“Exploring new research horizons in Visual Communication Studies” is the theme of a CITAR seminar

Wednesday, January 29, 2025 - 17:13

On February 3, Fernando R. Contreras, Professor of Visual Studies and Cyberculture and Chair of the Department of Journalism at the University of Seville, will lead a seminar at the School of Arts on the theme “Exploring new horizons of research in Visual Communication Studies”. The event will take place at 18:00 in room EC132 A.

The conference will present the main theoretical foundations that make up the research methodology from Visual Studies. The significance of the visual object is decoded by a hermeneutics centered on the discovery of the original gesture of its creator. The investigation of visuality through scopic regimes does not consist in establishing the personalized profile of visual production as the ultimate goal, nor in describing it in its formal details, but in understanding the relationships with its context determined by the nature, place of the object and its time. Visuality has traditionally been recognized through its aesthetic value, being the cause of exclusion of numerous non-artistic sensitive objects. For Visual Studies there are other relevant considerations: the variable awareness of the visual impression, the control of visual space, the phenomenology of visibility or the existence of a genealogy of images. From the interdisciplinary articulation of the main theories in the field of visual research, this conference aims to synthesize the most relevant debates that explain the organic composition of the scopic regime. Among the conclusions we will highlight the intemperate force of the visual legacy characterized by the historical, social and political plot of culture. In this study, the importance of knowing about the rational social from the visual intersubjective is gathered, that is, from the fabric woven by the incommensurable subjectivities of individual gazes.


Fernando R. Contreras is Professor of Visual Studies and Cyberculture and Chair of the Department of Journalism at the University of Seville. Director of the Technology, Art and Communication Research Group of the Andalusian Research, Development and Innovation Plan (PAIDI HUM 868). His research focuses on Visual Studies and the Philosophy of Art and Communication. He has a PhD in Philosophy, a PhD in Information Sciences and a degree in Fine Arts (Drawing and Printmaking). He studied industrial design and audiovisual design. His most recent research explores the political destruction of images (iconoclasm), the visuality of activist movements and digital mediation in computer vision. He is interested in the theoretical development of visuality from an interdisciplinary perspective and in experimentation in the fields of philosophy, semiotics or art on phenomena (iconodulia, fetishism, idolatry) and visual objects (relics, monuments or urban landscapes). He has been a visiting professor at numerous universities in France, the UK, Portugal, Italy, Germany and Latin America.

ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1105-5800.

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