Page - 97 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 01/01

Approaching Religious Symbols in the Public Space | 97www.jrfm.eu 2015, 1/1, 95–101 It is not surprising that different theoretical paradigms can be combined to explore the quite complex relationship between the visibility of religion in contemporary pub- lic spheres that encompasses spaces (in a physical, social and symbolic sense, like cities, common urban ground, places of worship, museums, and temporary installa- tions), public political debates and the broad range of media that characterise the contemporary world. But even when different approaches and theoretical horizons are combined, some aspects remain diffuse. Drawing on this debate, i would like to highlight the following methodological questions: first, what is “religion” in this context? second, how can the meaning- making processes generated by references to religion by visual means be understood from an academic, descriptive perspective? More or less consciously, religion is used in different ways and with various connotations. Religion recurs as a general category in common language for indicating private practices, an issue with a political agenda. It can be an official denomination of a group or used in emic perspective to describe personal belief. And, of course, it is also a scientific term discussed in innumerable aca- demic streams and schools. secularisation and desecularisation theorists are mainly interested in the relationship between religious institutions and their increasing or decreasing influence in society, while the mediatisation approach conceives religion more as a set of symbols and practices that may be associated with religious institu- tions but can be also independent and free from structured religious organisation. Therefore, although all deal with “religion”, they focus on distinct aspects. in this already quite intricate field, broadening the perspective by including visual communi- cation poses further challenges. Images do not generally contain the term “religion”; they operate with visual signs that refer in some ways to religious communities, tradi- tions, knowledge or imaginary. Visual communication has its own logic and needs spe- cific approaches. Meaning-making processes are dynamic and in the tension between production and reception different, even contrasting significances can arise. There- fore, religious images are understood as dynamic processes that encompass produc- tion, representation and multi-layered, sometimes contrasting reception processes.7 In this essay, I delineate possible methodological approaches to the significance of visual religious references within the public sphere by considering the specific case of contemporary art and museums.8 as an example we consider Proposition de détour by Su-Mei Tse from 2008 (fig. 1), which offers a good case study for the interaction of art, museum and religious symbols. In a first step, the work of art is considered as an independent representation that is consistent with itself. it is an industrially printed wool carpet with a diameter of 900 cm and reproduces, in reduced size, the eight central rows of the famous 13th century labyrinth in Chartres cathedral. The reference to that labyrinth is given by the shape 7 see Pezzoli-Olgiati 2015, 251–276. 8 On the relationship between religion and museum see the special issue of Religion in Europe 2011; Bräunlein 2004; Buggeln 2012; Carol 2007.