Issue cover
43: Science-Fiction Images: Media and Technologies

No. 43: Science-Fiction Images: Media and Technologies

Managing editors: Łukasz Kiełpiński, Piotr Gorliński-Kucik, Jerzy Stachowicz

Krzysztof Nowak, The Flying Car, a Symbol of Distant Future, 2025

This issue was supported by the SWPS University, Warsaw, University of Warsaw, and the program of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage from Culture Promotion Fund - State Purpose Fund.

Table of Contents

Editorial

  1. Science Fiction Images: Media and Technologies

    Piotr Gorliński-Kucik, Jerzy Stachowicz
    Piotr Gorliński-Kucik, Jerzy Stachowicz, ”Science Fiction Images”, Widok. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 43 (2025), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2025.43.3146

    Introductory reflections on the science fiction images and its media in visual culture and beyond.

    keywords: science fiction; speculative fiction; images; media

Close Up

  1. The Possibility of Community? Stories in the World of The Invincible

    Piotr Gorliński-Kucik
    Piotr Gorliński-Kucik, ”The Possibility of Community? ”, Widok. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 43 (2025), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2025.43.3170

    Stanisław Lem's novel Niezwyciężony (1964) has been subjected to several multi-media adaptations, but the most important in terms of its hermeneutic potential seems to be Starward Industries' game The Invincible (2023). Following the walking simulator convention, it emphasises the storyline and the immersion of the player in the created world, thus highlighting the importance of the player's ethical choices. The protagonist will lead to a nuclear attack, or to cooperation between actors exploring the planet Regis III and – as a consequence – to contact with the Alien, the fruit of inanimate evolution. Using the dialectics of imersion and emersion, and the phenomenon of the transfer of experiences (intensifying – according to Jacek Dukaj's concept – at the edge of post-literary habitus), the article attempts to interpret significant modifications in relation to the literary original and the impact on the player.

    keywords: Stanisław Lem; The Invincible; immersion; empathy; video games

  2. Cruelty Squad: Masochist Gaming as a Subversive Practice

    Kacper Lipski
    Kacper Lipski, ”Cruelty Squad: Masochist Gaming as a Subversive Practice”, Widok. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 43 (2025), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2025.43.3172

    The aim of this article is to analyze the video game Cruelty Squad, created by the independent Finnish studio Consumer Softproducts, with the main creator and designer being multimedia artist Ville Kallio. This first-person shooter game presents a capitalist dystopia, in which life processes are no longer constrained by human biology but – thanks to the development of biotechnology – are subordinated solely to the logic of the market and the global capital network. The narrative layer, which caricatures the potential maximization of violence, aligns with the aggressive and kitsch aesthetic, where the visual and sound aspects lead to sensory overload for the player. Using the tools of schizoanalysis and libidinal economy the present analysis of Cruelty Squad focuses on studying the conditions for the existence and functioning of such a project. This method is crucial as it allows for the analysis of the collective unconscious and the desires behind it, while also extracting emancipatory tools that constitute virtual components of this unconscious. This approach to the analysis ultimately demonstrates that creative projects like Cruelty Squad, despite their apparent fatalism, can serve as a mechanism of resistance and potential emancipation, especially in the realm of social imagination and the unconscious.

    keywords: Cruelty Squad; schizoanalysis; perversion; Kafka; subversion; simulacrum

  3. Fashion as Science Fiction?

    Alicja Raciniewska, Piotr Szaradowski
    Alicja Raciniewska, Piotr Szaradowski, ”Fashion as Science Fiction?”, Widok. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 43 (2025), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2025.43.3180

    Analysing the work of fashion designers such as Rick Owens, Yuima Nakazato and Marine Serre, the article presents a nuanced reflection on the relationship between contemporary fashion and science fiction. First, the article focuses on the influence of imagined futures produced in cinema on fashion practice and imaginarium. Reading fashion practices as science fiction, the text then explores the question of creating of future worlds and strategies for surviving planetary catastrophe in contemporary fashion design, presented on catwalks, in promotional images, fashion films and clothing designs, posing the question of the limits of social imagination set by this field of human creativity.

    keywords: science fiction; fashion design; fashion as science fiction; world-building/worlding

Panorama

  1. Virtual Investigations, or Visions of Future Detective Work in Polish Video Games "Observer", "Cyberpunk 2077" and "Nobody Wants to Die"

    Marcin M. Chojnacki
    Marcin M. Chojnacki, ”Virtual Investigations”, Widok. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 43 (2025), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2025.43.3175

    The article explores the visions of future detective work in selected Polish cyberpunk video games. The author pays special attention to the tools used by the characters and how they affect the game’s interface and visuals. The aim of the analyses is to identify similarities and differences between the futuristic investigative tools fromObserver,  Cyberpunk 2077 and Nobody Wants to Die, but also to indicate their impact on the narrative process and the course of the gameplay.

    keywords: cyberpunk; video games; interface; perspective; graphic design

  2. Correspondence of the Arts in the Post-Literate Era. Jacek Dukaj's Thinking About Art.

    Weronika Nawrocka
    Weronika Nawrocka, ”Correspondence of the Arts in the Post-Literate Era”, Widok. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 43 (2025), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2025.43.3182

