mobile phones, chats, and many other devices seem to confirm this while we witness - in parallel - an endless appeal and search for the sensorial experience of its users, from mobile phones and "touch" tablets, game consoles that involve the use of the players' bodies, to virtual reality.

In the contemporary context, have our attitudes towards images changed? Images of hundreds of hands, tears and fingers trying to reach the blanket that covered the saint, his blood or a finger, are replicated in countless current scenarios, with similar behaviours. Mobile phones that capture the passage of the saint, the miraculous image or the relic are common and repeated presences in sanctuaries. The number of sanctuaries - both official and popular devotions - grows day by day and allows us to attend practices common to all: touching, crying, kissing, photographing. But also virtual sanctuaries, in which images do not seem to lose their auratic charge. The miraculous image seems to be implacably linked to sensory experience, and peculiarly, to touch, even when it is digital

In this project we focus particularly on one type of images – miraculous ones – and on one type of behavior in particular – the act of touching, which involves not only the relationship between touch and sight but also new questions regarding the concept of aura, presence, similarity, body and virtuality, which make up the history of images in the West.

Areas