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February CRC Report – What Colour Means – What Colours Mean
by Sanny Schulte
The Colour Research Colloquium (CRC) in February 2025, titled What Colour Means – What Colours Mean brought together a diverse range of scholars and artists from various disciplines to explore the many ways in which colour interacts with perception, history, media, and identity.
Opening: Analysing Colours from Different Perspectives by Prof. Dr. Susanne Marschall and Dr. Elena Mucciarelli
Susanne Marschall and Elena Mucciarelli, chief editors of our journal, opened our Colloquium by showcasing the interdisciplinary scope of colour research. Marschall introduced her very own Kinematogramm, a comprehensive graphic she compiled during the lockdown to help students and researchers locate their research. During our CRC, Marschall also introduced it as a way to situate colour analysis within film studies—bridging aesthetics, perception, and cognitive effects. The discussion immediately expanded into broader questions: Where does colour reside? In composition, in aesthetics, in preproduction?
Elena Mucciarelli widened the scope, turning our attention to the ritualistic dimensions of colour. She reminded us of Colour Turn’s upcoming call for papers on colour and ritual and invited us to think about the times when colour became a medium or a ritual to communicate – when colour negotiates, claims, and transforms identity and culture. She further invited reflections on how the materiality of a colour affects the ritual practice, making it an active agent – shaping, impacting, and essentially contributing to the ritual as a tool. Dr Jarvis Curry added the aspect of regional effects on colours as rituals while Priscilla Layne suggested the inclusion in this special issue on colour and rituals of geographers and cultural studies before she proceeded with her own talk on colouring disabilities in comics:
Prof. Dr. Priscilla Layne: Colouring Difference: Analyzing the Use of Colour in Miguel Gallardo’s Comics on Disabilities
Priscilla Layne explored Miguel Gallardo‘s comics Maria y yo and Maria cumple 20 años, investigating how colour can mark differences without reinforcing stigmata. Gallardo, whose daughter Maria has autism, uses a limited colour palette – red, black, and white in the first comic and blue, black, and white in the second – to make Maria or himself stand out without pathologizing their difference. The colour scheme shifting from a loud red to a calmer blue in the sequel introduces a new layer of complexity, possibly signifying Maria’s
emotional growth, the change in perception, or a softened, negotiated contrast between Maria, Miguel, and their surroundings.
Layne emphasized the importance of comics written by people with disabilities instead of about them as that often feeds into rigid stereotypes, specifically regarding autism, which is still predominantly represented through white, male, genius, and highly intelligent, socially awkward characters. Layne mentioned that more diverse representations are a fairly recent development.
Crip Time, Space, and Narrative functioned as a key concept in Layne’s analysis – a concept where disabilities are understood as people being disabled by their surroundings that are not meant to accommodate them instead of being disabled themselves. Maria y yo reflects this in its storytelling structure: instead of framing Maria as a diagnosis that needs to be introduced as the very first sentence, the comic eases into her and her father’s world, presenting their reality as given. Gallardo’s artistic choices reflect this: Maria’s speech is written in red and never contained in a speech bubble, indicating her verbal or vocal communication exists differently from other dialogue. That way the comic does not centeron Maria’s ‘difference’ but subtly presents her and her father’s experiences as their natural, lived reality that does not demand explanation. Galardo’s artistic choice of presenting Maria as the only character with colour – red – makes her stand out without layering judgment or ascribing meaning. This last point sparked our discussion: while Gallardo does not assign a specific meaning to the colour red, colour inevitably carries cultural and ideological associations: Is red a mark of energy, passion, or even Maria’s frustration of living in a world that was not designed to accommodate her? The sequel’s shift to blue, Layne offers, could point to that: the shift to blue as a calmer colour, signaling Maria is more settled in her surroundings, found a space and a way to exist with less frustration. The discussion then shifted, does blue signify a more settled emotional state or does it reflect gendered colour coding given that the sequel is also concerned with Gallardo, the father, himself while Maria’s portrayal shifted to a character with broader shoulders and a more androgynous appearance in general.
Derya Tok raised an interesting point regarding the politics of colour representation asking whether there is a specific colour that represents the community, seemingly blue. The discussion then turned to a larger question of how colour is used to signify disability in different visual media with specific attention to who decides the colours that represents marginalized groups. Does colour assign meaning or does meaning assign colour? Layne gave an example: in the US, some children with autism carry teal-coloured pumpkins on
Halloween for trick-or-treating, signaling to home-owners they might be shy, non-verbal or have specific needs; colour functioning as a community identifier and signifier.
