Call for Essays
English version
#10
"Mythology of the Visual Monstrous.
From the Ghost of LouisXVI to Bombardiro Crocodilo"
edited by Alberto Abruzzese e Alfonso Amendola
The current state of images is being radically shaken by the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI), which opens unprecedented scenarios and activates transformations in the creation, reception, and distribution of the visual sphere so deep that they mark an epochal turn.
The web world has promptly given tangible expression to this revolution through a wide production of videos, photographs, and animations (many of which fall under the broad umbrella of memes), created with the help of creative artificial intelligence, or Generative AI. Enthusiastically embraced by the public, it has become a trending phenomenon with viral circulation across social media.
The images proposed by Italian Brain Rot, with their variety of surreal characters created by hybridizing animals and objects (such as Bombardiro Crocodilo, which fuses a bomber aircraft with a crocodile’s snout), have become emblematic of this contemporary cultural trend shaped by the new frontier of post-photographic (Fontcuberta), algorithmic (Eugeni), and machinic (Virilio) imagery. The Brain Rot images are symbolic icons because they underscore the centrality of the "monster" in the images produced by AI.
The viral spread of AI-generated images reveals, with striking clarity, the intention to create imaginary realities (Lévy) marked by grotesque, fantastic, magical elements, iconic expressions that distort reality to evoke the uncanny and the unsettling. From the outset,
AI-generated imagery has appeared under the guise of monstrosity: through the fusion of realism with surreal distortion on one hand, and on the other, through the ability to produce a sprawling parade of deformed figures that have taken over the web.
This centrality of the monster plays a crucial role and, in fact, constitutes a recurring topos each time an innovation enters the visual field.
We can trace a constellation of ghostly figures with the introduction of the magic lantern by Athanasius Kircher in 1675 (an improvement upon what Giovanni de Fontana described in the early 1400s and Giovanni Battista della Porta at the end of the 1500s); followed by the horror emphasis of Johann Georg Schröpfer during his mid-18th-century séances; and culminating in the terrifying spectacles of Étienne Gaspard Robertson’s Phantasmagoria at the end of the 18th century—shows that were shut down out of fear they might conjure the ghost of Louis XVI (Casetti) –; then came photography, with its morbid documentation of the dead—real or imagined—like the famous Autoportrait en noyé by Hippolyte Bayard in 1840 (Rabbito), as well as the freaks, spirit photography, and the grotesque, sulfurous cinema of early film, exemplified by the works of Georges Méliès; the dreamlike Fantasmagorie by Émile Cohl in 1908 marks the birth of animation, just as Disney’s 1937 Snow White witch introduces cartoons into the feature film format. The ferocious twin lions of Arch Oboler’s Bwana Devil (1952) announce the arrival of 3-D cinema, while CGI appears for the first time in Michael Crichton’s Westworld (1973), offering the subjective view of the mad robot performed by Yul Brynner. A few years later, the world of videogames emerged, opened by the alien invasion of Space Invaders, created by Tomohiro Nishikado in 1978.
Yet it is with the advent of digital technology and the Web that the production of monstrous imagery has exploded, inaugurating a new phase in the technological-visual field. We can describe this change by quoting Jung: it is no longer the soul but rather the imago and the machina, in contact with the unconscious, that now relate to the collective of the dead.
Jonathan Galindo, Huggy Wuggy, Slender Man, and Momo are the monstrous faces of this iconic turn and symbolic figures of innovation manifested through grotesque, destabilizing forms.
The constellation of monsters forms a new imaginary of visual reality, the result of a mythopoiesis through which to interpret technological research (Morin), a pathway for increasingly delegating image-making to machines (Colombo). This new mythology, encapsulated in the monstrous dimension that inaugurates the new visual age, is notably addressed to the childhood word, using its registers and grammar to fulfill an explanatory and educational function (Abruzzese) through the playful and morbid allure of the deformed.
The new Call for Essays for VCS – Visual Culture Studies aims to welcome studies that develop along the lines of analysis proposed here, with the goal of highlighting the role of monstrosity in visual culture, especially during complex and fertile moments of apparatus and linguistic innovation.
Contributions may be developed from various disciplinary perspectives. Key topics for focus include:
- the monstrous dimension in relation to technological and visual evolution;
- the role of contemporary mythology in interpreting cultural phenomena;
- deformation as a tool for analyzing visual culture;
- the phenomenology of devices in relation to the imaginary;
- the uses and meanings of fear-inducing aesthetics;
- archaeological media approaches that uncover specific cases illuminating the present condition;
- the role of terror in spectatorship and new forms of audiovisual experience;
- urban legends and social cases in relation to the visual sphere.
