Ramiro Oller

Working Title of Disseration Project

IMAGOLOGY. Multisensory storytelling in Museums and in Art Education Institutions.

Abstract

The research is placed in the field of artistic research, museum studies, pedagogy, and artistic practice, with the aim of creating alternative and plausible histories articulating and analyzing artworks, artifacts, institutions, and anecdotes. Unlike schematic traditional ways of constructing and transmitting art history, we will play with the events reorganizing them in new contexts regarding temporality and territory to see what potential knowledge comes from these alterations. A speculative exercise on how the present reshapes the past1, and the future as well.

The research has a theoretical and practical character that will feed back into each other. The theoretical aspect, expressed in the form of a critical written reflection, will try to define what could be an imagological study in the field of arts by setting up a methodology and defining the necessary conditions as well as the limitations of the field. The term Imagology was first coined in the field of comparative literature, it can be understood in a very wide sense as “ the critical analysis of cultural stereotypes”. At the same time, Imagology stands for a practice in a completely different field: in marketing, as well as in political campaigns, the imagologist is the one who analyzes, shapes, manipulates and creates the image of a product, an event, a celebrity, or a political candidate. The research will consider museums and art schools as places where the two aspects of imagology mentioned above could meet.

In a practical sense, as a way of collect data, we will develop experiments that will function as transmission devices. First of all, we will create an Imaginary Museum, which will be the core for a proposal for a class, workshop or seminar. This Imaginary Museum, will be an exercise on the creation of a new narrative framework, and will be dedicated to the creation of stories through storytelling based on certain topics proposed as potentially common throughout different cultures and times. Secondly, we will produce a series of speculative short tales -away of standarized art history storytelling- in the manner of audio guides to accompany already existing ones in the museum's permanent collections as a counter point. Taking some specific artworks as starting point: sounds, music, and acted narrations, are played in our audio guides to create a more emotional and multisensory connection with the art pieces as well as the context in with they are shown.

Keywords:

Imagology, imagination, art, images, art history, museum, transmission, art education, audio guides, culture, imaginary museum.

Supervisors:

Prof. Dr. Bénédicte Vauthier, Institut für Spanische Sprache und Literaturen, Universtität Bern
Prof. Dr. Thomas Strässle, Y-Institut, Hochschule der Künste Bern