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The Return of the Sewol―What Do the Images Want? : Based on W. J. T. Mitchell's Picture Theory
The Journal of Aesthetics and Science of Art
Abbr :
JASA
2018, 55(), pp.3-38
DOI :10.17527/JASA.55.0.01
Publisher : 한국미학예술학회
Research Area : Other Arts and Kinesiology
2018, 55(), pp.3-38
DOI :10.17527/JASA.55.0.01
Publisher : 한국미학예술학회
Research Area : Other Arts and Kinesiology
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This paper delves into the life and death of image, its pain and pity culminated by the Sewol Ferry Disaster, a ferry boat sunk in 2014 with over 200 high school students and many other civilian victims on board. The quest into image's painful life will be supported by Ｗ. Ｊ. Ｔ. Mitchell's profound discussion, What picture want: the life and love of image in which the author argues that ‘images are not dead but living subalterns demanding what they want, transfixing or paralyzing the viewer in their gaze’. This idea makes a shift in our inquiry - from what images do to us, to what they want from us; from image's impact on society to its affect over beholders. For the past few years in Korea, artistic attempts to visualize the pain of Sewol disaster have been trapped in image's hazier, reified sanctum that incubates moral taboos for beautifying the other's pain. However, as we have seen from the disaster, despite the moral concerns, the victims aboard never ceased to make their images (with their own mobile phones, cameras, etc). to let others know they are alive, to bring a rescue in time, or to be remembered forever - all to prove their ontic certainty and visual right. Therefore, to look at images, to believe in image's life, and to pay attention to what they want is a way to reach at the deepest chasm of visual desire that has in fact a rich history in western iconological traditions. Anchoring on Mitchell's study on image, I will also discuss this desire through the insight of Lacan, Michael Fried and Hans Belting whose studies at certain degree point to this inter-subjective demand and desire that will map out a new direction of image ethics.
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