Banal

Abstrakt: Banálnosť môže byť chápaná ako výrazová estetická kategória pôsobiaca prostredníctvom vizuálneho diela. Pôsobenie banálnosti sa vyskytuje ako zámer v mnohých umeleckých realizáciách vizuálnej kultúry 20. storočia. Východiskom práce je predpoklad, že pojem banálnosti v moderne nadobudol obsahy súvisiace so životom každodennosti a fenoménom masovej kultúry. Cieľom práce je komparácia rôznych prístupov k pojmu banálnosti a diferenciácia podôb participácie banálnosti na modernom a postmodernom umeleckom prejave. Interpretácia banálnosti je realizovaná na základe signifikantných koncepcií v oblastiach umeleckej kritiky, teórie umenia a estetiky.

Kľúčové slová: banálnosť, estetická kategória, výrazová kategória, frázovitosť, každodennosť, repetícia, vizuálne umenie, konceptualizmus, Nová figurácia, nízke umenie.

Abstract: Banality could be perceived as an expressive aesthetic category appealing via visual artwork. The effect of banality emerges as an intention in various artistic realisations of the 20th century visual culture. Basis of the paper is assumption that concept of the banality in modernity acquired contents related to everyday life and mass culture phenomenon. Aim of the paper is comparison of various attitudes to the concept of banality and differentiation of participation forms of banality in modern and postmodern artistic expression. Interpretation of banality is carried out on the basis of significant conceptions in the fields of art criticism, art theory and aesthetics.

The mass media in the form of advertising is extensively employed in the process of nation-building in Malaysia. Advertising has been used as an important tool for educating the public about State issues, ensuring diverse cultures are equally represented and the multicultural values are
emphasized to the fullest. The objective of the present study is to investigate how outdoor advertising, particularly billboards, promotes the language, social identity, and multicultural values of Malaysian
society for nation-building. In Malaysia, the extensive use of advertisements has been argued as one of the most powerful mechanisms to enhance Malaysian identity, foster interactions and thus
contribute to the process of nation-building even though it is portrayed in a banal and routine way. To achieve its objective, this paper utilizes semiotic methodology to examine 11 billboards to understand the relationships between texts and visuals that communicate messages to the public. The findings revealed that the billboards do not only communicate pro-social messages, but also reflect the language, social identity and multicultural values of Malaysian society towards nation-building. This study expands the work of outdoor advertising within the Malaysian society and contributes to Semiotic Analysis by examining textual-visual elements of billboards.

This study examines the emergence of YouTube and its content creators as This study examines the emergence of YouTube and its content creators as a major platform for introducing, mediating and interpreting South Korea to a major platform for introducing, mediating and interpreting South Korea to global audiences. By exploring global audiences. By exploring Eat Your Kimchi Eat Your Kimchi (EYK), a YouTube channel based (EYK), a YouTube channel based on content about Korea, this study discusses the novel roles and strategies of on content about Korea, this study discusses the novel roles and strategies of YouTubers as transnational cultural intermediaries, who as white expats continue YouTubers as transnational cultural intermediaries, who as white expats continue to translate and interpret the East (i.e., South Korea) to the West, (i.e., Anglophone to translate and interpret the East (i.e., South Korea) to the West, (i.e., Anglophone audiences). Firstly, EYK employ a strategy of selectively articulating their dual audiences). Firstly, EYK employ a strategy of selectively articulating their dual identity both as amateurs with no academic background or authority, and as identity both as amateurs with no academic background or authority, and as cultural experts based on their hands-on experiences in South Korea. Secondly, cultural experts based on their hands-on experiences in South Korea. Secondly, EYK reproduce the discursive themes of infantilizing and othering South Korea, EYK reproduce the discursive themes of infantilizing and othering South Korea, emphasizing cultural hierarchy, though in a subtle, everyday manner. This emphasizing cultural hierarchy, though in a subtle, everyday manner. This study suggests these discursive strategy and themes as seminal constituents study suggests these discursive strategy and themes as seminal constituents of banal Orientalism that EYK as transnational cultural intermediaries produce of banal Orientalism that EYK as transnational cultural intermediaries produce in the process of introducing Korean society and its people to the globe. By in the process of introducing Korean society and its people to the globe. By highlighting banal Orientalism, which is repeatedly and successfully constructed highlighting banal Orientalism, which is repeatedly and successfully constructed in EYK's discourses, we call attention to the cultural politics of YouTubers as in EYK's discourses, we call attention to the cultural politics of YouTubers as one of the most influential transnational cultural intermediaries for online one of the most influential transnational cultural intermediaries for online representation across countries, their cultures and societies.

Everyday aesthetics inter alia claims: Also outside of art, there is beauty. The existence of such extra-artistic beauty is taken as a given in this branch of aesthetic research; yet the issue it faces is of a methodological kind: How would it be possible to research ordinary beauties without turning them into extraordinary beauties and thus realigning them to art? The present paper proposes the method of speculation as a possible solution. Speculation is argued to be of aid for everyday aesthetics, because taking a speculative stance on reality means to not intervene in it, but to rather take a step back and respectfully narrate the withdrawing from our human perception that certain aspects of reality undertake. As such, speculation is a possibility to master the paradox faced by everyday aesthetics, which consists in engaging without intruding on beauties hiding within the everyday, and hence of preserving while and whilst researching them.

