No. 42: Science-Fiction Images: Otherness

Table of Contents

Introduction

1. Science Fiction Images: The Otherness and the Legacy of SF

   Jerzy Stachowicz, Piotr Gorliński-Kucik

   citation
   Jerzy Stachowicz, Piotr Gorliński-Kucik, ”Science-Fiction Images: The Otherness and the Legacy of SF”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 42 (2025), https://www.pismowidok.org/en/archive/42-science-fiction-images-otherness/science-fiction-images-the-otherness-and-the-legacy-of-sf
   abstract

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

   keywords: science fiction; speculative fiction; images; colonialism

Close Up

1. The Colonial Gaze and the Frame of Science-Fiction

   John Rieder

   citation
   John Rieder, ”The Colonial Gaze and the Frame of Science-Fiction”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 42 (2025), https://www.pismowidok.org/pl/archiwum/42-obrazy-fantastycznonaukowe-innosc/kolonialne-spojrzenie-i-ramy-fantastyki-naukowej
   abstract

   Polish translation of the first chapter of the book Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction (2008), one of the most important monographs devoted to the history of colonialism and imperialism in science fiction. The introductory chapter presents the book's main premise: the development of science fiction from the late 18th to the mid-20th century is inextricably linked to the ideology of colonialism and imperialism, as well as the colonial gaze. Understanding the history (and present) of science fiction is impossible without presenting its entanglement in the colonial/imperial discourses of the major European powers. Rieder emphasizes that science fiction not only reflects colonial ideology but also reveals its contradictions and tensions. The author proposes an interpretive framework (the frame of science fiction) in which science fiction is understood not only as a product of the modern imperial imagination but also as a field of its critical analysis.

   keywords: science fiction; colonialism; colonial gaze; imperialism; history

2. "Little Green Men": Early Representations of Aliens

   Agnieszka Haska

   citation
   Agnieszka Haska, ”"Little Green Men": Early Representations of Aliens”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 42 (2025), https://www.pismowidok.org/en/archive/42-science-fiction-images-otherness/little-green-men-early-representations-of-aliens
   abstract

   The article discusses xenological iconography in 19th-century and early 20th-century science fiction literature, with reference to film and press discourses. It explores representations of extraterrestrials as new forms of the natural world (e.g., flora, animals, crystals), the hybridity of beings—featuring both humanoid and animal traits or bodies undergoing evolutionary modifications—as well as colonial associations with terrestrial "otherness" and groups perceived as "savage". The analysis covers various examples of how ideas about life beyond Earth were imagined, along with their cultural contexts—from religious and scientific inspirations, through Europocentric colonial thinking and beliefs in racial and gender superiority, to human-machine hybrids and the dominance of the iconographic type of small gray or green humanoids. The author identifies how different types of visual representations have evolved over time and which ones have proven more enduring in popular culture, remaining present to this day.

   keywords: xenological iconography; 19th and 20th-century science fiction literature; aliens; hybridity of the Alien body; representations of life beyond Earth

3. “Why Use Old Code to Mirror Something New?” Retrofuturism in Queer Science Fiction Film

   Jędrzej Burszta

   citation
   Jędrzej Burszta, ”“Why Use Old Code to Mirror Something New?” ”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 42 (2025), https://www.pismowidok.org/en/archive/42-science-fiction-images-otherness/why-use-old-code-to-mirror-something-new
   abstract

   The article examines the intersection of retrofuturism and queer theory in science fiction film, using The Matrix Resurrections (2021) as a central case study. I argue that retrofuturism, which concerns past visions of the future, has become increasingly prevalent in SF cinema. While often linked to nostalgia and to a broader tendency in late capitalist culture, a queered “retrofuturist impulse” can offer progressive possibilities for speculative cinema. The Matrix Resurrections creatively reinterprets the original trilogy’s retro style and the cyberpunk genre through a queer sensibility. The film critiques nostalgic rehashing of a “future-past” by depicting “old code” as a restrictive loop, while using retrofuturist aesthetics to explore queer themes and politics. I posit that queer retrofuturism can repurpose familiar SF tropes to envision hopeful and progressive futures, demonstrating how “old code” can mirror something new—a queer futurity resurrected from a “lost future.”

   keywords: science fiction film; retrofuturism; queer theory; nostalgia; cyberpunk

4. Revisiting "The Shape of Water": Liberal Escapism and the Fantasy of Working-Class Empathy

   Jagoda Tyczyńska

   citation
   Jagoda Tyczyńska, ”Revisiting "The Shape of Water"”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 42 (2025), https://www.pismowidok.org/en/archive/42-science-fiction-images-otherness/revisiting-the-shape-of-water
   abstract

   This article examines Guillermo del Toro’s "The Shape of Water" as a cinematic response to the political climate of Donald Trump’s first presidency, particularly in its portrayal of working-class empathy and interclass solidarity. By analyzing key scenes and genre conventions, I argue that the film offers a liberal fantasy of reconciliation between the working class and the Other that substitutes the reality of class antagonism for the sake of emotional uplift. "The Shape of Water" reconfigures the monster film trope to offer a moral lesson about tolerance that overlooks the complexities of class and race. In doing so, it reinforces Hollywood’s tradition of symbolic resolution, catering to liberal sensibilities while avoiding engagement with the deeper reasons behind political division. Seen from the perspective of Trump’s second term, the film reveals the limitations of symbolic empathy in addressing enduring social and economic inequalities.

