The Visual Culture by Ricardo Campos

Ricardo Campos was the guest on Permanent Seminar of Visual Culture which took place on October 20 afternoon in ICS and that had full house. The CICS-Nova researcher has been studying the graffiti issue and focused his presentation on the concept of Visual Culture, trying to define it and to question some methodologies.

At the beginning of the presentation, Ricardo Campos said that “visual communication is a vast ecosystem” and that his approach to graffiti led him “to question how the city communicates”. According to the researcher, “we have to look at the city as a visual artifact”, which is seen as a “text”, a “speech” that can be translated. According to Ricardo Campos, “this speech is an instrument of power” and, therefore, “is negotiated.” In this context, there are “marginal languages” as in the case of graffiti, which is considered by the researcher as a social construction.

In a conversation about his career as a researcher, Ricardo Campos also said that “today a smartphone is sufficient for field research” and that “the researcher does not have to be a technologist.” Ricardo Campos also spoke in the contrasts between urban and rural, physical and virtual.

The initiative was part of the ‘Passeio project. Platform for Art and Urban Culture’ (based on CECS).

Text: Sofia Gomes

Photos: Vítor de Sousa