Lecture by Dr. Rüdiger Singer in the Auditorium of the Bern University of the Arts

How do political press cartoonists manage to illustrate complex issues, comment on them and provoke emotions, usually in just one image and under high pressure to keep up with the times? The lecture shows that they do not have to reinvent the wheel every day: satirical graphics have been around for half a millennium and press caricatures continue to draw on techniques developed in genres such as the emblem and creatively combine them with those of more recent genres such as comic strips and memes. How can such patterns be made visible and analyzed in terms of their potential impact? The lecture presents two approaches: the rhetorical model of production stages and the annotation of text and image components in a digital research platform. How can these approaches be productively combined with the Bernese models of visual interpretation and rhetorical design analysis? The lecturer is looking forward to the discussion with you!