Assist. Prof Gian Maria TORE

• Assistant professor in Semiotics and Visual studies
• Expert in Film and Media studies for the BTS Cinéma et audiovisuel [Luxembourg Film & Media School].

(Selection of outputs)

• Revoir. Film, expérience et connaissance [Re-view. Film, experience, and knowledge], Paris, Vrin, 2025. An essay on the vision: the ever-changing experience of a film/work of art and the meticulous gestures of its knowledge, including its demanding account.
• Expérience et explication de l’image à l’ère digitale: Une approche critique et utopique des tableaux [Experiencing and explaining the image in the digital age: A critical and utopian approach to paintings] (with Yves-Marie Visetti), Signata 14, 2023. A long paper on the approach to art images today, in museums, physically, and on screen, computationally.
• ‘Re-’ Répétition et reproduction dans les arts et les médias (co-ed.), Milan, Mimésis, 2021. A voluminous encyclopedic book aiming to take stock of all the phenomena of repetition and reproduction as a key feature of the arts and media, with researchers from several countries and disciplines. Its smaller forerunner: Comprendre la mise en abyme. Arts et médias au second degré [Understanding ‘Mise en Abyme’. Arts and Media Reflexively] (co-ed.), PUR, 2019.
• L’énonciation aujourd’hui. Un concept clé des sciences du langage (co-ed.), Limoges, Lambert-Lucas, 2016. A voluminous encyclopedic book bringing together all the concepts and approaches of the so-called language sciences (Semiotics, Pragmatics, Stylistics, etc.) related to ‘enunciation’.
• La réflexivité : Une question unique, des approches et des phénomènes différents [Reflexivity: A single question, different approaches and phenomena], Signata 4, 2013. A long paper attempting an overview and a review of all that is called, in different disciplines (linguistic, philosophical, artistic, social), ‘reflexive’.

Full list of papers for scientific conferences and research seminars
Full list of scientific publications

(Current courses)

Bachelor
Semiotics/AI: Methods for languages and images
From classic to mainstream: Deconstructing American film
Introducing Aesthetics: Why “it is an artwork”
Film History and Aesthetics
Art and Media studies: The modernity question (A history of the 19^th-21^st centuries)
Culture today: Initiations, discussions, and mediations

Master
Introducing Visual Studies: Understanding images today

Doctoral School
Research in Romance, Media, and Art Studies

BTS ‘Cinéma et Audiovisuel’ [Luxembourg Film & Media School]
Film analysis
Final thesis on films

Full list of courses

• Kseniia Fedorova, « Digital-Scape and Activism of Self-Education », doctoral thesis, co-superv. by Jean Lassègue (EHESS, Paris), FNR grant, 2024-2027.
• Seg Kirakossian, « Vices and Virtues of Material Constraints for Documentary Film Aesthetics: A Comparative Study of Armenian and Luxembourgish Documentary Cinema », doctoral thesis, self-funded, 2023-27.
• Roxanne Loos, post-doctoral research in Digital Art History, ANR-FNR grant, 2024-25.
• Nicolás Marín Bayona, « Le musée virtuel et l’œuvre d’art augmentée », co-superv. by Ralph Dekoninck (Université Catholique de Louvain), ANR-FNR grant, 2021-2024
• Kseniia Fedorova, « Formation of a new anthropological paradigm for the digital age in contemporary French philosophy » (University of Odessa), doctoral fellowship, FNR & UL grant, 2022-23.
• Seong-jae Kim, « Six regards sur la master class de piano : Phénoménologie et sémiotique de la rencontre musicale », co-superv. by Yves-Marie Visetti (EHESS, Paris), FNR grant, 2015-2019.

Thesis’ jury member and preliminary reporter

(Selection)

• Pour une histoire des formes du montage [Towards a History of Editing/Montage Forms]. A fortnightly research seminar at the Sorbonne School of Arts, Paris (since 2021), coordinated with Laurent Le Forestier, José Moure and Vincent Amiel, bringing together Film History, Film Aesthetics and Film Semiotics around this issue whose importance is inversely proportional to the studies devoted to it.
• Augmented Artwork Analysis – Computer-aided interpretation device for art images, funded by ANR for the Université Lyon 2/ENS and FNR for the University of Luxembourg (2021-25). Some thirty persons, from art history and visual semiotics, deep learning and pattern recognition engineering, affordance and interface design; several countries and fine arts museums (Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, Musée National du Luxembourg), to design a device to help analyse paintings in a deeply innovative way.

