methodologies INTERTEXTUAL METHOD IN VISUAL ARTS Martina - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Visual research methodologies INTERTEXTUAL METHOD IN VISUAL ARTS

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Martina Paatela-Nieminen martina.paatela-nieminen@helsinki.fi

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This presentationaims to offer the intertextual method as a tool for you to experiment visual analysis in practise in the workshop. ▪ Some words about intertextual method´s background. ▪ The intertextual method in theory ▪ Examples of the method applied in education practise. ▪

• PS. Unlike the presentation

this particular PowerPoint version does not include any students' examples. Some works of art are not included.

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Presentation proceeds:

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• What art education means to us at this moment in

time is a relevant question, because both art and art education are open concepts that change over time and with different modes of thought.

• Change is constant in our society.
• Therefore new methods for understanding arts and

art education are needed.

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The background of the intertextual method

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In modern art, the viewer investigates the art’s ultimate meaning. A work of art is then considered a closed system and usually has one correct interpretation (the artist’s intention). work of art – artist – tradition

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• We live in a world where cultural, linguistic, religious and philosophical

diversity exists.

• We also live in the world where everything is in continuous flux where art

changes culture as well as culture changes art. Culture has become artified.

• Art can be understood through different social and cultural networks.
• I became interested in studying art in wider textual relations and to

understand/produce plural meanings

• text – discourse – culture

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The background of the method

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A work of art per se Artist – work of art – tradition Textual relations Text – discourse – culture

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➢A text is a synonym to a verbal and written text (in daily life). ➢An image has it's own visual grammar. ➢However, an image can be studied as a text according to postmodern way of thinking. ➢An image can also be called visual text.

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What does it mean to study an image as a text?

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• Texts are visual, verbal and auditive, numeric,

kinaesthetic symbols and their combinations (extended understanding).

• Latin textum means a texture, a tissue, a woven fabric, a

construction, a network.

• Text derives from Latin verb texo that means a process:

knitting together, weaving and constructing, layering and linking meanings.

• Texts are traces that are shaped by the repetition and

transformation of other textual structures.

• A text contains meanings that the reader constructs

subjectively.

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What is a text?

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Skills in interpreting, producing and valuing various texts Ability to gather, combine, transform, produce, present, and assess information in different forms and environments Extended understanding of texts: visual, verbal, auditory, numeric, kinaesthetic, and/or combinations thereof. Texts interpreted and produced in written, auditory, visual, digital etc. Forms. See: The National Core Curriculum for Basic Education 2014.

8.July.2015 9 Department of Teacher Education/ Paatela- Nieminen&Itkonen

Multiliteracy is textual

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▪ The intertextual method in theory

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An intertext is a relation between texts

• The idea is not to study a text (e.g. a work of art) per

se but a text’s ( art work´s) relations to other texts (art works and culture).

• An intertext is a theoretical construct that serves the

process of reading, interpretation and signification (meaning).

• The reader reconstructs the cultural codes that are

realised in texts but also creates new meanings.

• Intertextuality is the open-ended process of producing

meanings in relation to different texts.

• To understand plural meanings.

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Intertextuality

• Although “intertextual” relations have always existed

does intertextuality as a concept date from the 1960s when thinkers started to study and re-read source texts in the light of new theories of linquistics and post-modern ways of thinking.

• Textual relations and meanings were defined and

studied analytically.

• I applied intertextual ideas from: Mihail Bakhtin,

Roland Barthes, Julia Kristeva, Gérard Genette, Deleuze & Guattari.

• Genette´s and Kristeva´s ideas are different views

and thus complete the method.

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Producing a new meaning artistically From an image T

• (pile of) images

T

• culture

Intertextual relations (text - genre/discourse - culture)

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Produce a new meaning

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Intertextual method for art education is profound

Genette has developed an open-ended system for producing differences and constructing meanings in contexts.

Paratext : a visual text is related to its own context Hypertext: a visual text is related to its´ genre / discourse.

Kristeva has developed intertextuality from the point of a speaking subject, unconscious of texts and cultures.

Geno-and phenotext: a visual text is related to culture.

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To start with, a work (of art) under study is first seen as a source text, a paratext, that works as a threshold of open-ended questions for the reader (Genette, 1997a). The text itself tempts the reader to ask questions and in the search for answers the reader relates the text to its setting and context and her/himself personally.

