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From Invisibility to Visibility #4

De l’invisibilité à la visibilité – Opus 4

Invisibles in arts and cinema

L(es) invisible(s) dans les arts et le cinéma

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Published on Friday, October 13, 2023

Abstract

Français English

This study day will focus on the (re)presentation of the invisible in the arts and cinema in order to analyse the way these art forms have looked at these figures of the unseen, the imperceptible or the “unshowable”, and to see to what extent they have been able to contribute to the de-marginalisation of certain populations by giving them a face.

Announcement

Français English

Argument

In the wake of the cycle of study days focusing on “Invisibility/Visibility” that have taken place at Université Jean Monnet and Université Clermont Auvergne since May 2021, and to continue our exchanges about margins, centre(s)/marginality(ies) and decentring, this fourth event offers to reflect on the representations of invisibility and visibility through all types of visual arts. According to Paul Klee’s famous aphorism in Théories de l’art moderne (1971), “art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible”. Art does indeed make visible what is seen but not apprehended; it does not imitate nature or reality, it reveals them. As such, aesthetic and political choices combine or even merge to open the viewer’s eyes and mind. In a resolutely transdisciplinary approach, we will therefore take an interest in the representation of the invisible in visual arts, photography and cinema, to appreciate how these art forms bring to light what is and/or those who are generally unseen, unnoticed or ignored.

In Doublures du visible : Voir et ne pas voir en cinéma (2021), Jacques Aumont establishes a range of invisible modes “starting from the physical world and its own share of the invisible, to the so-called spiritual worlds, whose existence is always doubtful but where the invisible reigns supreme”. For Marc Vernet (1988), the invisible in cinema refers to figures of absence: “those moments when the cinema seeks by its own means to make perceptible an existence that cannot be materialised in a realistic form: the look at the camera, the ‘point-of-view shot’, the superimposition, the woman in the portrait and the non-existent character”. Invisibility is also sometimes sought by the artist as a device to acquire notoriety (Pierre-Marie Chauvin, 2021) which, paradoxically, gives more visibility to his/her work but can ultimately interfere with it (as with the artist Banksy, for example, whose identity is as much if not more discussed than his work). Between material, psychological and ideological considerations, art has often confronted the great philosophical/existential questions of humanity. In other words, what is the invisible in what are essentially visual arts? Is it what is technically and/or ethically difficult to represent? Is the invisible linked to taboos and/or the unbearable? For instance, slavery is almost invisible on French screens, which suggests how difficult it is to represent this part of history and to accomplish memory work (Régis Dubois, 2022).

Invisible or invisibilised individuals and/or communities have been numerous throughout history. The significant number of documentary or fiction films entitled Les Invisibles/The Invisible (Sébastien Lifshitz, 2012; Louis-Julien Petit, 2018; Clarisse Feletin, 2021 to name but a few recent examples) shows the interest of cinema in homosexuals, the disabled, the elderly and mature/older women, as well as migrants, the homeless, social workers, subcontracted cleaning ladies, etc. Photography and graphic and visual arts in general also point this social invisibility to the public, for example by revealing rural or urban people marginalised by society, such as some 20th and 21st century North-American artists. In France, the committed American artist Faith Ringgold is being honoured for the first time at the Musée Picasso in Paris. Her reinterpretation of the history of modern art “which links the rich heritage of the Harlem Renaissance to the current art of young black American artists [establishes] a genuine plastic and critical dialogue with the Parisian art scene of the early 20th century” (https://www.museepicassoparis.fr/fr/ faith-ringgold, 2023). In the 1950s and 1960s, Gordon Parks was the first to make photo documentaries to show racial segregation, inequality and the reality of urban life in the United States. Before him, James Van der Zee’s photographs introduced the general public to the Harlem neighbourhood, its black bourgeoisie, its intellectuals and artists. Roy DeCarava, exhibited at MoMA in New York, also photographed the reality of this area in the 1920s: “I’m not a documentarian, I never have been. I think of myself as poetic, a maker of visions, dreams, and a few nightmares” (Miller, 1990).