Theo Andes then raised a basic, yet crucial question: why even is only Maria’s speech in red, written in all caps and constantly left outside speech bubbles? Is it meant to unsettle, reflect how others perceive Maria as disruptive? Layne suggested this is precisely the strength of Gallardo’s artistic choices: all of these assumptions could be true: it could mark a different kind of communication, one that doesn’t fit the standard frame (or bubble) of a conversation, it could be perceived as disruptive or simply different. This way Maria’s experience is not explained through exposition and pathologized, the visuals visualize Maria’s lived experience, letting her exist simply as she is.
From an artistic point of view, Susanne Marschall asked from what perspective Gallardo’s use of colour stems from. More open-ended questions piled onto the issue, that we could not all explore, and pointed towards the central aspect of Layne’s talk: Colour can challenge and reinforce dominant narratives about disability and can create space for new ways of seeing.
Devinn Hurley: The Colour of Age – Grey as a Cinematic Signifier
Devinn Hurley opened his talk with an observation: “As we age, we grey – not just physically, but in the way we are seen by society and, by extension, in cinema.” As bodies grey, so does their representation—saturation fades, desire is erased, and visibility declines. His analysis of Relic (2020) and The Substance (2024) underscored cinema’s tendency to frame aging as decay. Hurley argues that film mirrors and reinforces this process, where the loss of colour translates into a loss of desirability, agency, visibility, and even personhood. Hurley introduced a perpetual triadic link: youth is sexual, youth is colourful, sexual is colourful – an equation that took a sharp turn towards gender: as the woman’s body greys she becomes undesirable and hence invisible or monstrous. Further examples like Psycho, X or Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? were explored, where an aging female character parasitically clings to a younger woman, seeking to reclaim her lost colour and desirability.
A particularly compelling case study was Elizabeth’s yellow coat in The Substance, a piece of clothing she repeatedly returns to despite otherwise being dressed and framed in mostly neutral tones. The coat symbolizes her attachment to youth, but as Sanny Schulte pointed out, she grows ashamed of wearing it the more the decay progresses. In one particular scene, Elizabeth pulls the coat tightly around herself but hesitates looking at the vibrancy of the coat and ultimately retreats back inside, seeming ashamed. Is she ashamed of cosplaying youth?
Does the coat as an antithetical visual stylistic device suggest all attempts to hold on to vibrancy and youth are futile? The discussion then expanded through a Lacanian perspective introduced by Liana Majeri: if sexuality is not biologically determined but constructed, then the ‚greying‘ of a body does not have to dictate its desirability. This introduced hope—can cinema break free from its ideological obsession with youthful, colourful bodies? The audience recounted cinematic examples of cinema conforming to or attempting to break with this visual trope as Susanne Marschall added an artistic dimension: aging is not just about loss—it is an accumulation. Looking at an elderly face with its many lines is like reading a landscape, she argued, yet society resists seeing it because our aesthetic sensibilities tie beauty to youth, colour, and sexual desire. This linked back to Hurley’s argument: we exile the elderly from both daily life and cinematic representation because no one wants to look at grey that is so often framed as decay.
The discussion touched upon numerous subjects we would have loved to explore more if the time has permitted it:
key figure in Czech New Wave Cinema, is known for her film’s anarchic structure, subversive humor and disruptive visual style. In all these elements colour plays a fundamental role, as Boldor’s analysis showcased.
