An Unexpected Influencer. Aby Warburg as a Muse for Contemporary Visual Culture. On-and-offline Book Display and Open Survey

We are witnessing a growing interest in Aby Warburg’s use of images and in the ways he displayed them in original visual narratives. During his life long research he choose visual narratives as the main tool of investigation and explanation of Mediterranean cultures. We believe that inclusion of non academic perspectives within Warburg’s legacy will enhance a wider debate around his (anti) methodology. We are interested in projects involving images, and especially photography, books, displays, graphics, photographic archives and collections, both on and offline.

Through the book(s) on the web #4 is focused on an informal selection of books inspired by or concerned with Warburg’s innovative premises, from groups of publications more related to the theoretical side of the discourse, to authors such as Georges Didi-Huberman on one side and Gerhard Richter and Hans Peter Feldman on the other, to clusters of books chosen both from Leporello’s bookshelves and from our private libraries. The book selection is partly on display both in Leporello and on its web-site, going along with a series of interviews and projects published on Leporello’s blog and on anunexpectedinfluencer instagram account.

An open call will serve as a guide for a selection of works that will be also published on Leporello’s platforms devoted to the project and to widen the book display thanks to your indications.

The call is addressed to all those who use visual language and are interested in all inclusive and fluid methods of visual mounting proces- ses following a-historical and anti hierarchy discourses, adaptability of interpretation/misinterpretation and who are sensitive to social and political uses of images. We are interested in confronting vi- sual projects, whether focused on the origin of art, persistence and recur- rence of visual compositions, strict visual presentation, photo-archives, politics, conflicts.

Download here more details about the project and about Warburg, his practice and use of images and photography, with a focus on his photographs of the Hopi tribe rituals, the BilderAtlas Mmenosyne –Visual Atlas of Memory, and the way books were organized in his library.

Here’s the selected, and in progress, bibliography which is being expanded by your book suggestions as given in the interviews you can read in our blog.