Visual communicative practices: Towards a more inclusive visual rhetoric?

Themed section on Visual rhetoric and rhetorics of the visual

Abstract

In this conceptual article, I examine the term “visual communicative practices” in order to understand the ways in which it can broaden the research object and concepts of visual rhetoric to offer a contemporary study of any visual object. Although calls for a more audience and reception-focused Visual Studies are not new, when coupled with a need for a decolonised approach and subject matter, the term “visual communicative practices” provides one way of starting to grapple with what these ideas and approaches mean in practice. As an example of how this term could be beneficial, the challenges associated with studying the contextual, lived and experiential visual practice of street art and graffiti are explored. These examples are used since the subject matter and research methodology do not fit entirely into any singular discipline and instead have to employ a more transdisciplinary approach to the visual and the visible. Although at times this approach can present methodological challenges, it opens up and invigorates ideas around how to critically study contemporary and contextually situated visual practices. This is particularly relevant when considering these forms in the “semiotic marketplace” that is South African public space, and the “second-life” of images in the digital realm.