Most image strategies are part of a wider ‘visual culture’ unfolding their political potential by way of the «distribution of the sensible» [52], the «visual construction of the social field» [53] or the creation of a new sense of community through a «global dissemination of images» [54]. Hence, the aesthetic approach to politics today is just as relevant as at the court of Versailles, even though its purpose has changed radically. Aesthetic experience harbours no longer the privileged access to the mystery of the transubstantiation of the sovereign’s body but reveals that it is the process of representation through which political reality comes into existence.

Philipp Jeandrée received his MA in Political Science, Art History and Modern German Literature from the University of Freiburg, Germany in 2009. He is currently a PhD student in the Department of Politics at Goldsmiths, University of London. His interdisciplinary research interests revolve primarily around the interrelationship between political theory and artistic image production. At present, his work focuses on contemporary artistic image strategies addressing conceptual changes in social order in an age of globalisation. Through the analysis of modes of depiction and documentation, he interprets artistic image production not only as an object of study indicating epistemological shifts in political thinking, but rather as a form of enquiry in its own right, opening up alternative forms of representing social phenomena. He argues that visual-aesthetic forms of political thinking can help to reflect the speculative and imaginative dimensions of the production of social meaning which are essential for the understanding of global interdependencies but which are simultaneously beyond the reach of empirical observation.