Numerous thinkers have approached images from a philosophical perspective, for example, Derrida (The Truth in Painting; Memoirs of the Blind: The Self-Portrait and Other Ruins, etc.), Lyotard (Duchamp, Monory, Cézanne, etc.), Rancière (cinema), and Deleuze. Deleuze even defined philosophy as the activity of creating concepts from images and considered philosophy’s relation to images through such a creation. On the other hand, creative practitioners, including writers and painters, have explored different approaches of reinterpreting other media and making use of both images and text in their creative works. This includes the traditions of concrete poetry, modernist writers’ use of typography in printed works, Alain Robbe-Grillet’s use of Cubism’s painting techniques, and more contemporary works like Xu Bing’s artistic recreation of Chinese text in Tianshu (Book From the Sky). This course draws from traditions that examine the relation between text and images, and, along with theoretical and empirical inquiries, includes visits to local art museums and invites practitioners to share their artistic experiences. It also encourages students to explore the possibilities of creating multimedia works of their own.