By examining habitual expressions, ordinary units of words and implicit but repetitive ways of representations in the crime reportages in the news coverage, this chapter illustrates that the prevalent discourse of crime reports contributes to the reproduction of misogynistic values and frameworks in South Korea. For this purpose, we examine two interrelated phenomena on reporting car accidents. The first is an exploration of the semantic evolution of the term Kim-yeosa [“Poorly skilled women driver”] while the second is an examination of the responses to traffic accidents, which are full of various hate speech against women. In so doing, we argue that not only conspicuous, contested and volatile debates, but also routine, prosaic, dull and unremarkable depictions can construct a particular structure of antipathy against women, which we refer to as banal misogyny. The idea of banal misogyny highlights the necessity of re-thinking media reportage through the lens of misogyny, as well as the close connection between gender-biased representation in mainstream news media and hate speech against women online. Furthermore, the perspective of banal misogyny allows us to designate the media as a catalyst for generating online hate speech against women

This short paper is an attempt to intersect my reading of Alexander Kremer's key ideas in his article Pragmatists on the Everyday Aesthetic Experience (2020) with my previous thoughts on banality as an aesthetic quality experienced by the modern subject in her everyday life. My contribution tries to interconnect key theoretical and artistic conceptions of banality (as discussed for example by Charles Baudelaire, Hannah Arendt, Marie Darrieussecq, Edward Keinholz) with Shusterman's somaesthetics and subsequently to reveal another possibility of rethinking the relationship between aesthetics and ethics.

Quoique la critique ait unanimement enregistré une évolution essentielle du genre fantastique au XXe siècle, elle peine à s’entendre sur la nature de cette évolution plurielle. Postulant que le fantastique moderne tel qu’il a été circonscrit par Sartre puis Todorov constitue bien un nouvel avatar du genre, l’article se propose de revenir sur leurs analyses pour interroger tout à la fois la singularité positive de cet avatar et le rapport de dépendance et de continuité qu’il entretient malgré tout avec la tradition. Caractérisé par l’absence d’action et l’absence de réaction du protagoniste dans un monde devenu « tout entier bizarre », ce fantastique multiplie les signes précurseurs et les indicateurs génériques déceptifs, déjouant les attentes du lecteur. Devenu seul témoin de l’étrange, ce dernier est ainsi conduit à réduire ces incohérences par l’interprétation, cependant que le texte, par l’activité symbolique déficiente qu’il déploie, tend à lui refuser le statut d’interprète pour rendre l’étrange à sa littéralité singulière. Le fantastique moderne, qui livre son lecteur à l’indéterminé à travers la mise en déroute successive de ses compétences pragmatique, générique et herméneutique, apparaît finalement le moyen pour le texte de synthétiser l’insignifiant dans sa banalité.

The mass media in the form of advertising is extensively employed in the process of nation-building in Malaysia. Advertising has been used as an important tool for educating the public about State issues, ensuring diverse cultures are equally represented and the multicultural values are emphasized to the fullest. The objective of the present study is to investigate how outdoor advertising, particularly billboards, promotes the language, social identity, and multicultural values of Malaysian society for nation-building. In Malaysia, the extensive use of advertisements has been argued as one of the most powerful mechanisms to enhance Malaysian identity, foster interactions and thus contribute to the process of nation-building even though it is portrayed in a banal and routine way. To achieve its objective, this paper utilizes semiotic methodology to examine 11 billboards to understand the relationships between texts and visuals that communicate messages to the public. The findings rev...

It is said that a horizontal line drawn across the center of a canvas is enough to identify an image as a landscape. In the latter half of the twentieth century, a similarly minimal approach was shared by two very different groups of image-makers – some of them working for the English architectural press in the 1950s, others exhibiting as photographic artists in America in the 1970s. Though working decades apart under very different circumstances, both groups were concerned with the way that the concept of landscape was being transformed from a ‘natural’ space into one that was explicitly shaped by human activity.

In 1955, in a special issue of the magazine The Architectural Review, writer Ian Nairn coined the term ‘subtopia’ to describe the banality and isolationism of suburban life. Spreading out unchecked across the countryside, subtopia cloaked the English landscape in an undifferentiated sprawl – an organism with a life of its own, its life-force drawn from the desires of a newly consumer-obsessed middle class.  Nairn’s photographs, and those of many of his contemporaries at The Architectural Review followed a strikingly consistent formula: the bottom half of the image an empty expanse of tarmac, with a scattering of dwellings and a blank sky above.

Twenty years after Nairn’s article appeared, the 1975 New Topographics exhibition put a collection of similarly featureless landscapes before an unsuspecting American public. In image after image of industrial parks, anonymous main streets and housing developments, the gaze is met by empty foregrounds and nondescript architecture – the increasingly ubiquitous infrastructure of the American dream.

Both sets of landscape images failed, quite deliberately, to do what the photograph was conventionally understood to do – to confer upon even the most banal subject matter the status of something more than itself. Though taken at different times and under different circumstances, the subject of these photographs is existential boredom, and boredom is also their mode of reception.