Normative Image Spaces: Virtual and Imaginary Dynamics of Epistemic Topologies (C04#)

• Subject Area: Art History
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 470106373

The research project C04 Normative Image Spaces: Virtual and Imaginary Dynamics of Epistemic Topologies aims to analyze the reciprocal relationship between life-world experience, image viewing, and the formation of norms in the early-modern period (15th-17th centuries). It focuses on pictorial spaces in which social behavior (collective as well as individual) is directed, normed, and potentialized. The phenomenon of ‚normative image spaces‘ will be considered as operation, that links the investigation of sensual perception (visually guided spatio-temporal orientation) with normative action (value orientation). Pre-digital virtuali- ty is thereby conceived as a dynamic design of artificial environments, as well as a mental and imaginary phenomenon. The project investigates epistemic and visual spaces of normative negotiation and education in which virtue constellations in the sense of virtus (power, possibility, ability) and virtuositas (artistic skill, adequacy), become effective models of space, movement, and embodiment. The two main research areas of the TP concentrate on early modern political epistemology and didac- tics according to phenomenological and praxeological research on social spaces (Lefebvre 1974/2006; Rancière 2006). In order to topologically locate the formation of norms in pre-digital virtual image spaces, the two areas will investigate into immersive (UP C04.1 Virtuality of Negotiation. Virtue order, immersion and inversion) as well as imaginative (UP C04.2 Imaginary life. Epistemic image spaces and educative topologies) image spaces. On the one hand, it will be analyzed how abstract values (law, politics, rule) are mediated and oriented towards forms of action through figurations of virtue in governmental and administrative environments (court, consistory, audience halls). On the other hand, allegories of life (images of the journey of the soul, or paths of virtue) in educational contexts will be examined as embodiments that aim at a mental or actual activation of the body through images spaces. To capture cognitive and multisensory aspects of normative image spaces, the analysis of artistic representational techniques that specifically mi- mic the order of the natural visual process will be approached through embodiment theories (Krois 2011; Smith 2017). This bipolar exploration of pre-digital virtualities promises to explain the topological function of virtus for normative orders. At the same time, the TP will add another historical perspective in the frame the SFB, engaging in an intensive exchange with other projects.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres
• Subproject of: SFB 1567: Virtuelle Lebenswelten
• Applicant Institution: Ruhr-Universität Bochum
• Project Head: Professorin Dr. Carolin Behrmann