Bibliographical references
- Abruzzese A., L’utopia dell’immagine, in ID., Forme estetiche e società di massa. Arte e pubblico nell'età del capitalismo, Marsilio, Venezia 2001.
- Abruzzese A., La grande scimmia. Mostri, vampiri, automi, mutanti. L'immaginario collettivo dalla letteratura al cinema e all'informazione, Luca Sossella Editore, Roma 2008.
- Augé M., Chi è dunque l’altro?, Raffaello Cortina, Milano 2019.
- Braidotti R., Madri, mostre e macchine, a cura di Anna Maria Crispino, Castelvecchi, Roma 2021.
- Caronia A., Dal cyborg al postumano. Biopolitica del corpo artificiale, Meltemi, Milano 2020.
- Casetti F., Schermare le paure. I media tra proiezione e protezione, Bompiani, Milano 2023.
- Cometa M., Paleoestetica. Alle origini della cultura visuale, Raffaello Cortina, Milano 2024.
- Colombo F., Ombre sintetiche. Saggio di teoria dell'immagine elettronica, Liguori, Napoli 1990.
- Eco U., Il nostro mostro quotidiano, in ID., Apocalittici e integrati, Bompiani, Milano 1987.
- Eugeni R., La condizione postmediale, Media, linguaggi e narrazioni, Morcelliana Scholé, Brescia 2015.
- Eugeni R., Capitale algoritmico. Cinque dispositivi postmediali (più uno) , Morcelliana Scholé, Brescia 2021.
- Fontcuberta J., La furia delle immagini. Note sulla postfotografia, Einaudi, Milano 2018.
- Foucault M., Gli anormali. Corso al Collége de France (1974-1975), a cura di V. Marchetti e A. Salomoni, Feltrinelli, Milano 2000.
- Freud S., Il perturbante, in Saggi sull’arte, la letteratura e il linguaggio, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 1991.
- Haraway D., Le promesse dei mostri. Una politica rigeneratrice per l’alterità
inappropriata, DeriveApprodi, Roma 2019.
- Jung C. G., Un mito moderno. Le cose che si vedono in cielo, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 1992.
- Lacan J., Il seminario. Libro XI: I quattro concetti fondamentali della psicoanalisi, a cura di A. Di Ciaccia, Einaudi, 2003.
- Lévy P., Il virtuale. La rivoluzione digitale e l'umano, Meltemi, Milano 2023.
- Lyotard, J.-F, , L’inumano. Divagazioni sul tempo, a cura di E. Raimondi, F. Ferrari, Lanfranchi editore, Milano 2001.
- Morin E., Lo spirito del tempo, a cura di A. Rabbito, Meltemi, Milano 2017.
- Ortoleva P., Il secolo dei media. Riti, abitudini, mitologie, Il Saggiatore, Milano 2009.
- Poggi, S., La vera storia della regina di Biancaneve. Dalla Selva Turingia a Hollywood, Raffaello Cortina, Milano 2007.
- Rabbito A., L’illusione e l’inganno. Dal Barocco al cinema, Bonanno, Roma-Acireale 2010.
- Remotti F., Fare umanità. I drammi dell’antropo-poiesi, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2013.
- Stiegler B., La colpa di Epimeteo. La tecnica e il tempo vol. 1, Luiss University Press, Roma 2023.
- Virilio P., La macchina che vede, SugarCo, Milano 1988.
- Weinstock J. A. (edited by), The Monster Theory Reader, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 2020.
Operational guidelines:
Researchers interested in contributing are invited to submit a proposal no later than June 27, 2025. The proposal should be approximately 300 words in length (including a brief bibliography), accompanied by a 100-words bio.
All materials and correspondence related to the publication should be sent to the editors’ and the journal’s email addresses:
Those who submit a proposal will receive a response by July 1, 2025, and, if accepted, will be expected to send their full contribution by September 1, 2025. Final papers should be between 8,000 and 10,000 words, including notes and bibliography. The editorial guidelines can be consulted and downloaded at: https://vcsmimesis.org/norme-redazionali. Each article must include an abstract of 200 words, 3 to 5 keywords and a bio-bibliographic note about the author(s) of 100 words maximum.
The abstract, keywords, and bio-bibliographic note must be written in both English and Italian. Articles may be written in either English or Italian. They may include images, for which the author(s) must ensure they hold the reproduction rights.
All submissions will undergo double-blind peer review. Referee reports will be returned to authors by October 1, 2025. If revisions are required, authors must submit the revised version by October 27, 2025.
For all matters not specified in this Call for Essays, please refer to the journal’s ethics and editorial policy, available at: https://vcsmimesis.org/norme-etiche