"BECOMING AGENS. Synesthetic and Active Processes of Image Reception in the Middle Ages"

While Alfred Gell already emphasised the concept of agency, viewing “art as a system of action intended to change the world”, this special issue of Comunicazioni Sociali. Journal of Media, Performing Arts and Cultural Studies focuses on the interactions of images and material objects intended as “a recurring set of operations, which integrate the most diverse elements into their mode of working, give their components new functions and roles, and assign a new orientation to the whole” (Casetti 2019). This special issue collects papers that address the process of how an image or a material object becomes agens, active and even animated, and on the processes through which a visual device of representation becomes a performative device of multisensory perception.