Image and transtextuality

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Image and transtextuality
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This enquiry starting grid focuses upon an image
analysis in following a perspective, which
consists of the relation it has to anything it
does not stand for all of the phenomena,
categories or the elements that preceed it and
which fundamentally condition it. From this
angle, the entire registry of the image unveils a
hermeneutical dimension that we shall submit to
the layering idea. So, from this point on we
shall say that a layered image will always be an
impure image, made up of several levels of image,
consisting of multiple semnifications, and
usually having rich historical references.
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1. What is basically the actuality of the matter?

• It is no longer a surprise that
  postmodernity, among its often paradoxal forms
  of cultural manifestation goes espacially towards
  evoking history, reconstructing it after the
  roaring period of the modernist avantgarde, when
  the need for novelty supresses the need for
  historical continuity. That mechanism finds a
  powerful ally in Ihab Hassans conception, one of
  the most important theorist among other names
  such as J.F. Lyotard, Gianni Vattimo etc.

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• The post modern world - as far as the socio
  political project perspective is concerned -
  lives under what Marshal Mc Luhan defined as the
  global village . So it is not at all an
  accident the fact that contemporaneity proves its
  highly developed inclninations toward mixing and
  blending, culturally speaking, for hybrid, be it
  in matters of temporal to-s and fro-s (blending
  cultural past with the present) or the
  intertwining different cultural identities of the
  moment. The ideea of hybrid or mingling is not
  uncommon to our topic, the layerd image assuming
  from the very start such a dimenssion.

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2. What is transtextuality and to what extent
can it be related to the registry of the image? 

• In order for you to get better the idea of
  layerd image we shall bring forward an analysis
  that Gerard Genette applies on literature domain,
  but which is thought as applicable to any other
  research fields. We are talking about analyzing
  transtextuality, notion included in his study
  Palimpsests. La literature de second degree and
  defines it as anything that comes into a direct
  relation or a less obvious, more hidden, with
  other texts. In this respect, transtextuality
  includes all the layring phenomena of a text.

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• Considering both notions, the one of text
  and that of image as a specifically culturally
  and qualitatively charged, we may use the French
  theorist analysis to the image field.
•  

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3. What are the transtextuality subspecies?

• In the mentioned study Gerard Genette
  presents 5 subspecies paratextuality,
  metatextuality, intertextuality, hypertextuality
  and architextuality. Thus we shall squeeze out of
  the analysis upon these five subs also the
  applications they provide, analogically, with the
  visual arts.

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3.1) Paratextuality

• At the text level we can identify it by a
  text auxiliary signs such as titles,
  inter-titles, signatures, illustrations, notes,
  etc. On the image level, the image title, for
  instance, is not a part of it directly, yet, it
  remains related to it such as signature or the
  authors notorious-famous name.

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René Magritte "Ceci n'est pas une pipe"
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3.2) Metatextuality

• At the text level it speaks about the comment
  relation which unites a text to a second one to
  which it refers oftenly on critical terms without
  necessarily quoting it. As for the image level we
  identify those images that took shape out of the
  authors (critics one) need to complete it by
  commenting upon other images or realting his
  comment upon them. Also, without quoting them
  necesarily. Often we can find images that use a
  specific manner of a specific artist into a
  totaly diffrent context.

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Claudio Bravo Before the game
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3.3) Intertextuality

• At the text level it presumes a relation of
  co-presence between two or among several texts
  which actually consists of two texts intertwined.
  A text is present inside the other. It is easily
  noticable in the quotation technique. At the
  image level, the quotation of a visual element
  belonging to a constitutive detail belonging to
  another image is a sign of intertextuality.

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Roberto Camargo La Muerte de Cristo Segun Hans
Holbein
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3.4) Hipertextuality

• At the textual level it is understood as a
  balance between hypotext and hyper text in which
  the latter maintains the structure and even
  several elements of the former alterating it. A
  literary example to illustrate the matter would
  be Daniel Defoe s novel, Robinson Crusoe versus
  Turniers Vendredi ou les Limbes du Pacifique.
  At the image level we recognize the dapres
  theme in which different painters create
  pastiches that allude to other painters works,

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• maintaining the basic structural composition,
  the chromatic or other constitutive elements
  offering new interpretations and conferring them
  different meanings according to the actual
  context thus turning the whole assembly into an
  entire new message.

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• Sandow Birk Dantes Inferno, The gate of Hell

• Gustave Dore Dantes Inferno, The gate of Hell

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• William BlakeDante s Inferno

• Tom Phillips Dante s Inferno

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3.4) Architextuality 

• At the literary level we see it in the both
  abstract and general zone of the genre/species
  which determines the genre of a literary work
  that influences the manner the work finally turns
  out in the end. On the visual level we see this
  subspecies in the visual arts genres painting,
  sculpture, graphics etc , or going further to
  portrayal, equestrian sculpture. Worthy to
  mention is that intermedia genres do reconsider
  in debates the problem of architextuality to the
  extent to wich, for instance, the installation is
  a hybrid genre in which we find remixed and
  redefined other genres such as sculpture or video
  art.

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4. The instalation ARS dantesca combinatoria of
and the concept of transtextuality

• Ars dantesca combinatoria is an
  installation, made by Teofil Ioan Stiop, whose
  constructing is particularly a transtextual
  foramatting one. Here we deal with a space in
  which video art combines to bidimensional image
  presented non/parietal. The resulted images are
  the consequence of a sum of graphical signs that
  belong to the illustrations made for the Divina
  Comedia along the centuries. They are reassembled
  back into the context and cut out , basically
  their existance is constructed on the blanks.

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• Also, the entire structure of the
  installation is founded on the mold of the
  tripartite dantean poem. What it states is it
  shall remain continuously related to the poem as
  well as the illustrations it comes out of. In
  this respect, with the illustrations as paratext
  to the poem(backing the poem), and hypotext to
  the installation images that are hypertext to the
  illustrations, but, yet, paratext, too, to the
  poem. The whole scenery is constructed on the
  rules of transitive archtextuality of the
  installation genre where the advised lecturer in

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• dantean imagery will instantly reckon the
  intertextuality of the presented details. As for
  the message, in order to bring about another
  layer to the fore ones, the installation makes a
  connection between the image graphic hypotext (a
  text unveiling the direct message/ encoded
  message/ beyond direct expressing
  words/image/graphic), the Divina Comedias world
  beyond, and the world beyond, the post hystorical
  world of postmodernity with the purpose of
  invoking a reenchantment to purify. Everything
  goes by through all layred inferno

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• of meannings, through the impure image,
  through the fire. The graphic elements are burned
  in the process with a laser plotter (the mark of
  the highest technology), and impressed by smoke
  technique (the mark of primeval technology).

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