Thanks to past and ongoing struggles, making visible the invisible has become more common (or even “fashionable” as critics of the supposedly new political correctness would say), albeit to varying degrees. In the film industry, some artists denounce the under-representation or the still too biased and essentialising representation of certain communities, pointed out by indicators such as the Bechdel Test for women or the RizTest for Muslims. One can obviously think of various recent Hollywood campaigns (OscarsSoWhite since 2015; Time’s Up since 2018) and, in a French-speaking context, the “book-manifesto” initiated by actress Aïssa Maïga, Noire n’est pas mon métier/Being black is not my job (2018) presented at the Cannes Film Festival when it was released, the satirical mockumentary Simply Black (Jean-Pascal Zadi and John Wax, 2020), or the creation of the Collectif 50/50. The invisibilisation of African American film casts and crews since the origins of Hollywood cinema was recently symbolised in Nope (Jordan Peele, 2022) through its reference to the jockey in Eadweard Muybridge’s Animal Locomotion (1887) and that of the pioneering women of the film industry is beginning to be analysed with, notably, the “rediscovery” of Alice Guy.

That is why one of the aims of this fourth event will be to ask whether visual arts provide a solution to the under-representation or rather the “ill-representation” (Rosanvallon, 2014) of certain individuals and/or communities, and whether more recognition (Honneth, 2000; Ricoeur, 2004) necessarily goes hand in hand with more visibility, as examples tend to show the opposite: “The mis-representation as well as the under-representation of immigrants and minorities in the French media, and particularly on television, is an observation that has been widely and regularly proven by research for over twenty years” (Magali Nayrac, 2011). However, “to recognise a life is to give it credit, to give it value and thus make it visible. Conversely, an invisible life is so unrecognised that all value is taken away from it and it no longer counts” (Guillaume Leblanc in de Montalembert, 2022).

So what strategies can artists put in place to ensure that the spectator truly experiences the face of the other, as was meant by Levinas? In Humanism of the Other (1972), he asserts: “the face imposes itself on me without my being able to remain deaf to its call, nor to forget it, I mean without my ceasing to be responsible for its misery”. In other words, if Deleuze and Guattari (1980) see “faciality” as an essential prerequisite for any analysis of strategies for extracting the subject from the norms (as we saw with event 3), Levinas asserts that the relationship to others and the recognition of the other, which is consubstantial with our relationship to the world, passes through the face (albeit metaphorically) and thus links visibility and ethics, or even humanism. The myth of the invisible man and its cinematographic variants almost always lead to the conclusion that, without the gaze of the other, there is no longer any morality (James Whales, 1933; Paul Verhoeven, 2000; Leigh Whannel, 2020).

Finally, this study day will also allow us to identify those who are still invisible or remain invisibilised, as some articles on the representation deficit or whitewashing of East Asian communities in films seem to indicate (Axelle Pisuto, 2019). On the other hand, is the colour-blind status achieved by some artists not the ultimate sign of their success?

Submission guidelines

This study day will therefore focus on the (re)presentation of the invisible in the arts and cinema in order to analyse the way these art forms have looked at these figures of the unseen, the imperceptible or the “unshowable” (Becker, 2021), and to see to what extent they have been able to contribute to the de-marginalisation of certain populations by giving them a face.

Proposals (500 words maximum with a short biography indicating your current position, affiliation and research interests) should be sent to:

  • Christine Dualé, UJM – ECLLA (christine.duale@univ-st-etienne.fr)
  • Anne-Lise Marin-Lamellet, UJM – ECLLA (anne.lise.marin.lamellet@univ-st-etienne.fr)

by January 4, 2024

Notification will be sent by February 2024. 

Study day will take place on 5, April 2024.

Presentations will not exceed 25 minutes. The conference will be held at Université Jean Monnet, Saint-Étienne. The proceedings of this 4th event are intended to be published.

 Scientific coordination

  • Christine Dualé, UJM – ECLLA (christine.duale@univ-st-etienne.fr)
  • Anne-Lise Marin-Lamellet, UJM – ECLLA (anne.lise.marin.lamellet@univ-st-etienne.fr)

Bibliography

Anonyme. (2023). « À propos de l’exposition : Faith Ringgold ». Musée Picasso Paris. URL : https://www.museepicassoparis.fr/fr/faith-ringgold.

Aumont, Jacques. (2021). Doublures du visible : Voir et ne pas voir en cinéma. Villeneuve d’Ascq : Presses universitaires du Septentrion.

Becker, Annette. (2021). L’Immontrable : Des guerres et des violences extrêmes dans l’art et la littérature. Paris : Créaphis Éditions.