   keywords: working class; fantasy; the Other; empathy; stereotypes; Trump

Panorama

1. "The sun and moon beneath her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars." The film "Arrival" in the context of Marian spirituality

   Piotr Sitarski

   citation
   Piotr Sitarski, ”"The sun and moon beneath her feet..."”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 42 (2025), https://www.pismowidok.org/pl/archiwum/42-obrazy-fantastycznonaukowe-innosc/slonce-i-ksiezyc-pod-jej-stopami
   abstract

   This article analyses Arrival (2016, dir. Denis Villeneuve) as an example of a “paradoxically religious film”, in which spiritual meanings are embedded beneath a seemingly secular science fiction narrative. The author proposes a reading of the film through the lens of Marian spirituality, interpreting the protagonist, Louise Banks, as a figure of the Virgin Mary. Drawing a parallel with the biblical Annunciation, the film depicts a woman’s decision to embrace motherhood despite foreknowledge of future suffering, thereby echoing the logic of Mary’s fiat and the devotional tradition of redemptive suffering. The Marian framework also enables a deeper understanding of the paradox of foreknowledge, suffering and free will. The article situates Arrival within the broader tradition of religious cinema and argues that, while the film appears secular on the surface, it may be more fully understood as a narrative of Revelation when viewed from the perspective of Christian orthodoxy.

   keywords: Arrival; film; religion in science fiction; figure of Mary; Marian spirituality

2. Sweet brain. The visuality of affect in online content about ADHD

   Marek Kawka

   citation
   Marek Kawka, ”Sweet Brain”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 42 (2025), https://www.pismowidok.org/pl/archiwum/42-obrazy-fantastycznonaukowe-innosc/slodki-mozg
   abstract

   Stemming from a larger project of exploring the global Internet culture around ADHD, the article identifies and analyzes the visual figure of the cute brain, often seen in ADHD content. Acting as a visual metaphor for the disorder, the antropomorphic brain is an image of the process of recognizing oneself as a neurochemical, “enbrained” subject, which accompanies diagnosis. Its visual cuteness, a “minor aesthetic category” (Ngai) whose affective conntations have been studied extensively, sets it affective orientation towards a certain understanding of self-care and “disclaiming responsibility” (Svendmann). Ultimately, the cute brain serves as a visual metaphor for more than the disorder, expressing a tension between agency and lack thereof common in contemporary discourses around the mind and subjectivity. The figure’s marked appearance in online content – an apparently “lower class” yet “culturally central” (McNulty) subset of what is available to see on the internet – gives an insight into the implications of commonplace formulations of the mind, “brainhood” and subjectivity, inspired by 20th century medical sciences. ADHD creators and their audiences utilize those formulations, informed both by their experiences and new ideas of neurodiversity. The study is anchored in a theory of affect developed by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick after the psychologist Silvan Tomkins, which reconfigures both “theory” and “affect” as ultimately codependent, affect being a theory of the subject’s relations with the world and itself which in turn influences how theory, in the academic sense, is constructed.

   keywords: ADHD; visual culture; affect; neurodiversity; content; YouTube; subjectivity; brainhood; diagnosis; cuteness

3. ‘Hello, Space? This is Bulgaria speaking.’ The communist space age and its contemporary artistic reinterpretations

   Angelika Niewiadomska

   citation
   Angelika Niewiadomska, ”‘Hello, Space? This is Bulgaria speaking’”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 42 (2025), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2025.42.3112
   abstract

   In the 1950s, a ‘scientific-technological revolution’ began in Bulgaria (then hardly industrialised) under the patronage of Todor Zhivkov. One of the stages in the implementation of this modernisation project was the country's involvement in space exploration. In the first part of this paper, I analyse the fantasies of Bulgarians as a communist, technical and space-faring nation, as well as propaganda images visualising the process of entering a new era – the era of the atom, cybernetics, genetic engineering and space exploration. One of these is the brutalist structure of the Monument House of the Bulgarian Communist Party, commonly associated with a space shuttle or flying saucer. Today, the object is becoming a source of inspiration for the artists I focus on in the second part of the paper. The artists in question create dystopian and futuristic visions, confronting the communist project of technoutopia. They subversively capture its images in order to, through various media (literature, film or photography), pose questions not only about the legacy of the past or the present reality of (post)transformational Bulgaria, but also to make futurological predictions about its future.

   keywords: space; communism; Bulgaria; Monument House of the Bulgarian Communist Party; Buzludzha Monument; dystopia; future

