<p>Andrzej Wróblewski, <em>Kompozycja-collage nr 1425</em>, nd., courtesy of the Andrzej Wróblewski Foundation.</p>
<p>Andrzej Wróblewski, <em>Kompozycja-collage nr 1425</em>, nd., courtesy of the Andrzej Wróblewski Foundation.</p>

No. 3: Archiving States of Exception

Managing editor: Paweł Mościcki

Andrzej Wróblewski, Kompozycja-collage nr 1425, nd., courtesy of the Andrzej Wróblewski Foundation.

This issue is dedicated to the memory of Allan Sekula (1951-2013)


Table of Contents

Introduction

  1. Archiving States of Exception

    , ” Archiving States of Exception”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 3 (2013), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2013.3.1379

    Introduction to the third issue of "View. Theories and practices of visual culture".

    keywords: state of exception; archive; memory and history; aesthetics and politics; visual culture

Close-up

  1. Archive of the Great War. Strategies of Montage and Reconstruction of Mediated Images of Violence

    Dorota Sajewska
    Dorota Sajewska, ”Archive of the Great War. Strategies of Montage and Reconstruction”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 3 (2013), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2013.3.1224

    Through the analysis of Jean-François Delassus's documentary film 14–18. The Noise and the Fury (2008), as well as the physical and mental condition of a private soldier during the Great War, the author examines two models of constructing historical narratives of this major event - montage and reconstruction. The author also points to the importance of the category of performativity for the understanding of both strategies of memory.

    keywords: body; memory; narration; history; performativity

  2. Cinematic Monument and Archive as Autobiography. Notes on the Gianikians

    Tomasz Szerszeń
    Tomasz Szerszeń, ”Cinematic Monument and Archive as Autobiography. Notes on the”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 3 (2013), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2013.3.1227

    Angela Ricci Lucchi and Yervant Gianikian work with rare archival film materials from the beginnings of cinema, creating film essays about the First World War, the Armenian genocide, colonialism, and the birth of fascism. The work of the Giankinans constitutes a film genealogy of the 20th century, in which the past maintains a relation to the present (and vice versa). Simultaneously, their practice escapes simple classifications and is situated somewhere between filmmaking, visual art and archiving.

    keywords: archive; found footage; Angela Ricci Lucchi; Yervant Gianikian; film essay

  3. Deutschlandbilder. Work of Retrieval

    Iwona Kurz
    Iwona Kurz, ”Deutschlandbilder. Work of Retrieval”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 3 (2013), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2013.3.1229

    The article is an interpretation of Hartmut Bitomsky's and Heiner Mühlenbrock's (1983–1984) Deutschlandbilder. The author analyses the film as an archive of the state of exception, which was constituted by the German state during the times of the Third Reich. Deutschlandbilder is a montage of propaganda films from 1933-1945. The work criticizes the medium of film, while simultaneously showing its power as a tool of describing reality, a tool used not always in accordance with propandist intentions. The author also reflects on Staub (2007), another work of the German documentary film maker, in which he reflects on the film medium itself.

    keywords: film; history; propaganda; nazism; Hartmut Bitomsky; newsreel

  4. Deserts of Suffering, Galaxies of Resistance

    Paweł Mościcki
    Paweł Mościcki, ”Deserts of Suffering, Galaxies of Resistance”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 3 (2013), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2013.3.1230

    The text analyses Patricio Guzman's documentary film Nostalgy for the Light (2010), in which the Chilean director creates a complex symbolic composition connecting a recent political history of Chile - especially the Pinochet regime - with narratives about the Atacama desert and its astronomic observatories. The author tries to whow the meaning of these juxtapositions and present the way in which they are inscribed in the practice of building an archive of political violence.

    keywords: state of exception; archive; recent past; aesthetics and politics; dialectics

  5. Double Bind

    Justyna Lipko-Konieczna
    Justyna Lipko-Konieczna, ”Double Bind”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 3 (2013), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2013.3.1235

    The propaganda film So That Our House Doesn't Burn (dir. Marian Duszyński, 1982) is used by the author to provide a gender analysis of the strategies of representing the opposition by the government in the times of the Polish martial law.

    keywords: martial law; polish cinema; gender studies; Marian Duszyński

  6. Methane

    Georges Didi-Huberman
    Georges Didi-Huberman , ”Methane”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 3 (2013), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2013.3.1266

    The author analyses methane explosions in coal mines and the significance of images as signs of an invisible and approaching catastrophe.

    keywords: visual studies; memory and history; historical disasters; Walter Benjamin; history of mining

