The University of Wisconsin-Madison
VISUAL CULTURE CLUSTER
Visiting Speaker Christopher Pinney
Christopher Pinney is Professor of Anthropology and Visual Culture at University College, London. He is the author of Camera Indica: The Social Life of Indian Photographs; and co-editor of Pleasure and the Nation, Beyond Aesthetics, and Photography's Other Histories. His most recent book is ‘Photos of the Gods’: The Printed Image and Political Struggle in India. Pinney has helped shift critical debate about photography away from a Euro-American center of gravity and toward an engagement with the ways photography has been appropriated by the political, cultural, and historical projects of the postcolonial world. Following the concrete historical circulation of images and tracing the meanings inscribed in their forms, uses, and trajectories, Pinney has helped forge fresh approaches to the ethnography and history of visual culture and the technologies of enchantment. His work has already had considerable impact in the fields of anthropology and Asian studies, and is relevant to multidisciplinary understandings of cultural difference.
Monday, November 7
Noon,
8417 Social Sciences
"The Political Economy of Gloss: 'India Shining' and the
Common Man"
Anthropology Colloquium
This lecture develops a neo-Situationalist explanation of the
Indian 2004 elections in which the BJP's vision of a glossy "India Shining"
was defeated by the black and white aesthetics of Congress' "Common Man".
Descriptions of political imagery are juxtaposed with accounts of the
changing modalities of Bombay film advertising to examine the manner in
which society organised through appearance can be disrupted at the level of
appearance.
Tuesday, October 8
5:00 pm, Chazen L140
“The Coming of Photography in India”
Visual Culture Lecture
What models might best explain the arrival and impact of a technology such as photography in a locale such as India? Does photography as "technology" dissolve in the "culture" of India? Conversely are there limits to its "torque" and "tensility"? Is its "time" the same as that of the world in which it errupts? This talk explores specific events and precise historical moments that might permit us to see more clearly what photography makes possible and impossible."
Wednesday, November 9
1-3 pm
"The Social Life of Images and 'Wavy Meaning'"
Visual Culture Workshop
Seating for this workshop is limited and advanced reading is required. Please contact visualculture@education.wisc.edu to register and for further information.
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