Call for Papers – I.CON – Rivista Internazionale di Teoria e Pratica dell’Immagine

Special Issue: “Origins and Destinies of the Image”
Submission Deadline: September 1, 2025

Accepted languages: Italian, English.
Submissions must be sent to the following email address: tariemma@yahoo.it, in the form of an anonymous .doc or .docx file.
Contributions should be between 15,000 and 40,000 characters (including spaces).

In addition to the manuscript, authors must attach a separate document including:
• an abstract in English (max 150 words)
• three keywords in English
• author information (full name, institutional affiliation, email address)

Selected texts will undergo evaluation through a double-blind peer review process.

For editorial guidelines, please refer to the Chicago Manual of Style:
https://it.bul.sbu.usi.ch/learning/chicago_note

Theme of Issue No. 1: Origins and Destinies of the Image

The question of the image lies at the heart of one of the most fertile and cross-disciplinary theoretical debates of recent decades, in an age marked by visual proliferation, media hybridization, and the transformation of perceptual regimes.

Starting from this context, the first special issue of I.CON – International Journal of Image Theory and Practice aims to explore the archetypal roots and possible futures of the image, adopting an approach that intersects philosophy, anthropology, art history, media studies, performance theory, and contemporary artistic practices.

From the prehistoric origins of representation – from cave paintings to early ritual techniques – the image has emerged as a nexus between gesture and memory, vision and belief, body and sign. Images are not mere surfaces to be deciphered: they act, circulate, transform, reveal. This assumption underlies many of the most significant theoretical inquiries of the 20th and 21st centuries: from Hans Belting’s Bildwissenschaft, which redefined the genealogy of the image through the lens of body and medium, to Horst Bredekamp’s image-acting theory, which conceives images as autonomous agents, to Bruno Latour’s relational and networked thinking, which places the image within circuits of symbolic and social action.

Aby Warburg’s figurative thought opened the way to an understanding of the image as the survival of gesture and pathos, laying the groundwork for a true archaeology of visual memory. Meanwhile, W. J. T. Mitchell has deconstructed images as “living objects” capable of generating desire, conflict, and identity.

Alongside these perspectives, there has been renewed interest in a paleo-aesthetics (Michele Cometa) that investigates the cognitive and evolutionary origins of image-making, as well as in an anthropology of the image, starting from Alfred Gell, which emphasizes the affective and agentic powers of images. Images do not merely represent – they interact, colonize the gaze, perform identities and affections.

In this same vein, contemporary research on digital and algorithmic imagery is expanding into the realm of dark media and automated visuality. Today, the image is no longer (just) icon, but code, interface, simulation, filter, sensorial plug-in.

Based on these references, this issue welcomes theoretical and analytical contributions from across disciplines, reflecting on the power of images over time, their media and dispositifs, their regimes of meaning, and their historical mutations. Contributions that combine art history, media archaeology, film and performance theory, philosophy of technology, and emerging artistic practices (video art, new media, artificial intelligence, NFTs, glitch aesthetics, etc.) are particularly encouraged.

Suggested topics include: