The turn is apparently the modern way of referring to the
heightened awareness of dimensions and aspects that
were previously neglected. […] It suggests that a
multitude of very different perspectives are possible on the
same subject. It is apparently an enrichment of the act of
seeing, perceiving and processing. Turns (in the plural,
that is) are evidently an indication that something is afoot:
an opening, an expansion, a pluralization of dimensions.
From Schlögel, Karl: “Kartenlesen, Augenarbeit: Über die Fälligkeit des spatial turn in
den Geschichts- und Kulturwissenschaften.” in Was sind Kulturwissenschaften? 13 Antworten.
Ed. Heinz Dieter Kittsteiner. Munich: Fink, 2004. 261–283, p. 265.
Linguistic turn
Interpretive Turn
Performative Turn
Reflexive Turn/Literary Turn
Postcolonial Turn
Translational Turn
Spatial Turn
Iconic Turn/Pictorial Turn
Sensory turn
2010
2017
Bissera V. Pentcheva
Iconic Turn // Sensory turn
The icon was perceived as matter […]As matter,
this object was meant to be physically experienced.
Touch, smell, taste, and sound all contributed to the
experience of ‘seeing’ the portable portrait. Over
the years, this sensory and sensual experience
(aesthesis) of the image has been lost from view in
the scholarship. […]
The icon is in fact a surface that resonates with
sound, wind, light, touch, and smell. This object
thus offers us a glimpse into what vision meant in
Byzantium: a synesthetic experience in which the
whole body is engaged.
B. Pentcheva, “The Performative Icon”, The Art
Bulletin, 88, 4 (2006), pp. 631–655, p. 631.
In its original setting, the icon performed
through its materiality. The radiance of light
reflected from the gilded surfaces, the flicker
of candles and oil lamps placed before the
image, the sweetly fragrant incense, the
sounds of prayer and music, these inundated
all senses. In saturating the material and
sensorial to excess, the experience of the icon
led to a transcendence of this very materiality
and gave access to the intangible, invisible,
and noetic.
B. Pentcheva, “The Performative Icon”, The Art
Bulletin, 88, 4 (2006), pp. 631–655, p. 631.
Alexej Lidov
20212018
Body & senses at the center of the experience