Center for Visual Studies

The Center for Visual Studies is an association of scientists and professionals established with the aim of studying the body of science- and theory-related problems which the Anglo-Saxon academic terminology most commonly describes as "visual studies". More ››

Field of Interest

The Center's primary field of interest are medialized visual expressions, be it interpretations of a latest piece of art, an advertising campaign, of TV shows, the aesthetics of the current fashion trend or the trivial cultur. More ››

Methodology and Collaborators

The Center for Visual Studies gathers scientists as well as post-graduate and graduate students who wish to participate in the scientific interpretation of today's visual phenomena. The Centre's members and/or collaborators work on different research projects devised and conducted by the Centre alone or in co-operation with other institutions in Croatia and abroad. More ››

Educational Program

In the framework of its educational program, the Center advocates establishing and conducting an optional course entitled Introduction to Visual Studies. Such a course would give the students a basic insight into a very modern scientific discipline whose importance has been steadily growing in recent years at universities worldwide. More ››

Publishing Program

The publishing program is on the one hand conceived as a logical complement to the optional Visual Studies course, and on the other hand it is an autonomous activity aiming at facilitating the students' easier and faster access to relevant literature on the history and theory of modern art. More ››

International Symposium

The Croatian Writers' Society, the theory, culture and visual arts journal Tvrđa, and the Zagreb Center for Visual Studies are organizing an international interdisciplinary symposium entitled Visual Construction of Culture, to be held at the Mimara Museum in Zagreb on 26 and 27 October 2007 (Friday and Saturday).

Over the past ten-odd years, the interest for the establishment of Visual Culture/Visual Studies as a new interdisciplinary field of scientific study has surpassed the boundaries of contemporary visual arts. As W. J. T. Mitchell, one of the leading theoreticians of visuality and the image in the media age, puts it, the new way in which images are created in the digital age requires a paradigm shift. More ››

Research Project: Visual Culture and New Media

The Center for Visual Studies initiated a research project devoted to the relation between digital technology and culture, i.e. the new communication media and the visual arts. The research will be conducted by experts in art history, history of literature, semioticians, sociologists and media theoreticians.In view of the Croatian tradition of media culture and media art, and taking into account the importance of new digital technologies in its present-day society, we believe that the time has come to undertake a sort of revalorization of the developments that took place in the new media scene over the past twenty years. More ››

Interview: Arthur and Marilouise Kroker

Technologically accelerating at the speed of light, social reality is itself in the process of being consumed by the paradoxes of light-space and light-time. Social history is now astrophysics, which implies that a culture moving at light-speed is not exempt from the perturbations of space travel with its black holes, warp jumps, and unexpected ripples in the spacetime fabric. Like the violent rip in the cultural fabric which occurred post-9/11 in which the universe, while continuing to accelerate technologically, began to curve back to its primal origins in anxiety, distrust, and panic. More ››