  7. The Radiated Photography of Igor Kostin. On the Visual Aspects of the Chernobyl Catastrophe

    Monika Pastuszko
    Monika Pastuszko, ”The Radiated Photography of Igor Kostin. ”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 3 (2013), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2013.3.1268

    Igor Kostin was the first photographer to document the destroyed reactor in Chernobyl. He continued to take photographs of the effects of the explosion. The photosensitive photographic film he used were effected by the same processes that touched the bodies of Chednobyl inhabitants and the body of the photographer himself - they became radiated. The traces of the radiation make themselves visible through white streaks and granulation. The article examines the possibilities and limitations of the photographic medium, the photographic practices and the process of giving meaning to photography.

    keywords: photography; catastrophe; radiation; bio-politics

  8. Image, Space, Revolution: The Arts of Occupation

    W.J.T. Mitchell
    W.J.T. Mitchell , ”Image, Space, Revolution: The Arts of Occupation”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 3 (2013), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2013.3.1270

    Polish translation of the essay "Image, Space, Revolution: The Arts of Occupation", which appeared in Critical Inquiry (Autumn 2012).

    keywords: art and activism; occupy movement; revolution; visual culture; iconography of the protest

Panorama

  1. Re-staging the Avant-garde. Henryk Berlewi’s Return to Abstract Art

    Agata Pietrasik
    Agata Pietrasik, ”Re-staging the Avant-garde. Henryk Berlewi’s Return to Abstract Art”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 3 (2013), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2013.3.1380

    Henryk Berlewi is a seminal figure of the Polish avant-grade whose circuitous artistic trajectory, marked by a rupture with and then return to abstraction, invites us to pose questions regarding the way the legacy of the avant-grade was constructed and at the same time retroactively shaped by the modernism of the 1960s. The text analyses the specific conditions and consequences, on both sides of the Iron Curtain, of Berlewi’s re-emergence as an abstract artist.

    keywords: art; avant-garde; abstraction; modernism; Henryk Berlewi

  2. The Gesture of Realism. Andrzej Wróblewski's Photo-Memory of War

    Katarzyna Bojarska
    Katarzyna Bojarska, ”The Gesture of Realism. Andrzej Wróblewski's Photo-Memory of War”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 3 (2013), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2013.3.1381

    The essay deals wih Andrzej Wróblewski's paintings from 1949, the Execution series and other war paintings and interpretes them in the framework of traumatic memory, realist imperative and relations between photography and painting.

    keywords: realism; polish painting; Andrzej Wróblewski; trauma representations; memory

  3. Sculpture in the Field of Nostalgia and History. Rachel Whiteread's Holocaust Mahnmal

    Aleksandra Ubertowska
    Aleksandra Ubertowska, ”Sculpture in the Field of Nostalgia and History.”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 3 (2013), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2013.3.1276

    The article is an attempt at multisided interpretation of the monument to the Viennese Jews by British artist Rachel Whiteread. This minimalist monument, situated in the centre of Vienna, on the Judenplatz (the former Medival Jewish Qartier) is a cast of the library, a negative of the space, referring to the symbol of the Jews as the People of the Book. The author analyses the semantics of the sculpture-monument in relation to several questions: the work of Whiteread, Rosalind Krauss' sculpture theory and feminist art history.

    keywords: memory; monument; Shoah; Rachel Whiteread; art history

  4. Guy Debord's Cinema

    Giorgio Agamben
    Giorgio Agamben, ”Guy Debord's Cinema”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 3 (2013), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2013.3.1279

    Polish translation of Giorgio Agamben's lecture, in which he analyses Debord's specific cinema project, refering it to the concept of Benjaminian "dialectical image" and his notion of Messianism. Agamben also claims that Debord suceeded in creating an original vision of relationship between cinema and history, later continued by Jean-Luc Godard.

    keywords: Guy Debord; cinema; archive; film essay; cinema and history

  5. Hegel, Haiti and Universal History

    Susan Buck-Morss
    Susan Buck-Morss, ”Hegel, Haiti and Universal History”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 3 (2013), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/20977382

    Excerpt from the Polish translation of the book Hegel, Haiti and Universal History, which will be published by Wydawnictwo Krytyki Politycznej in December 2013.

    keywords: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel; Haiti revolution; history; universalism; postcolonial studies

Perspectives

  1. Fables of Present and Past. Allan Sekula in conversation with Krzysztof Pijarski

    Allan Sekula, Krzysztof Pijarski
    Allan Sekula, Krzysztof Pijarski, ”Fables of Present and Past. ”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 3 (2013), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2013.3.1382

    A conversation with the artist about Polonia and Other Fables (2007-2009) that took place in New York, January 31st, 2010, not long after the opening of the show at the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago.

