Maria Rosaria Perrelli

PhD programme in Human Sciences - 36° ciclo (October 1, 2020 - September 30, 2023)

Doctorate research program

Research Project Title: The anachronism of the images 

Keywords: Anachronism, optical unconscious, Didi-Huberman, Walter Benjamin, visual cultural studies
 

In the set of the images, also named iconosphere by the visual cultural studies, it is necessary, nowadays, to define a methodology that does not have to follow a linear chronology of time as usually can be observed in History of Fine Arts, because in the contemporaneity, the images, not only of Art, but also photographs, films, videos, advertisement, virtual reality, augmented reality and such become vectors of a Story. So every image is able to establish a relationship between elements of the Past, realizing a new vision appearing only in the contingency of a time that assumes the appearance of a constellation, as it is said by Walter Benjamin. Benjamin ideas about the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction, as it is said in his most famous work, implies the well known theme of the death of art, or even better, the art of disappearing. Most recently, George Didi-Huberman, connecting other authors, from Benjamin to Warburg, from Riegl to Wölfflin, from Derrida to Agamben, develops the concept of anachronism which involves that images do not stand in History like a spot on a line, one after one like beads in a necklace, so everyone of them is not only an event forced in the historical process, but an entity capable to manifest its sensitivity to the becoming of Time. Images have to be intended as living organisms, not only object in a glass case.