Transatlantic Conversations: This Other Text Between Word and Image

Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Art (IDSVA), in collaboration with The University of Pretoria and the African Center for the Study of the United States, University of the Witwatersrand, invites you to “Transatlantic Conversations: This Other Text Between Word and Image” on March 28, 2025 at 12pm EDT / 6pm SAST. Register here.

“I cannot yet detach myself from the image. I read, I receive (probably, in fact, immediately), a third—evident, erratic, and persistent meaning....As for the other, third meaning, the one which appears ‘as extra,’ as a supplement my intellection cannot quite absorb, a meaning both persistent and fugitive, apparent and evasive, I propose calling it the obtuse meaning.” (Roland Barthes, “The Third Meaning: Notes on Some of Einsenstein’s Stills,” Artforum, January 1973)

Barthes’s notion of the “third meaning” takes image and text in a conjunction through which one becomes the other. This approach might be applied to the uneasy and ever-shifting relationship between “word and image”, which is the central theme of this symposium. It is proposed that participants in the conversation—a “Translatlantic conversation” putting in dialogue artists and scholars from across the American and the African Continents—attend to the materiality of the word-image relationship (or text-work, to use another Barthesian dyad) via Barthes’s “third”—a liminal space of multiple and polyphonic significations, allowing for the emergence of non-verbal content out of its constitutive gap. While considerations of the “text” are often overdetermined, relatively little attention has been paid to the potency of the word. “Text” and “image” may both be visual, but the word is also aural, moving in the direction of poetry, soundscape, and hybrid media.

Speakers
Sean O’Toole is a writer, editor, curator, and occasional literary pamphleteer based in Cape Town. He has published two books, edited three volumes of essays, and written extensively about art, photography, and architecture for various print and online media. His most recent books are the biography Irma Stern: African in Europe—European in Africa (2021) and The Journey: New Positions in African Photography (2020), a New York Times notable art book of 2021. His recent curatorial projects include Photo book! Photo-book! Photobook! (2022) at A4 Arts Foundation and The Objects (2023) at Under Projects, both in Cape Town.

Raél Jero Salley is faculty in the History of Art, Design, and Visual Culture at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), Founding Creative Director of The Space for Creative Black Imagination, Inc., Producer of Making Art History Now (a collaboration between Yale University and La Biennale di Venezia), and Curator of Looking Rights (Johns Hopkins University, supported by the Mellon Foundation). Salley is an internationally recognized advisor, creative, and scholar who makes conceptual art, teaches martial arts, leads yoga sessions, feeds a dog called Biko, waters Gloria’s plants and is Mazie’s grandson. See more at raelsalley.studio.

Moderator
Anthea Buys is an independent researcher, curator, and writer living in South Africa. Her academic work has focused on the intersection of philosophy, art, and literature, and her current curatorial undertaking is a retrospective exhibition of the South African, France-based performance artist Steven Cohen (Iziko South African National Gallery, forthcoming December 2025). She is interested in collective fabulation, North-South relations, ethics, improvisation, and failure. 

About IDSVA
The Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts (IDSVA) is a research-based, low-residency PhD for creative thinkers. As a true nomadic institution, IDSVA does not have a campus. We exist everywhere our students and faculty are. The pioneering curriculum—fusing interactive online education with intensive residencies—allows working art professionals to pursue rigorous advanced scholarship without having to interrupt or abandon their teaching careers, art practice, or other professional responsibilities. The IDSVA PhD in Visual Arts: Philosophy, Aesthetics, and Art Theory takes approximately five years to complete. We offer generous scholarships, and our low-residency format allows students to keep their jobs while working toward their degrees.

We are currently accepting applications for September 2025 enrollment. Inquire today, or contact Molly Davis, Director of Admissions, at mdavis@idsva.edu for more information.