<p>Mona Vatamanu, Florin Tudor, <em>Production line for the future</em>, installation, 1st Ural Industrial Biennial, Yekaterinburg, 2010, courtesy of the artists.</p>
<p>Mona Vatamanu, Florin Tudor, <em>Production line for the future</em>, installation, 1st Ural Industrial Biennial, Yekaterinburg, 2010, courtesy of the artists.</p>

No. 21: Invisible Labor

Managing editors: Łukasz Zaremba, Agata Zborowska

Mona Vatamanu, Florin Tudor, Production line for the future, installation, 1st Ural Industrial Biennial, Yekaterinburg, 2010, courtesy of the artists.

This issue was supported by the Polish Minister of Science and Higher Education, from the funds of the program for the popularization of scholarship in 2017, and by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage, from the Fund for the Promotion of Culture.

Table of Contents

Introduction

  1. Invisible Labor

    ”Invisible Labor”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 21 (2018), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2018.21.1476

    Editorial to the 21st issue of "View."

Close-up

  1. Conclusions for a Beginning: The Refusal of Work

    Maurizio Lazzarato
    Maurizio Lazzarato, ”Conclusions for a Beginning: The Refusal of Work”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 21 (2018), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2018.21.458

    A translation of a fragment of the book by Maurizio Lazzarato Gouverner par la dette (Les Prairies ordinaires, Paris 2014) published with the permission of the author.

    The text is a call to rethink the concept of work in the conditions of the contemporary capitalist economy.

  2. Freedom From Everything: Freelancers and Mercenaries

    Hito Steyerl
    Hito Steyerl, ”Freedom From Everything: Freelancers and Mercenaries”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 21 (2018), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2018.21.481

    Polish translation of Hito Steyerl's essay Freedom From Everything: Freelancers and Mercenaries, [in:] Wretched of the Screen, Sternberg Press, Berlin 2012.

  3. Extras: Social Media and the Invisible Work of Observing the Other

    Krzysztof Świrek
    Krzysztof Świrek, ”Extras: Social Media and the Invisible Work of Observing the Other”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 21 (2018), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2018.21.1477

    The article is an attempt to show the practice of observing others in contemporary media as a certain work involving both cognitive and affective capacities of individuals. Contemporary media platforms are presented as paradigmatic for the process of "colonising the psyche" by the Capital in late capitalism. Then the author analyses the work character and affective relations produced during the process of observing the other. The relation between the observing and the observed is here presented with the use of the film metaphor. In conclusion, the author comes back to the problem of observing and being visible as elements of reversible interaction, in which the user of contemporary media is entangled.

  4. The Need for Visibility. Working Modes of Contemporary Female Visual Artists

    Karolina Sikorska
    Karolina Sikorska, ”The Need for Visibility. Working Modes of Contemporary Female...”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 21 (2018), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2018.21.1479

    The text examines visibility of  work of female artists in Polish art field. It’s based on my own interviews with professionally active female artists. I try to reconstruct cultural conditions of their work and values set down by art discourse, which is strictly correlated with capitalistic reality. In my analysis I point to work as an operation connected with preparing piece of art, creative process, organizing display etc., but also to practices usually not considered as work – for example – “cultivation of contactness”. Gender has important role to play in these analyses of visibility and transparency of artistic work.

  5. Mierle Laderman Ukeles’ Maintenance and/as (Art) Work

    Andreas Petrossiants
    Andreas Petrossiants, ”Mierle Laderman Ukeles’ Maintenance and/as (Art) Work”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 21 (2018), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2018.21.1481

    Considering the literature on feminist militancy and “domestic labor” of the late 1960s and early 70s from the perspective of Western visual culture, the artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles is undoubtedly a central figure. Surprisingly, however, her works has rarerly been read through the lense of the international Wages for Housework movement. This essay proposes to read Ukeles’ cultural activism and work through the writing and political organizing of Silvia Federici, who also distanced herself from previously dominant and at times sectarian feminisms to articulate a pointedly (post-)autonomist feminism as a political project. The author is trying to grsp and describe the truly radical and imperative position that Ukeles activated, and continues to “maintain.”

  6. The Disappearance of the Working Class from the Cinematic Screen

    Adam Przywara
    Adam Przywara, ”The Disappearance of the Working Class from the Cinematic Screen”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 21 (2018), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2018.21.1482

    This paper is a critical interpretation of selected representations of working class in contemporary art and cinema. The argument mobilises various interpretative frameworks as film studies, Marxist sociology of art and Postcolonial critique in order to approach three works of contemporary video art. Interpreting works of Harun Farocki, Steve McQueen, Yuri Pattison the paper underlines ways in which they elaborate on a shifting visibility of the workers on a cinematic screen. Spanning from the first Lumière Brothers screenings, to images mediated through the internet, the analysis juxtaposes conditions of representation with conditions of labour in various forms of capitalist development.