Viewpoint

1. Conceptual Future Tense: The CPK and Its Environs

   Piotr Puldzian Płucienniczak, ZOE (Małgorzata Gurowska, Agata Szydłowska), Kuba Maria Mazurkiewicz, Anna Siekierska, Damien Brailly

   citation
   Piotr Puldzian Płucienniczak, ZOE (Małgorzata Gurowska, Agata Szydłowska) et al., ”Conceptual Future Tense: The CPK and Its Environs”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 42 (2025), https://www.pismowidok.org/en/archive/42-science-fiction-images-otherness/conceptual-future-tense-the-cpk-and-its-environs
   abstract

   A presentation of the artistic research based project “Conceptual Future Tense” that explores the temporal and spatial dimensions of the area surrounding Poland’s planned Central Communication Port (CPK). Using speculative and critical frameworks, the project investigates the Mazovian landscape on the eve of a massive investment. It examines realized and imagined histories, ecological memory, and infrastructural ruins to question the contingent, contested, and ever-shifting nature of large-scale development projects.

2. Hyperlocal artistic research: Baranów/ Central Communication Port

   Kuba Maria Mazurkiewicz

   citation
   Kuba Maria Mazurkiewicz, ”Hyperlocal artistic research: Baranów/ Central Communication Port”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 42 (2025), https://www.pismowidok.org/en/archive/42-science-fiction-images-otherness/hyperlocal-artistic-research-baranow-central-communication-port
   abstract

   Research commentary on the interdisciplinary artistic research project (2021–2025) documenting the Baranów municipality as the site of the future construction of the Central Communication Port (CPK). The text describes how the project team approached the analysis of the relations between human and non-human actors (nature, infrastructure) in the context of the region's modernist transformation into a global transport hub. Using a speculative framework, it includes a reflection on localness in the face of the hyperobject.

   keywords: artistic research; CPK (Central Communiction Port); Baranów; Actor-Network Theory (ANT); infrastructure; hyperobject

3. Polish (Im)mobility: The Visuality of Industrial Semi-peripheries

   Maciej Chojna-Olejniczak, Michał Frąckiewicz, Wojciech Idźkowski , Olga Łukaszewska

   citation
   Maciej Chojna-Olejniczak, Michał Frąckiewicz et al., ”Polish (Im)mobility”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 42 (2025), https://www.pismowidok.org/en/archive/42-science-fiction-images-otherness/polish-immobility
   abstract

   The increasing presence of visuals in popular media leads us to reflect on the role they play in the current system. The example of the Central Transport Port, analysed by the authors' subjects, becomes one of the many points that organise the Polish discourse, making desire invested in a certain way. Author persons, through the lens of Lacanian psychoanalysis, treat the visualisations of CPK as a symptom of a certain phantasm. Analysing the observable overproduction of visualisations in the media in recent years, they point out that their position in contemporary reality is significantly different from the one they occupied in 20th century societies. They also note that the process of the megaproject is part of the current trends in the development of capitalism. According to the contributors, the visualisation of megaprojects acts as one of the instruments of power that directs desire towards its own preferred trajectories. The visualised infrastructure of CPK, by reducing the diversity of the world to its functionality, creates a futuristic vision of reality in which technology is a decoration for an already technological design. This vision is a screen for phantasmagorical projections leading to the transformation of the symbolic dimension in such a way as to exclude (Verwerfen) workers from its sphere. The dehumanised space of information and resource flows in fact narrows the possibilities of movement, making its exterior appear fussy. The dominant role that megaprojects play in the modern age is linked to the way in which the successive stages of a given project do not delineate separate, unconnected segments. They maintain continuity with one another, being constantly sustained by engagement. Each element of a contemporary megaproject aims to accumulate human involvement for as long as possible. The authors' persons agree with the thesis that contemporary politics is no longer organised in a disciplinary, individual-centred way, but in a controlling way in which engagement in the system as a whole of life.

   keywords: visual studies; psychoanalysis; Centralny Port Komunikacyjny; visualisation of architecture; megaproject

Snapshots

1. On Three-legged Cat: a Troubled Biennial

   Justyna Chmielewska

   citation
   Justyna Chmielewska, ”On Three-legged Cat: a Troubled Biennial ”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 42 (2025), https://www.pismowidok.org/pl/archiwum/42-obrazy-fantastycznonaukowe-innosc/o-trojnogim-kocie-czyli-biennale-po-przejsciach
   abstract

   A report from the 18th Istanbul Biennial, whose first edition runs from September 20 to November 23, 2025. I describe the institutional and cultural context of the biennial and the main assumptions of its curator, Christine Tohmé. Starting from the thematic framework she has established, I take a closer look at selected works shown during this year’s exhibitions.

   keywords: art biennial; Istanbul; Christine Tohmé

2. What can be seen in the eye of the storm

   Piotr Słodkowski

   citation
   Piotr Słodkowski, ”What can be seen in the eye of the storm”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 42 (2025), https://www.pismowidok.org/pl/archiwum/42-obrazy-fantastycznonaukowe-innosc/co-widac-w-oku-cyklonu
   abstract

   Critical review of the ewxhibition In the Eye of the Storm: Modernism in Ukraine, 1900–1930s on view at the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź

   keywords: In the Eye of the Storm; Modernism in Ukraine; Muzeum Sztuki