This project investigates the specific modes of the appearance of difference (gender, ethnicity, but also ironic or parodic differences) in today’s public sphere and in particular in the visual imagery that circulates there. This includes:
– particular prominent and visible processes of the “re-invention” of gender and ethnic identity, the images coined in the course of them and the struggles these processes are involved in;
– cultural-theoretical and empirical investigations of turning formerly “natural” and “racial” things and phenomena defined by religion into “culture(s)”, for example for example through the use of aesthetic tactics such as irony and parody; and the ambivalent effects and impacts and the social and political conflicts and shifts that arise in connection with these stagings of difference
– case studies concerning the global image of particular ethnic groups such as the Italians and Italianità.
Project results can be found in (selection:
Visuelle Ironie und Kontingenz: Aneignungen von Praktiken des (politisierten) Sports im künstlerischen Werk von Nilbar Güreş. In: IMAGE Journal for Interdisciplinary Image Studies 41 (1) 2025, 25–47
Occupying Empty Places: Political Protest and Solidarity Among Strangers in Times
of Social Distancing. In: S. Krizic Roban, A. Sverko (eds.): Watching, Waiting. The Photographic Representation of Empty Places. Leuven: Leuven University Press 2023, 87–11
Fotografie als Akt der Solidarität unter Fremden: Die Covid-19-Serien von Fabio
Bucciarelli. In: C. Hattendorff, S. Abendschön, A. Schnurr, N. Zillien (eds.): Bilder der Pandemie. Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven auf die Visualisierung einer unsichtbaren Gefahr. (Interaktiva, Schriftenreihe des Zentrums für Medien und Interaktivität, Gießen). Frankfurt am Main, New York: Campus Verlag 2023, 43–57
Das Boot mit Flüchtenden. Ikonologie einer Figur des Zwischenraums. In: Migration und Soziale Arbeit, (3/ Grenzregime) 2022, 204–112
Naheinstellungen auf Kindergesichter: Bilder von undokumentierten Einwandernden als ambivalente Vermittler von Öffentlichkeit. In: A. Schober-de Graaf, B. Hipfl (eds.): Wir und die Anderen. Visuelle Kultur zwischen Aneignung und Ausgrenzung (Klagenfurter Beiträge zur Visuellen Kultur, Band Band 7). Cologne: Herbert von Halem Verlag 2020, 99–124
Lumpen Design, Penis Fashion and Body-Part Amplifiers. Artistic Responses to the New Image-Environments in Former Socialist Countries since 1989. In: Performance Research, ”On Form”, Vol. 10, No. 2/ October 2005, 25–37 (Routledge)
Hélio Oiticica’s Parangolés: Body-Events, Participation in the Anti-Doxa of the Avant-Garde and Struggling Free from It. In: theory@buffalo, ”Politics and Doxa,” Vol. 9/ 2004, 75–101 (Morris Publishing)