  7. Images Out of Sight: Some Remarks on Moderating Online Content

    Miłosz Markiewicz
    Miłosz Markiewicz, ”Images Out of Sight: Some Remarks on Moderating Online Content”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 21 (2018), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2018.21.1484

    The article is an attempt to reflect on the issue of content moderation on the Internet, in particular, visual content. The author refers to the book Algorithms of Oppression, in which Safiya Umoja Noble describes oppressive discrimination systems functioning within the network, as well as two narratives describing the work of the so-called content moderators – artistic installation Dark Content and documentary The Cleaners. The author asks about the ways of the existence of a digital image that has been removed from the web, raises the issue of its non-presence, and also reflects on the place of power and supervision in the ontology of digital visuality.

Viewpoint

  1. Agri-Works

    Alicja Rogalska
    Alicja Rogalska, ”Agri-Works”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 21 (2018), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2018.21.2023

    Presentation of several works by Alicja Rogalska from 2015-2018 that are connected with agriculture.

  2. Clay Potatoes

    Monika Borys
    Monika Borys, ”Clay Potatoes”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 21 (2018), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2018.21.1485

    Analysis of artistic practice of Alicja Rogalska (CULTIVATION – the National Polish Festival of Short Agricultural Films, which was held as part of the ArtBoom Festival in Krakow; Agri-Care project and Alien Species, part of Jersey Archives Photographic Archives).

Panorama

  1. Production of Poetry as Immaterial Labor. New Subjectivities and the Possible Worlds of Communism

    Dawid Kujawa
    Dawid Kujawa, ”Production of Poetry as Immaterial Labor. New Subjectivities and ...”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 21 (2018), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2018.21.497

    The article examines writing poetry as immaterial labor - a form of producing subjectivity. Drawing on the theories of Felix Guattari and Michel Foucault, the author traces the politics of the poetry of such authors as Andrzej Szpindler, Piotr Janicki and Miłosz Biedrzycki. The article shows that a schizoanalytic examination of literature allows for pinpointing processes which remain invisible from the perspective of traditional hermeneutic theories.

  2. Boor, Mulatto, Chameleon. Andrzej Lepper as the Visual Class Figure of the Polish Post-socialist Transition

    Marcin Stachowicz
    Marcin Stachowicz, ”Boor, Mulatto, Chameleon. Andrzej Lepper as the Visual Class...”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 21 (2018), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2018.21.503

    Focusing on the visual representations of Andrzej Lepper in Polish liberal media, this article considers visual class stereotypes and the concept of public visuality in post-socialist Poland. The author examines the aesthetic strategies used by liberals to ridicule Lepper and show him as a figure of political immaturity and primitiveness. An important context is also the transformation of Lepper's public image – from plebeian tribune to mainstream politician – and its consequences for the Polish visual field. Moreover, the author considers the potential of Lepper's visual representations from the early 90's as a form of counter-visuality that works especially in the interest of the Polish lower/subaltern classes.

Snapshots

  1. New Geographies of Cooperation

    Magda Roszkowska
    Magda Roszkowska, ”New Geographies of Cooperation”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 21 (2018), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2018.21.1463

    Review of the exhibition Peer-to-Peer. Collective practices in new art, curator: Agnieszka Pindera, Muzeum Sztuki at Łodz, 8 June – 28 October, 2018

  2. The Exercises of Resistance

    Katarzyna Warmuz
    Katarzyna Warmuz, ”The Exercises of Resistance”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 21 (2018), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2018.21.1464

    The article is a review of book Training for Exploitation? Politicising Employability and Reclaiming Education written by Precarious Workers Brigade. The book is a workbook, which contains proposals for workshops and exercises to construct forms of collective resistance to exploitation among young precariats.

  3. Factory Without Walls - Walls without Factory

    Mateusz Filip Tarwacki
    Mateusz Filip Tarwacki, ”Factory Without Walls - Walls without Factory”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 21 (2018), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2018.21.1465

    The essay analysing The Nothing Factory (2017), dir. Pedro Pinho.

  4. The Necessity of a Certain Illusion

    Bartosz Wójcik
    Bartosz Wójcik, ”The Necessity of a Certain Illusion”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 21 (2018), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2018.21.1468

    Review of Krzysztof Świrek's Theories of Ideologies (Warsaw 2018).

  5. Two bodies of Democracy. Politiques de l'iminité by Achille Mbembe

    Dorota Sosnowska
    Dorota Sosnowska, ”Two bodies of Democracy. Politiques de l'iminité by Achille Mbembe”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 21 (2018), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2018.21.1469

    Review of the Polish edition of the Achille Mbembe's book Politiques de l'inimité published together with his essay Necropolitics as Polityka wrogości. Nekropolityka (translated by Urszula Kropiwiec and Katarzyna Bojarska, Karakter, Kraków 2018).