AUDIOVISUAL MEDIA IN POST-HUMANIST PERSPECTIVES
edited by prof. Małgorzata Radkiewicz, dr Marta Stańczyk and dr Ewelina Twardoch-Raś. Deadline: 10.04.2025
Reflection on audiovisual media is constantly informed by the perspectives of posthumanist and postanthropocentric research. It includes issues related to the environment, geo- and biospheric processes, and non-human/non-human entities. It concerns narratives, modes of representation and the functioning of the media themselves - their traditions and functions in the era of post-cinema and post-media art. In the proposed thematic issue of “Przegląd Kulturoznawczy”, we would like to take a critical look at, revise and recontextualise the discourses that have emerged in this field. We will consider to what extent they repeat already established patterns of representation and to what extent they introduce or can introduce new research, interpretative and activist directions.
The first set of questions we want to revise is determined by the research done by critical animal studies on the anthropomorphisation of non-human entities in cinema, film zoobiographies and scientific films (medical, biological, natural). Within this reflection, narrative structures, plot patterns, methods of representation, but also manifestations of violence - both symbolic and institutional - will be analysed.
The second area will include issues related to the Anthropocene and climate catastrophe, forcing a re-examination of the view of the plant world, the approach to landscape and environmental spaces with their diverse material elements. Ecological and non-anthropocentric thinking also determines the nature of the non-human history of cinema, as well as ways of understanding creative practices (artistic and activist) and research in relation to non-human entities and categories. Posthumanist and transhumanist narratives also include various experiments in the field of art&science based on artificial intelligence systems, measurement mechanisms (including cybercartography) and speculative design.
The third direction is marked by questions concerning the connections between the human body and technologies, cyberspace and non-human entities, which are translated into the micro-politics of reproduction in the audiovisual field (hybrid, speculative, digital reproduction, etc.), as well as into various systems and mechanisms of interaction and relationality (from corporate performances to posthumanist design and management).
An important thread connecting these three paths is also determined by the institutional and production dimensions of audiovisual media. These include a posthumanist reflection on the ethical and ecological aspect of the design of mediality, including the problem of machine learning and vision, as well as the popularisation of knowledge.
We propose to focus on the following topics:
- Post- and transhumanist strategies in art & science projects;
- Post-anthropocentric speculative design and interspecies design;
- animal/plant/microorganism art and machine and AI art;
- non-human and more-than-human imaging, visualisation strategies;
- post-anthropocentric cultural heritage and curatorial strategies;
- queer and feminist ecologies;
- images of marine ecology,
- the problem of empathy in stories about non-human animals;
- Strategies of representing animals and interspecies relations in audiovisual media;
- histories of the exploitation of non-human beings in cinema.
The thematic editors of the issue are: prof. dr hab. Małgorzata Radkiewicz, dr Marta Stańczyk and dr Ewelina Twardoch-Raś
Articles are due by 10 April. Please send them obligatory in parallel in two ways: