By choosing the topic of Images and texts reproduced, the eleventh International Association of Word and Image Studies–conference aims to explore the impact of reproduction/reproducibility on artistic and literary creation, and on the textual and visual constructions of knowledge in the humanities. The conceptions and uses of reproduction have undergone radical changes in the last two centuries with the extension of print practices, photography, and computer techniques. During the Renaissance, the expansion of printing and engraving techniques provoked major turns in the fields of visual and textual cultures in comparison to the practice of copy in the Middle Ages.
To what extent has reproduction/reproducibility (from manuscripts to Ipads, from print to photography) transformed the production of the works, their diffusion and reception? This vast question addresses not only the history of images and texts production (artistic, scientific, religious, and so on) but also historical, theoretical, and methodological aspects of our disciplines. “In principle a work of art has always been reproducible,” according to Walter Benjamin’s famous 1936 essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. This fundamental assertion is worth questioning today. (Philippe Kaenel, University of Lausanne)