    keywords: photography; aesthetics and politics; polish history; Allan Sekula

  2. Allan Sekula (1951-2013)

    Terry Smith
    Terry Smith, ”Allan Sekula (1951-2013)”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 3 (2013), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2013.3.1282

    Translated obiturary of Allan Sekula. First published on the "Critical Inquiry" blog.

    keywords: photography; aesthetics and politics; history; Allan Sekula

  3. Love for Emancipation

    Piotr Piotrowski, Katarzyna Bojarska, Adam Mazur, Luiza Nader
    Piotr Piotrowski, Katarzyna Bojarska et al., ”Love for Emancipation”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 3 (2013), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2013.3.1345

    Edited transcript of the discussion with Piotr Piotrowski in the framework of "Methods of the Scholar in the Humanities" realised by a research group "Mistrz" sponsored by the Foundation for Polish Science, under the leadership of prof. Ewa Domańska. Discussion on methodology, stages of intellectual development and the influence of social and historical change for the shape of the research attitude.

    keywords: art; history; criticism; curating; humanities

  4. Images in the "Era of Leaks"

    Joanna Walewska
    Joanna Walewska, ”Images in the "Era of Leaks"”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 3 (2013), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2013.3.1354

    The essay is a commentary on Łukasz Zaremba's article Did the War on Terror also Not Take Place? and Nicholas Mirzoeff's book Watching Babylon.

    keywords: terrorism; images; violence; criticism; visual culture

  5. Power of Images? A Response to Joanna Walewska's essay

    Łukasz Zaremba
    Łukasz Zaremba, ”Power of Images? A Response to Joanna Walewska's essay”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 3 (2013), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2013.3.1364

    A response to a polemical essay by Joanna Walewska, Images in the "Culture of Leaks" ("View" 2013, no 3)

    keywords: terrorism; images; violence; criticism; visual culture

Viewpoint

  1. Histoires de fantômes pour grandes personnes

    Georges Didi-Huberman
    Georges Didi-Huberman , ”Histoires de fantômes pour grandes personnes”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 3 (2013), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2013.3.1384

    Presentation of Ghost Stories for Adults, an exhibition project by Georges Didi-Huberman and Arno Gisinger at Le Fresnoy. Studio national des arts contemporains, 2012.

    keywords: atlas; exposition, dialectical image; lamentation

  2. Ghost Stories for Adults: The Question of (Double) Exposition

    Régis Durand
    Régis Durand, ”Ghost Stories for Adults: The Question of (Double) Exposition”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 3 (2013), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2013.3.1385

    A critical discussion of the exhibition entitled Ghost Stories for Adults, curated by Georges Didi-Hubermana and presented in Le Fresnoy, Studio national des arts contemporains in 2012.

    keywords: atlas; exposition; dialectical image; lamentation

  3. Greetings from Auschwitz

    Paweł Szypulski
    Paweł Szypulski, ”Greetings from Auschwitz”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 3 (2013), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2013.3.1386

    Presentation of a part of Paweł Szypulski's collection entitled Greetings from Auschwitz.

    keywords: postcard; photography; Auschwitz; Shoah; memory

  4. Greetings from Oświęcim

    Iwona Kurz
    Iwona Kurz, ”Greetings from Oświęcim”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 3 (2013), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2013.3.1387

    Essay accompanying the presentation of a part of Paweł Szypulski's collection entitled Greetings from Auschwitz.

    keywords: postcard; photography; Auschwitz; Shoah; memory

Snapshots

  1. Faces of Polish Cinema

    Matylda Szewczyk
    Matylda Szewczyk, ”Faces of Polish Cinema”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 3 (2013), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2013.3.1369

    Review of the book Der Polnische Film. Von seinen Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart, edited by Konrad Klejsa, Schamma Schahadat and Margarete Wach (Schüren, Marburg 2013).

    keywords: polish cinema; history of cinema; history; film studies

  2. A Possible History

    Jakub Socha
    Jakub Socha, ”A Possible History”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 3 (2013), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2013.3.1370

    Review of Tadeusz Lubelski's Historia niebyła kina PRL [An Unrealized History of Film] (Znak, Kraków 2012)

    keywords: history of cinema; People's Republic of Poland; counter-factual histories; polish cinema

  3. Please Don't Wake Me

    Magda Szcześniak
    Magda Szcześniak, ”Please Don't Wake Me”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 3 (2013), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2013.3.1371

    Review of Jonathan Crary's 24/7. Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep (Verso Books, London 2013).

    keywords: capitalism; criticism; work; sleep; Jonathan Crary