Critical Visualities and New Cultural Narratives in the Postdigital Era

2025-04-14

Coordinators: 

Dr Luis Rodrigo Martín, University of Valladolid.Dr Almudena Barrientos-Baez, Complutense University of Madrid.Dr Joan Francesc Fondevilla, University of Girona.

At present, we are witnessing a profound reconfiguration of the ways in which we see, represent, and narrate the world. Images—in all their forms, formats, and platforms—have become central axes in the construction of meaning within contemporary societies. From digital environments to urban spaces, from museums to social media, visualities not only reflect realities but also produce, contest, and transform them.

The so-called postdigital era, characterised by the constant entwinement of the physical and the digital, has opened up new possibilities for the creation, circulation, and reappropriation of images. Within this context, visual narratives are not neutral: they are imbued with ideology, emotion, memory, and power. They challenge us as social subjects, citizens, consumers, and embodied beings in relation to others. Through them, narratives are constructed around war, gender, success, nationhood, marginality, or technology—often naturalised within media, artistic, and institutional discourses.

This special issue stems from a critical intention: to examine how these visualities operate across diverse symbolic territories, from political campaigns to audiovisual true crime; from the representation of women in precarious labour sectors to emerging forms of feminist or anti-racist visual activism; from inclusive museographic strategies to the cultural regeneration of public space through urban art.

In this context, Visual Review launches a call for rigorous, original, and cross-cutting research articles that explore new visual narratives from a critical, intersectional, and situated perspective. We seek to foster a space for dialogue among disciplines such as visual studies, communication, cultural sociology, gender studies, philosophy, art, visual anthropology, and urban studies, among others.

Moreover, we aim for this monograph to serve as a platform to highlight research—both theoretical and applied—that contributes to understanding the role of images in shaping contemporary cultures, with particular attention to the tensions between representation and power, aesthetics and politics, technology and subjectivity.

Suggested Thematic Lines

  • Visuality, conflict, and social media: mediated representation of wars, resistance, and digital propaganda.

  • Gender and identity in urban, digital, and artistic visual culture.

  • Audiovisual heritage and memory narratives in institutional or community contexts.

  • Extended realities (VR/AR/ER) in contemporary art and cultural conservation.

  • Communication strategies in 21st-century museums and digital platforms.

  • Street art and urban regeneration: aesthetic, political, and territorial practices.

  • Inequality and exclusion in the creative industries: events, performances, and governance.

  • Audio description and accessibility in museums: case studies and normative proposals.

  • Critical visual culture: manga, comics, and alternative gender-based narratives.

  • The metaphysics of the visual in digital environments: philosophy, networks, and existence.

Keywords

Visual culture · Representation · Gender · Social media · Virtual reality · Heritage · Strategic communication · Urban art · Museography · Digital narratives · Inclusion · Critical visuality · Cultural studies · Philosophy of technology

Deadline for submission: 01/08/2025