Revealing embedded power: Collage and disruption of meaning
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.53450/2179-1465.RG.2022v13i2p94-104Keywords:
Analogue processes, Body as archive, Collage, Image and power, Practice methodologyAbstract
Analogue materials and collage are fundamental to my research and practice. They assist in examining and peeling off layers embedded within the printed image. The human body represents power, and an image featuring a privileged male body is a representation of that power (Brauer and Callen, 2008). Photographs and visual presentations of these bodies are bound by codes set by a culture in a certain space and time. These codes have limitations, and at the same time possibilities, manufactured by media and technology within which they function and refer. New presentations are effectually re-presentations, partially echoing previous utterances of power (Barthes, 1977). As a result, the image of a body becomes an archive, a discursive document covered in layers, and the analysis of that image lays bare its textuality, and collage helps investigate this multi-layered corporeal object— a palimpsestuous weaving of ocular representation through discourse, culture, and technology, to reveal its meanings and semiotic signs. This way, collage becomes an appropriate practice method to disentangle and highlight, and at the same time to manipulate and disrupt— an effective methodology to peel and strip the embedded meanings and significations within an image
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