(Selection)

• The Augmented Artwork, between past and future. Art History, Semiotics, Digital Humanities, a one-week winter school at the Academia Belgica and the Villa Medici in Rome (January 15-19, 2024). Analysing the image encountered in situ (museum, church, palace, etc.) based on a network of other images available digitally. A genuine workshop on alternative Art History, Visual Semiotics and Digital Humanities.
• The ‘Université populaire du cinéma’, a collaboration with the Cinematheque of Luxembourg (since 2010). Annual programs of lectures, screenings and readings designed to provide an introduction to cinema and images in general, based on an essential question that will be covered in full each year (the history of cinema from its origins to the present day; all the elements that make up a film, like shot, editing, sound, etc.; but also all the facets of a film’s style, all the criteria for evaluating a film, all the ethical questions raised by a film, etc.).
• The ‘Forum arts, médias et société’, a collaboration with Casino Luxembourg – Forum of contemporary art (2019-2021). Annual programs of lectures and analyses of works to introduce participants to the arts and media through cross-cutting and societal issues (Understanding the image, Understanding the screen), with international guests and publications of readings.
• Convention UL-Luxembourg Art Week (2019-2020), for a variety of meetings in galleries, schools and universities, always focusing on cross-cutting issues (about the multiple links between art and education).
• Meetings at the Venice Biennale (2015-2016), bringing together artists, cultural mediators and a wide range of audiences, as well as academics, on some formal issues (the detail, the scale).

Full list of academic and public events organised

(Selection)

• Co-founder and -director of Signata. Annales des sémiotiques/Annals of Semiotics, peer-reviewed journal, funded by FNRS (since 2010).
• Co-founder and -director of the semiotic book collection Sigilla, at Presses Universitaires de Liège (since 2012).
• Committee member of .able, image-based journal at the intersection of art, design, and sciences.

(Selection)

• Curations, conferences, talks in museums, cinemas, cultural Institutions…
• Screening & collective debate for the Holocaust Remembrance Day, promoted by the ‘Zentrum fir Politesch Bildung’ [Centre for Political Education of Luxembourg] and the Lux Film Festival, since 2020.
• Jury member of art and film festivals: Lux Film Fest (Luxembourg City Film Festival) 2023; Discovery Zone (Luxembourg City Film Festival), 2013; D’Konschtkëscht (Festival de l’art vidéo de la Grande Région), 2012; CinEast (Central and Eastern European Film Festival) 2010 and 2011.
• Jury member of research and creation residency at the Academia Belgica à Rome, supported by the Cultural National Fund of Luxembourg, 2019-2020.

Full list of lectures for Art & Culture centres, pieces on Arts & Films

• Visiting professor in Film Semiotics at the Université de Bordeaux (MICA – Laboratoire Médiations, Informations, Communication, Arts) in 2014.
• Visiting researcher in Semiotics of Media at the Università IULM di Milano (Facoltà di Comunicazione) in 2009.
• Visiting PhD researcher at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM, Interdisciplinary Center « Le soi et l’autre », lead by P. Ouellet) in 2005.
• French regional grant for doctoral thesis, 2002-2007.

• Senior lecturer in Media Studies at the University of Luxembourg (2011-2018).
• Lecturer in Semiotics of Arts at the University of Metz (2009-2011).
• Postdoc in Visual Semiotics at the University of Luxembourg (2008-2011).
• PhD thesis in ‘Sciences du Langage’ [Linguistics & Semiotics]: « Expérience et figuration au cinéma. Pour une sémiotique audiovisuelle », University of Limoges, superv. by J. Fontanille, discussed with P. Fabbri, D. Chateau, F. Jost (2007). An updated overview on film analysis, comparing the semiotic approach to others, for the study of different issues related to different corpus sizes – image, sequence, whole film, several films.
• ‘DEA’ [Master] in Semiotics & Cultural Studies, thesis: « Notes pour une poétique audiovisuelle dans Pickpocket de Robert Bresson », University of Limoges (2003).
• Master in Communication & Media Studies, thesis on the issue of fashion, especially related to visual styles, University of Bologna (2002).
• High school diploma in Classical Studies in Bologna (1996).