Images as Agents [‘imagines agentes’]. Memory and Animation

digital

Articolo

Rivista

COMUNICAZIONI SOCIALI

Sezione

Open Access

Titolo

Images as Agents [‘imagines agentes’]. Memory and Animation

Autore

Henning Laugerud

Editore

Vita e Pensiero

Formato

Articolo |

Pdf

Pagine

Online da

10-2024

Doi

10.26350/001200_000207

Issn

0392-8667 (stampa) | 1827-7969 (digitale)

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Descrizione Commenti dei lettori

I take my point of departure in one of the Norwegian painted altar-frontals from the 13th century, from the church in Kinsarvik, and the early 14th Century Crucifix from the church of Fana outside of Bergen, and through these two specific medieval examples try to unravel some aspects of this animated and performative image culture, and the animated potential of common images and imagery through the lens of memory. Which is not just an important cognitive function of the human mind, but also a crucial cultural system. Memory makes up the cognitive environment and fundamental matrix of thinking. I argue that both the two-dimensional painted altar-frontal, and the three-dimensional ‘hyper-realistic’ sculpture might have worked as ‘image agents’ [imagines agentes], images with agency, through the movement of- and in the image user’s memory, that may be seen as a nexus between the outer and inner images and as such as a bodily and enlivening agent. Embodied and alive – articulating the performative and productive quality (or potential) of memoria, in a movement of dialogical transfiguration as animated and animating image(s). In the medieval image culture animation might be seen as a ‘total cultural fact’ – at the core of the cognitive environment of imagery – animating and animated. Animation is not only in the mind of the beholder, but in the epistemology, creation, interaction, and materiality of images. Images are embedded in social action, and animation is deeply constitutive of the production of meaning. Animation relates to the ontology of images and is a fundamental aspect of the life with images – in the pre-modern as well as today.

Images as Agents [‘imagines agentes’]. Memory and Animation by Henning Laugerud is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0