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. Secondly, the text is open-endedly connected to other texts, for example a work (of art) is related to other works (of art). Genres work as tools for grouping texts that are similar to each

• ther through some artistic, social, ideological or political relations

(amongst others). In order to study the texts according to a uniting principle, they are arranged in a palimpsestical continuum, from the newest text to the oldest. Genette’s palimpsestical reading, moving from the newest text to the oldest, is a way of producing transformations and variations from the textual continuum (1997b). A palimpsestical reading offers understanding as to how a newer text, the hypertext, transforms a preceding text, the hypotext (Genette 1997b). This is a way

• f

re-writing transformations and variations from the continuum and understanding how a contemporary work of art (the hypertext) transforms, modifies, and recycles older art (the earlier hypotext) in a palimpsestical continuum. In this way, it is possible to produce interesting difference(s) from the continuum for further study.

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Morimura Yasumasa 2013: Las meninas reborn in the night IV: peering at the secret scene behind the artist, from the series Las meninas reborn in the night I-VIII Manolo Valdes 2007, Helsinki Park Esplanade Pablo Picasso, Las Meninas 1957; Museum Picasso Diego Velásquez, Las Meninas 1656, Prado

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Formal differences: quantitative reduction or extension, change of viewpoint, dramatization etc. Thematic differences: spatiotemporal world, culture, action etc, Stylistical differences : playful, humorous, serious, polemical, satiric, ironic

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Producing changes

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Thirdly, Kristeva breaks up Genette’s contextual and genre- based thinking. The difference is further studied in a space of plural sign systems with the result that diverse as well as new meanings are produced for it. Kristeva focuses on a subject in which personal drives, the unconscious and the collective cultural memory become part of the subject’s reading process (Kristeva 1984). In a similar vein, a text has a logical structure and grammar, called the phenotext, and a dynamic unconscious force, the genotext, that produce meanings together (Kristeva 1984). Meanings are layered in the cultural memory and they are produced in the subjective reading process. According to Deleuze and Guattari (1987), the reading process can also be unstable and proceed with unexpected offshoots. It depends on the reader as to which meanings s/he finds important to produce and develop further.

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Cultural relations

Music Movies Dance Literature History Society Myths

INTERTEXTUAL RELATIONS Advertisements

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Task

• Apply the following step-by –step model for studying

intertextual relations.

• After the study process concentrate on your artistic
• utcome and create a new meaning for the
• utcome.

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"Phase 1: Relate your text to yourself and to the text’s

• wn context open-endedly.
• Find a text (image, place, object etc.) that you are interested in.
• Ask yourself what the text means to you personally. Write your

answer in the portfolio and make a visualization of it.

• Examine your interest via references and write your answers in

the portfolio.​" "Phase 2: Relate your text to other texts according to your guiding principle of interest

• Choose samples of data/texts that you want to relate to your

text.

• Choose the data/texts according to the principle of importance

to you.

• Choose or develop your own organizing principle (e.g. your
• wn focus, topic, theme, genre, phenomenon, discourse, class,

mode etc.).

• Arrange the data/texts in a palimpsestic continuum (from the

newest to the oldest) and document your data/texts.

• Study the continuum to find similarities and differences. Write

about your study process.

• Produce the difference of most importance/interest to you.

Write about your findings.​"

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"Phase 3: Study the difference open-endedly, associatively, and rhizomatically in relation to culture(s) or a world of texts. Set aside your previous organizing principle and think

• utside ‘the box’, the principle.
• Explore associatively what the difference (as an open-

ended textual space) says about culture(s) or world of

• texts. Chart of your associations and rhizomes.
• Find texts from a culture/s, to see how the difference

manifests in plural meanings. Document the texts

• Study the different interpretations and produce plural
• understanding. Study the meanings from references.
• Produce your own meanings.
• Analyze your own process. Ask how the process of

producing pluralities affected your thinking.

• Ask how your production of plural meanings may have

helped you to understand and respect multiple, different ways of understanding.​"

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"Phase 4: Produce your version of the difference associatively, rhizomatically, as an artistic performance based on your study process.

• Think associatively, rhizomatically and apply

joy/jamming/playing (if suits for your idea). Produce sketches.

• Create new meanings by combining existing one(s) with

the new, i.e. recycle, remix, apply collage techniques, etc. Document the planning process and end product

• Or
• Create new meanings by changing modes. Document the

planning process and end product.

• Or
• Create an entirely new interpretation. Document the

planning process and end product."

• Reading the World as T

exts: Intertextuality in Theory and Practice for (Art) EducationPaatela-Nieminen, M. & Itkonen, T ., 31 Jan 2017, Silent Partners in Multicultural Education. Itkonen, T . & Dervin,

• F. (eds.). Charlotte, NC: INFORMATION AGE PUBLISHING, INC, p.

3-28 26 p. 1. (Research in multicultural education and international perspectives).

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See more articles from Martina:

• rcid.org/0000-0003-0601-3534
• https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Martina_Paatel

a-Nieminen

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If you get interested