Chauvin, Pierre-Marie. (2021). « La Mise en scène de l’invisibilité, Banksy comme cas-limite d’une sociologie des réputations artistiques ». Réseaux 2021/1 (n°225) : 249-282. URL : https://www.cairn.info/revue-reseaux-2021-1-page-249.htm ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.3917/res.225.0249.

De Montalembert, Marc. (2022). « Rendre visibles les invisibles ». Justice et Paix. URL : https://justice-paix.cef.fr/lettre/rendre-visibles-les-invisibles/.

Deleuze, Gilles et Félix, Guattari. (1980). Mille plateaux. Paris : Les Éditions de minuit.

Honneth, Axel. (2000). La Lutte pour la reconnaissance. Paris : Cerf, coll. « Passages » (traduit de l’allemand par P. Rusch, 1992).

Klee, Paul. (1971). Théories de l’art moderne. Paris : Gallimard, 1998.

Levinas, Emmanuel. (1972). Humanisme de l’autre homme. Paris : Le Livre de poche, coll. « Biblio Essais », 1987.

Maïga, Aïssa  et al. (2018). Noire n’est pas mon métier. Paris : Points, 2021.

Miller, Ivor. (1990). « ‘If It Hasn’t Been One of Color’: An Interview With Roy DeCarava ». Callaloo 13 (n°4) : 852. DOI : https://doi.org/10.2307/2931378.

Muybridge, Eadweard et Adam, Hans Christian. (2010). Eadweard Muybridge, The Human and Animal Locomotion Photographs. Taschen Bibliotheca Universalis, coll. « Klotz ».

Nayrac, Magali. (2011). « La question de la représentation des minorités dans les médias, ou le champ médiatique comme révélateur d’enjeux sociopolitiques contemporains ». Cahiers de l’Urmis 13/2011. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/urmis/1054.

Pisuto, Axelle. (2019). « L’invisibilité des communautés asiatiques dans le cinéma occidental : quel pouvoir a le cinéma sur notre imaginaire ? ». À films ouverts. URL : https://www.afilmsouverts.be/L-invisibilite-des-communautes-asiatiques-dans-le-cinema-occidental-quel.html.

Ricoeur, Paul. (2004). Parcours de la reconnaissance. Paris : Folio Essais, 2005.

Rosanvallon, Pierre. (2014). Le Parlement des Invisibles : Déchiffrer la France. Paris : Points, édition augmentée et mise à jour, 2020.

Vernet, Marc. (1988). Figures de l’absence : De l’invisible au cinéma. Paris : Cahiers du cinéma.

Quoted films and documentaries

Dubois, Régis. (2022). L’Esclavage au cinéma, la fin d’un tabou ?

Feletin, Clarisse. (2021). Les Invisibles.

Lifshitz, Sébastien. (2012). Les Invisibles. 

Peele, Jordan. (2022). Nope.

Petit, Louis-Julien. (2018). Les Invisibles. 

Urréa, Valérie et Masduraud, Nathalie. (2021). Alice Guy : L’Inconnue du 7e art.

Verhoeven, Paul. (2000). Hollow Man (Hollow Man, L’Homme sans ombre).

Whales, James. (1933). The Invisible Man (L’Homme invisible).

Whannel, Leigh. (2020). The Invisible Man (Invisible Man).

Zadi, Jean-Pascal et Wax, John. (2020). Tout simplement noir.

Places

  • Université Jean Monnet – Saint Etienne Campus Tréfilerie 33 rue du 11 novembre
    Saint-Étienne, France (42)

Event attendance modalities

Hybrid event (on site and online)


Date(s)

  • Thursday, January 04, 2024

Keywords

  • invisibilité, visibilité, mineur, (re)présentations, figures du non-vu, arts, cinéma, littérature, philosophie

Contact(s)

  • Anne-Lise Marin-Lamellet
    courriel : anne [dot] lise [dot] marin [dot] lamellet [at] univ-st-etienne [dot] fr
  • Christine Dualé
    courriel : christine [dot] duale [at] univ-st-etienne [dot] fr

Information source

  • Christine Dualé
    courriel : christine [dot] duale [at] univ-st-etienne [dot] fr

License

CC0-1.0 This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.

To cite this announcement

« From Invisibility to Visibility #4 », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Friday, October 13, 2023, https://doi.org/10.58079/1bz1

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