Professor of English and Art History at the University of Chicago, and long-time editor of Critical Inquiry, Mitchell (United States, b. 1942) has been one of the most influential figures in visual culture and media theory. His books, from Iconology to Picture Theory to What Do Pictures Want?, argue that images are not inert representations but active agents, with desires, demands, and social lives. Drawing on Marx, Freud, and semiotics, Mitchell insists that pictures must be thought as living entities within economies of power and meaning. His interventions have decisively shaped debates on visuality, aesthetics, and the politics of representation in an age saturated with images.
“I have always been surprised by this lack of theory — and of history as well. Even prominent colleagues of ours can hardly name five masterworks essential for them … This means that some professionals work in the field without fully knowing what they do when they claim to practice landscape architecture.”
I have spent the last two weeks conducting field research at a large music festival located in the interior of Portugal. Every day, I would wake up in my tiny tent and walk into a stunning landscape. Walking around the grounds of the festival every morning was my favorite activity, indulging in the lake around […]
Dr. Jevgeniy Bluwstein, a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies at the University of Bern, examines how the reductive Western view of landscapes reinforces colonization through exclusionary conservation practices, focusing on a case study of Tarangire National Park in Tanzania. Introducing the term “landscapism,” meaning the “double movement of colonizing landscapes/landscaping colonies,” Bluwstein offers a critical perspective, advocating for viewing landscapes through a lens of relationality.
As we confront the growing ecological crisis, it becomes increasingly difficult to argue that harmonious aesthetics, designed primarily for pleasure and ease, are always the most effective mode of expression. Perhaps there is space to question whether ecological efforts demand a different aesthetic attitude, one less fixated on traditional notions of balance and spatial conformity and more open to dissensus and confrontation.
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