Representation: Looking at You, Me and the Selfie

Images of ourselves and others saturate our experiences of contemporary life. In Tinder pics, advertisements and Police mugshots, we automatically and unintentionally read signifiers of race, class, gender and sexuality. Yet how, and why, do we interpret these? This course engages with examples of representation drawn from the diverse fields of art, photography, popular culture (film, television and video games), news media and social media to enable students to critically assess images of their own and others' making. Drawing on theories of looking, with attention to the gaze and the construct of the Other, students will explore self-portraiture and representation in the age of the selfie.

The Society of the Spectacle (Seminar): In 1967, Guy Debord penned The Society of the Spectacle, opening the text with this first, prescient, thesis: "In societies dominated by modern conditions of production, life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has receded into a representation". This seminar unpacks Debord's ideas before expanding into the questions: What are the implications of living in a society governed by images? What are the legacies of Debord's ideas? What role can image-makers play in perpetuating or disrupting the spectacle? 

Semiotics (Seminar): This seminar introduces semiotics - the science or theory of signs - pioneered by Swiss linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure and American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce. After drawing out two key principles of semiotics: 1. that language (and images) construct rather than reflect the world; and 2. that distinctions are often made through binary oppositions. Discussions will focus on the implications of these principles in visual culture. 

The Male Gaze (Seminar): The feminist film critic, Laura Mulvey, coined the term 'male gaze' in her 1975 essay "Visual pleasure and narrative cinema". This seminar explains Mulvey's concept of the male gaze with attention to Mulvey's focus on who is doing the making, the framing and the looking. Discussions will focus on examples from visual culture that repeat, refuse or complicate the male gaze before turning to bell hooks' important critique of Mulvey via her racialised theory of the Oppositional Gaze. 

Heterocentric Visions and other Recurring Tropes (Seminar): This seminar deploys student-led discussion to investigate the relationships between overused cliches (especially as they relate to race, gender, sexuality, class and ability) and issues of invisibility/lack of representation. Student will bring pre-selected examples to class for a speed-dating style discussion. 

Coded Messages and Resistant Readings (Seminar): This seminar explores polysemy in visual culture, that is, the potential for different audiences to read multiple, even conflicting, meanings in a text according to coded messages and resistant readings. 

Female s(h)eroes: Counter-Representation (Seminar): In 1993, Australia's first Cyberfeminist art collective - VNS Matrix - refused to represent their female s(h)hero All New Gen, opting instead to imagine her as a powerful, feminine, mist. In this seminar, we'll discuss counter-representational strategies including redeploying existing images and inserting new bodies into old narratives.
Screening: Soda_Jerk, Terror Nullius, 2018. 

Anger and Repair (Seminar): In her book, Reparative Aesthetics, Susan Best articulates the possibility for political art to eschew its critical tendency in order to provide a method for healing. In this seminar, we'll explore the emotional affect of visual culture. 

Selfies, Self-Portraiture and Self-Representation (Seminar): African-American abolitionist, Frederick Douglas, was the most photographed man in the 1800s. He recognised in photography the potential to author a more accurate image of African Americans. In this seminar, we'll encounter an extraordinary suite of artists, activists and image-makers who have similarly turned the camera on themselves, and their surroundings.
Screening: Caroline Garcia, Imperial Reminiscence, 2018 

Masquerade (Seminar): Cindy Sherman famously photographs herself over and over, not as a form of self-portraiture but as a form of masquerade. Her repetitions expose images as a construct and identity as performance. With attention to Judith Butler's Gender Trouble, in this seminar, we'll discuss image-makers who perform for the camera, often without us knowing. 


Ethical Conundrums and Contemporary Debates (Seminar): In this final seminar, we will explore some of the ethical quandaries and contemporary debates raised by this course. Students will lead discussion on debates that divide opinion yet offer fruitful engagement. These may include: #yourfaveisproblematic: fandom in the age of critique, representing violence and desire in the age of #metoo, when is it unethical to take a selfie? What should/shouldn't be censored online? How/can Capitalism and Intersectional ethics coexist? etc