Marie-José Mondzain, in her book Image, Icon, Economy: The Byzantine Origins of the Contemporary Imaginary (2004), holds that all empires need to establish a certain order of the visible. Her thesis is that it was the fathers of the Catholic Church who, very early on, discovered the fundamental solidarity that binds the imaginary to life; they were the first to create a pedagogy and a policy of the visible icon at the service of power, under a broader concept, that of the economy.

Taking this reflection as our starting point, we want to go back over the close link between oikonomia and economy, that is to say, the classical understanding of the economy that implies the day-to-day functional organisation of an order with a view to a material benefit, rethinking the role that images have played in the organisation of everyday life, the perception and sensation that make certain specific exchanges possible.

Following the analyses of Peter Szendy developed in his book The Supermarket of the Visible (2019), we propose to explore this complex relationship between images and capital that make up a whole organisation of the visible, “an innervation”, in the words of Benjamin, adding the complex weave that technique contributes to the fabric of experience: the mediation of image, icon and economy, the image as an artefact of speculative and political potency.

Andrea Soto Calderón, PhD in Philosophy, lecturer in Aesthetics and Theory of Art. She has done research in Valparaíso, Barcelona, Lisbon and Paris. Her research lines are focused on the transformations of the aesthetic experience in contemporary culture, criticism, artistic research, the study of the image and the media, and the relationship between aesthetics and politics.

She has written numerous academic articles and texts for artists’ catalogues. Her recent publications include the book Le travail des images, in collaboration with Jacques Rancière (Les presses du réel, 2019).