Susanne Marschall opened the discussion by emphasizing how material colour in these films is, especially in the food: the women in Daisies don’t just consume the food, they consume its colour, essentially transforming eating into an anarchic act of defiance. This led Marschall to a compelling parallel with Zazie Dans le Métro, a French New Wave Film similarly dedicated to linguistic and visual destruction. The element of humor and laughing adds even more to the absurdist energy: the destroying of the sense but also the deconstruction of the nonsense. Katja Schmid then shifted the discussion towards editing, arguing that the colour in Daisies doesn’t just exist in the film but actively disrupts it, supporting the disruptive montage and jump cuts. “There are no rules, “ Schmid observes, “once any rule or continuity is established it’s immediately and anarchically broken apart.” From there the conversation took a conceptual turn with Elena Mucciarelli posing a central question: Can colour itself be ironic? Does Irony exist in colour, or is it only readable through context? How much of the film’s disruptive energy depends on colour? Schmid suggested an experiment: What if AI was used to remove the erratic colour shifts? Would the anarchy of Daisies remain or does its irony depend on colour as a disruptive and destabilizing layer? This would showcase colour’s impact on the film’s disruptive and ironic nature. Marschall thenconnected the films to Ulrike Ottinger, working with colour in a different way but also using them for an ironic undertone. Schmid then noted the interesting thematic shift: while earlier we focused on colour as political or ideological – now we’re investigating colour as ironic: our discussions essentially showcased the dynamic range of colour research: as a tool of representation and also as a tool for disruption, deconstruction, mocking and irony itself.
“From the colour of irony to the colour of iron”, Anita Back says before introducing us to the fine printing process of cyanotype:
Anita Back: Beautiful Blue – a Dive into Cyanotype
Anita Back, an artist and photographer, started working with Cyanotype during the pandemic – by chance -, drawn primarily to its long history as one of the oldest photographic techniques – third to the Daguerrotype and Henry Fox Talbot’s Calotype. Cyanotype, invented in 1842 by John Herschel, was initially developed as a part of broader photographic experimentation but soon found commercial use, specifically in architecture for the creation of blueprints. The process itself is simple yet fascinating: a non-toxic chemical emulsion is applied to paper, fabric, or any other medium, then exposed to the sun (UV light) and developed in water. Cyanotype, like early photographic explorations, was
born from the need to fix an image: a way to preserve fleeting visual impressions, to make them permanent.
Back then traced cyanotype through some of its key figures, namely Annat Atkins, widely regarded as the first female photographer. She produced 13 original books using cyanotype to document, among others, algae and later expanded to feathers and other botanicals. Her work is now fully digitized and accessible in the New York Public Library – also online – and is considered the first photobook in history. Moving on, Back introduced to us Susan Weil, an American Artist born in 1930, deeply inspired by her family’s connection to Cyanotype: her father made blueprints, so she made cyanotypes. Together with Robert Rauschenberg she experimented with the cameraless cyanotype photography technique – most famously lying directly on the paper and creating life-sized prints, essentially drawing with body and light. Back introduces another notable figure: Klara Meinhardt, a German artist born in 1987, using cyanotype on textiles.
Anita Back then turned to her own work, explaining how beginning her experimentation with cyanotype during covid led her to take the in the media overrepresented images of the coronavirus itself everyday and test different exposure methods, playing with emulsion thickness, UV duration and paper types, essentially creating a virus mosaic. Back primarily works with prints, but following the footsteps of Atkins – as, she jokes, everyone who works with cyanotype eventually does – she experimented with algae and fern-based cyanotypes as well. During a residency in Finland, Anita grew restless with the constant blue and decided to push the process further: she layered colours in three separate exposures, each taking a full day, on thick sturdy paper paper that could withstand the process to create multicoloured prints.
David Warburton brought a historical and philosophical perspective into our discussion pointing to cyanotype’s deep historical roots, arguing that blue itself carries agency dating back to the third millennium BCE. Mucciarelli reflects on the nature of Back’s work as research through material practice, emphasizing how deeply cyanotype connects process, expression, history, and form. Katja Schmid noted that Back’s work made her think about the aura of colour, which is increasingly lost in the digital realm. That’s why, Schmid concluded, it’s no surprise that physical printing techniques like cyanotype are having a renaissance today: in a world where image and colour can be endlessly manipulated with a click, artists are once again drawn to processes that demand patience, physicality, and permanence to regain the colour’s aura while digital processes already include various techniques like layering grain or other material effects in desperate search for aura.
Towards a Tentacular Network
Our increasingly rich discussions revealed one common thread: colour is not a solitary concept but a web of interconnections. From representation of disabilities and age, gendered notions, ritualistic materiality of colour, avant-garde disruptions and research as material practice: this CRC proved colour research depends on interdisciplinarity.
Moving forward, the Colour Turn team thanks all participants and proposes another meeting in May, envisioning our CRC as a tentacular network stretching across disciplines, borders, and methodologies. We invite everyone to join our network to foster an increasingly expanding dialogue about colour through all possible accesses.