    Jacek Dukaj’s works, both fiction and essays, reflect a vision of post-literacy, focusing on how future societies will experience art and culture. In his translation of Heart of Darkness and his essays, he introduces the idea of “post-literate thinking,” where sensory deprivation and intensified experience will replace traditional narrative forms. Works like Po piśmie and Linia oporu explore this, anticipating a shift to virtual realities, where experience is immediate and non-verbal. Katedra, inspired by Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia, illustrates the fusion of sensory elements and their transformation into immersive experiences. Dukaj’s work is a bridge between Romantic ideas of art’s emotional power and futuristic explorations of VR, presenting a vision where multiple arts converge, allowing for deep, direct engagement with the world and self. His stories reflect the potential changes in perception and communication in a post-literate society.

    keywords: Jacek Dukaj; romanticism; correspondence of the arts; future; post-literacy

  3. The Visual Economy of Reaper Drones from a Critical Perspective

    Paulina Dudzińska
    Paulina Dudzińska, ”The Visual Economy of Reaper Drones from a Critical Perspective”, Widok. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 43 (2025), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2025.43.3204

    The article undertakes a critical reflection on the visual aspects of combat drones, focusing on the MQ9 Reaper. The author explores predominantly their usage by US forces in targeted killing practices to problematize the status of these apparatus as a media technology and inquire about the mechanisms of power over the bodies that become the targets of their perception. She is particularly interested in signature attacks, in which the target is selected based on activity data and metadata. The author draws on a Foucaultian framework conceptualizing visuality in economic terms, and on the concept of kulturtechniken (cultural techniques) and the so called german media theory in my material-symbolic analysis of drones as techno-perceptual systems. The critical and normative dimension of my reflection is situated in critical theory’s tradition of questioning techno-rational instrumentality.

    keywords: drones; pattern recognition; automation; visual economy; terrorism

Viewpoint

  1. Eclipse 2.0

    Magda Szpecht, Dominika Janicka
    Magda Szpecht, Dominika Janicka, ”Eclipse 2.0”, Widok. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 43 (2025), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2025.43.3189

    This project is a speculative vision of repurposing Eclipse, a superyacht owned by Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich. The vessel which in reality avoided sanctions and seizure, is imagined by Szpecht and Janicka as a tool for compensation and remedy of some of the war traumas suffered by Ukrainians.

    keywords: sanctions; war in Ukraine; artivism; Roman Abramovich; oligarchy; yacht

  2. The Benefits of Imagination: On "Eclipse 2.0" by Magda Szpecht and Dominika Janicka

    Tytus Szabelski-Różniak
    Tytus Szabelski-Różniak, ”The Benefits of Imagination”, Widok. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 43 (2025), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2025.43.3188

    The text contextualizes Magda Szpecht and Dominika Janicka’s project Eclipse 2.0, presented in this issue of Widok. It gives background information regarding sanctions imposed on Russian oligarchs after the invasion on Ukraine in February 2022, the phenomenon of superyachts’ popularity among the ultrarich, and combines Szpecht and Janicka’s work with other speculative artistic projects.

    keywords: sanctions; war in Ukraine; artivism; Roman Abramovich; oligarchy; yacht

  3. The World of Futuro Darko: The Future and Technologies of Communist Poland after a Global Catastrophe

    Krzysztof Nowak
    Krzysztof Nowak, ”The World of Futuro Darko”, Widok. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 43 (2025), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2025.43.3192

    The presentation intoduces the Futuro Darko universe as an original vision of "PRL-punk," in which a post-apocalyptic America is dominated by Polish technical thought (with corporations such as Elwro or Stomil). The author explores the visual power of nostalgia for 20th-century technological aesthetics, transforming it into a cohesive transmedia project; he deconstructs the relationship between analog heritage and digital craft, demonstrating how archival brochures and company catalogs serve as the foundation for a new visual mythology.

    keywords: PRL-punk; retrofuturism; transmediality, visual culture, post-apocalypse

Perspectives

  1. Theatre of Alternative Realities: Michał Kmiecik in conversation with Jerzy Stachowicz

    Jerzy Stachowicz, Michał Kmiecik
    Jerzy Stachowicz, Michał Kmiecik, ”Theatre of Alternative Realities”, Widok. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 43 (2025), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2025.43.3200

    A conversation between scholar of science-fiction and theatre maker on how to understand the relationship between science-fiction and Polish theatre historically and today.

    keywords: theatre; scince-fiction; scene; alternative worlds

Snapshots

  1. Fantastic Growths on Modernism

    Jerzy Stachowicz
    Jerzy Stachowicz, ”Fantastic Growths on Modernism”, Widok. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 43 (2025), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2025.43.3193

    An essay devoted to the monographic exhibition of the Dutch artist Rob Voerman, Entropic Empire. The author situates Voerman’s works within the historical context, emphasizing relationships between architecture, particularly modernist architecture, the visual arts, and science fiction.

    keywords: Modernism; Rob Voerman; art; architecture; SF

  2. The Future Already Arrived? On Yanis Varoufakis' "Technofeudalism"

    Tomasz Rawski
    Tomasz Rawski, ”The Future Already Arrived?”, Widok. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 43 (2025), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2025.43.3195

    This text is a review essay on Yanis Varoufakis's work Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism? The author of the essay contextualizes this work in the debate on the end of capitalism, and then presents the most important concepts—primarily the concept of cloud capital—and the core logic of technofeudalism which distinguishes this formation from capitalism. Next, the author interprets Varoufakis's approach as close to Political Marxism, pointing out that for the Greek economist, the driving force behind the historical dynamics of technofeudalism is class struggle analyzed in two dimensions: intra- and inter-national.

    keywords: technofeudalism; cloud capital; Yanis Varoufakis; class struggle; Political Marxism