Listen here: [audio:May2012/cambre.mp3]

On February 25, Dr. Carolina Cambre was invited to speak at the Toronto Semiotic Circle as part of their monthly lecture series. Her lecture, titled “The Semiotics of Artifice in the Case of Che Guevara’s Face in East Timor,” explores the appropriation of the famous South American revolutionary for use in the resistance movement of East Timor. The Toronto Semiotic Circle press release notes that Dr. Cambre’s lecture

outlines how the performative creates a space of “ethical possibility” through visualizations. This paper combines the work of anthropologist Alfred Gell on radical notions of agency of art and semiotician Roman Jakobson’s introduction of artifice as an aesthetic and intentional sign…Cambre also considers current ideas on the virtual…as a more nuanced way of understanding geopolitical visual practices – especially when mobilized from the grassroots.

Dr. Cambre refers to a video montage at the beginning of her presentation. It can be found here.

The following images accompany the podcast. Listen, view and enjoy!

 

 

 

Dr. Cambre received her doctorate from the Educational Policy Studies department at the University of Alberta. Her dissertation research was titled, The Politics of Face: Manifestation of Che Guevara’s Image and its Renderings, Progeny, and Agency. Currently, she is teaching courses in Mass Media and Advertising for the University of Western Ontario’s Sociology department.