<p>Bunny Rogers, <em>Lady Amalthea (mourning mop)</em>, 2013. Collection of the artist; courtesy Société Berlin, photo by Jasper Spicero</p>
<p>Bunny Rogers, <em>Lady Amalthea (mourning mop)</em>, 2013. Collection of the artist; courtesy Société Berlin, photo by Jasper Spicero</p>

No. 19: Pictures for Children

Managing editors: Katarzyna Bojarska, Paweł Mościcki

Bunny Rogers, Lady Amalthea (mourning mop), 2013. Collection of the artist; courtesy Société Berlin, photo by Jasper Spicero

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.

Table of Contents

Introduction

  1. Images for children

    ”Images for children ”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 19 (2017), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2017.19.538

    Introduction to the 19th issue of the "View" - Images for Children. Managing editors: Katarzyna Bojarska, Paweł Mościcki

    keywords: cuteness; childhood; visual culture; images for children

Close-up

  1. Cuteness

    Sianne Ngai
    Sianne Ngai, ”Cuteness”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 19 (2017), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2017.19.529

    Polish translation of an excerpt of the book Our Aesthetic Categories. Cute, Zany. Interesting (Cambridge,Mass.: Harvard University Press 2012).

    keywords: cuteness; toys; avant-garde; aesthetics; Takashi Murakami

  2. Bunny Rogers. Child's Play

    Natalia Sielewicz
    Natalia Sielewicz, ”Bunny Rogers. Child's Play”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 19 (2017), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2017.19.540

    In her article the author analyses the work of American poet and visual artist Bunny Rogers, referring to the codes of visual and narrative associations that concern the objectification of children and animals by mass culture. Her point of reference is Sianne Ngai's theory as present in "Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting." Using the concept of cuteness as proposed by Ngai, the author discusses the pictorial and literary representations of maturation, love, alienation, depression and pathos that Rogers creates in her heterogeneous work.

    keywords: cuteness; affects; kitsch; contemporary art; Bunny Rogers

  3. Speculative cuteness. Adventures of ideas in Adventure Time

    Grzegorz Czemiel
    Grzegorz Czemiel, ”Speculative cuteness. Adventures of ideas in Adventure Time”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 19 (2017), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2017.19.541

    The article examines Cartoon Network’s popular television series Adventure Time, attempting to demonstrate that the show’s use of cuteness is highly subversive and can be interpreted as an attempt to problematize accepted notions of childishness and maturity. Its cute design may be viewed as a way in which social anxieties of so-called millennials find proper expression. At the same time, it could announce the necessity to develop new sensibilities that would form adequate response to the challenges of the Anthropocene. To conceptualize these issues, the article utilizes philosophical theories of Alfred North Whitehead (speculative philosophy) and Catherine Malabou (brain plasticity).

    keywords: cuteness; plasticity; Alfred North Whitehead; speculation; television

  4. Beautiful Exploitation. Notes on the Un-free Minions

    Justyna Szklarczyk
    Justyna Szklarczyk, ”Beautiful Exploitation. Notes on the Un-free Minions”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 19 (2017), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2017.19.542

    The article is an analysis of film series about Minions, treated as a fairytale representation of the working class. The animated series analyzed is based on such paradoxes as: the visibility of the working class (but on limited principles); the use of a class language and a naturalized inability to promote; the extraction of homosocial desire of Minions and its ban; the presentation of capitalism as a slavery system and its praise. Minions would be a testimony to fear of social change and a late response. The author also seeks to answer the question about the reason why such working class performances are directed to children.

    keywords: cuteness; ideology; class relations; Minions; visual studies

  5. Torture Play: Girls, Women, and Barbie Dolls

    Marcin Kluczykowski
    Marcin Kluczykowski, ”Torture Play: Girls, Women, and Barbie Dolls”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 19 (2017), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2017.19.545

    The article analyses the practice of attacking and torturing Barbie dolls and the artistic representations of these acts. The author briefly presents the history of Mattel's product, drawing attention to the problematic body standards promoted by the dolls, and analyses Mattel's marketing narrative, according to which "everything is possible" in Barbie’s world. The essay also examines point literary, visual and theatrical works, which touch on the subject of violence against Barbie dolls.

