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“Studies in Visual Arts and Communication – an international journal”Volume 12 – Nr 1, 2025 |
Table of Contents
June 2025; 12(1)
1. Emily Eliza Scott
Caught in the Circuits: Jean Tinguely in Nevada, On Television
Studies in Visual Arts and Communication – an international journal / June 2025 12(1)
ABSTRACT
In 1962, Study for an End of the World No. 2 by the Swiss artist Jean Tinguely, which entailed the mock-apocalyptic explosion of a junk-fashioned kinetic sculpture on a dry lakebed in the American desert—just a stone’s throw from the Nevada Test Site, where actual atomic tests were carried out repeatedly in the period—was relayed to the American public by way of primetime television. Tinguely’s gesture addressed two technologies that profoundly reshaped the decades following World War II: the atom bomb (representing the potential end point of all technology) and television (representing the potential translation of all into spectacle), simultaneously mimicking atomic tests and their widespread coverage in the mass media. This essay considers the artwork’s unlikely trespass into, and inextricability from, the then-young medium of television, which itself radically refigured space and experience in the period. Study for an End of the World No. 2, indeed, mirrored the growing impossibility of potential detachment, or autonomy, in a society ever more enveloped by various circuitry and grappling with the unsettling implications of an unprecedented haziness between here and there, between event and “pseudo-event,” between news and entertainment. As such, it holds renewed relevance to our own moment, marked as it is by accelerated entrapment within various entangled networks of late capitalism and when the lines between real versus fake news, AI versus human-generated content, and the public versus private spheres are thus ever more difficult to discern.
Keywords: Tinguely, television, atomic test, pseudo-event, spectacle, mediation, desert, spatiotemporal relations, Nevada Test Site, 1960s.
2. Radu Lilea
From culture war to war on arts. Cultural policies and censorship on visual arts in Brazil between 2016 and 2022
Studies in Visual Arts and Communication – an international journal / June 2025 12(1)
ABSTRACT
This article provides a comprehensive overview of the evolution of Brazilian cultural policies from 2003 to 2022, particularly focusing on the administrations of Michel Temer and Jair Bolsonaro. The radical neoconservative changes in cultural policies enacted between 2016 and 2022 provide a framework for examining the resurgence of free speech suppression, illustrated here by the case of visual arts. They emerged as a key battleground in the cultural war between progressivism and neoconservatism and a prime target for censorship when addressing certain “sensitive” topics involving LGBTQ matters, depictions of nudity, the incorporation of religious symbols in contexts deemed inappropriate, etc. Documented instances of censorship during the Temer and Bolsonaro administrations revealed both overt and more veiled silencing practices imposed by state authorities on artistic freedom. Additionally, there was a participative, “democratized” dimension to censorship, stemming from the involvement of segments of the general public in efforts to undermine and terminate particular art initiatives via social media. At times, the online surge of outrage exerted pressure on art funding and hosting organizations to adopt censorship measures in response to fears of potential public boycotts.
Keywords: Bolsonarism, Brazilian cultural policies, Brazilian visual arts, censorship, culture war, neoconservatism.