Visualizations of cult

"Visualizations of cult" deals with the strategies of visual representations of cult as well as with concretisations of its visualization, in the perspective of historical and cultural sciences. Cult is understood in a broad sense, describing modes of collective veneration and auratization, in religious, quasi-religious or trivial-profane connections. The focus is on cult practice and experience and their manifestations. The complex theme is treated under the following five aspects: 1. Objects: Staging of cult. This chapter treats objects and phenomena which become cult objects by their presentation or by the manipulation of their perception through the media. The staging can be permanent (e.g.: tools placed like donations at the pedestal of the bust showing the founder of the institute), or it can be a performative act (e.g.: the evaluation of personal belongings by experts in a tv-show that acquired cult status); it might consist of rather spontaneous responses (e.g.: autographs in guest books that ask for comments) or of events that are announced and served by the mass media (e.g.: eclipses of the sun). 2. Subjects: Experiences of cult. Images become images only through the perception by subjects. Their effectiveness depends on their being appropriated and being interpreted by the beholders (e.g.: an open offer of views made by some film producers like Angelopoulos). Images can have various layers, they can refer to long- established traditions and might be highly codified especially if they are relevant for cult. They can be read differently by beholders of different traditions, they might address beholders at different levels or play with different levels (e.g.: images of traditional Jews in iconographic schemes of Christian tradition). Images can also have an effect due to the overwhelming force of their presence, especially in cases of entirely new kinds of visualization which in turn can itself turn into a cult object (e.g. the first moving images in the late 19th century). 3. Cult of persons. The styling of certain persons which aims at veneration is found in all cultures. Due to the richness of sources this process can be traced particularly well for persons of recent times (e.g.: for the Portuguese dictator Salazar). Persons of the past or mythical persons are instrumentalized in order to serve current interests even if this claim hardly survives a critical scrutiny (e.g.: the persons who fought the battle on the Kosovo polje and were worshipped as heroes serve as prototypes for Serbian nationalist in 1989, 600 years after the battle). Self- authored testimony allows a special view on the lived discrepancy between reality and cult figure (e.g.: life and oeuvre of the female painter Stainer-Knittel after whom the Geier Wally, a figure in a novel, was shaped). 4. Spaces of cult. Spaces are places of cult, settings for cult practice and objects of cultic veneration. Spatial dispositions allow and steer cult practice and set it apart from other activities. It is shown how the organization of space can make cults (cult places and cult traditions in their diversity and their idiosyncrasies) visible (e.g.: how the Erechtheum on the Acropolis of Athens visualizes the definition of identity and the claim for autochthony) and how functional structures can be integrated in a system of cultic veneration (e.g.: crosses and inscriptions at Byzantine bridges). In the case of carriers of elaborate image cycles (e.g.: the high altar of Pöggstall in Lower Austria) their placing as well as that of the figures and pictorial elements that serve as bridges to the actual experiences of the beholders can form a sacred complex which creates a stage of action for cult practice. In addition to analyses of structures and decoration of space a praxeological approach is needed in order to connect the physical space with the social one (e.g.: the symbolic order of the churches of Mariahilf and the Votivkirche in Vienna). 5. Manifestations of cult practice. Sacrifices, deposits of durable gifts, foundations, visual represen-tations of cult activities are permanent evidence of cult practice. Images of cult activities may give clues to the performance and the importance of the respective activity and its protagonists and also be conclusive for the mechanism of visual communication (e.g.: the question of the narrativity of scenes of sacrifice in Asia Minor in Roman Imperial times). It is often asked by which intentions the dedicators of votive gifts were guided when they chose their specific gift (e.g.: use of terracotta figurines produced in series for individual purposes and the interpretation of such figurines). The primary function of sacrifices (pleading, thanking) may shift to that of representational purposes of the founders (coins and medals in finds of deposits in foundations and towers in Austria).