    keywords: torture play; dolls; childhood; violence

Panorama

  1. Theweleit in America. The Pocahontas Complex

    Michał Herer
    Michał Herer, ”Theweleit in America. The Pocahontas Complex”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 19 (2017), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2017.19.547

    The text is an effect of philosophical reading of writings belonging to Klaus Thewleit’s cycle: Der Pocahontas Komplex. It helps to extract new meanings and to emphasize the fundamental questions of treason and truth. The story of Pocahontas is an American founding myth. By concealing or justifying the violence, it legitimizes the colonial domination. The counterbalance to this myth turns out to be the treason (understood as an act of breaking with the dominant culture and mixing with the “minoritarian”, in Deleuzian sense), as well as parrhesia (understood, after Foucault, as a courageous truth-telling about the history of violence).

    keywords: Klaus Theweleit; Pocahontas complex; minoritarian; parrhesia

  2. Does anything go in a museum? Questioning modern paidocentrism

    Marta Rakoczy
    Marta Rakoczy, ”Does anything go in a museum? Questioning modern paidocentrism”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 19 (2017), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2017.19.550

    The article focuses on the exhibition of the National Museum in Warsaw The Anything Goes Museum from 2015. The author analyzes the visual dimension of the exhibition, but above all its accompanying discourses, including curatorial texts, reviews and viewers responses, with an emphasis on the dichotomy of adulthood and childhood and an attempt to redefine it. Using the Bruno Latour’s concept of the modern constitution, the author argues that postmodern museum institutions – which are in a state of constant questioning their own status and boundaries and creating new narratives and sensory perceptions around texts, images and materials – are a hostage of modernity, and the child – as a counterpart to antimodern and so-called natural values – is the main hostage of this situation.

    keywords: museum; Bruno Latour; National Museum in Warsaw; childhood; adulthood

Perspectives

  1. Socially Useful Museums: for children and adults

    Aleksandra Janus
    Aleksandra Janus, ”Socially Useful Museums: for children and adults”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 19 (2017), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2017.19.558

    The article presents selected museum activities addressed to children, both in Poland and abroad. It compares the recent and popular exhibitions dedicated to a younger audience in Poland with other examples of museum activities and institutions addressed to children around the world. The examples in question are situated in the context of contemporary museological reflection, especially discussions about the ethical obligations and social responsibility of museums and the audiences' right – regardless their age and socio-cultural background – to include themselves in the process of co-creation of the institution.

    keywords: museum; childhood; ethics; contemporary exhibitions

Viewpoint

  1. Mother

    Katarzyna Bojarska, Paweł Mościcki
    Katarzyna Bojarska, Paweł Mościcki, ”Mother”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 19 (2017), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2017.19.564

    Visual-textual essay devoted to images of mothers, mother-images, motherhood and mothering.

    keywords: motherhood; visual culture; literature; cinema

Snapshots

  1. I would also want to know

    Paweł Mościcki
    Paweł Mościcki, ”I would also want to know”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 19 (2017), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2017.19.566

    Critical review of Polish edition of Walter Benjamin's and Marta Monteiro's, A crazy mixed-up day: Thirty brainteasers book for children.

    keywords: childhood; children books; Walter Benjamin; Marta Monteiro

  2. How They See Us? Transnationality in Polish Cinema

    Krzysztof Świrek
    Krzysztof Świrek, ”How They See Us? Transnationality in Polish Cinema”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 19 (2017), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2017.19.567

    Review of collection of essays entitled Kino polskie jako kino transnarodowe (ed. by S. Jagielski, M. Podsiadło, Kraków 2017, in Polish). A summary of important topics of the collection, as well as strengths and weaknesses of the perspective taken by the authors of the book, in the context of recent discussions on the role of cinema in the construction of national imaginary.

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

  3. DO WGLĄDU

    ”DO WGLĄDU”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 19 (2017), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2017.19.568

    Rekomendowane przez redakcję nowości wydawnicze