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SWPS University - Main page

Power and the Image: Its Uses and Abuses

Culture – Image – Power

About the Conference Register

The conference is addressed to:

scholars, artists, and practitioners interested in exploring how images intersect with power, consciousness, and culture

Language of the event: English

Torn poster depicting a hand making a pointing gesture
 

About the Conference

The interplay between visual and verbal codes has long captured our attention, shaping human orientation and influence on the environment. This conference seeks to delve into the profound role of images in our "culture of images" (J.-J. Wunenburger), examining their capacity to convey and encode information across sensory modalities. From tactile and auditory landscapes to visual media, images surround and shape us, mediating our experiences and perceptions.

Images often appear as self-evident representations of reality, affirming or visualizing states of the world. Yet, they can also deceive, manipulate, and obscure, raising critical questions about their power and potential misuse. The critique of images has been a recurrent theme throughout global history, and in today's world, images continue to construct entire symbolic frameworks—delineating boundaries like "us" versus "them"—and influencing our actions and identities.

This conference invites scholars, artists, and practitioners to investigate how images interact with power, consciousness, and culture. What do contemporary research and creative practices reveal about the pervasive influence of visuality? How do images contribute to memory, imagination, and action? What role do images play in ideologization and liberation?

Conference Program

The organizing committee is not responsible for cancellations by individual speakers. The program is subject to change.

Day 1 (September 1): The Culture of Images in Contemporary Society

  1. Introduction

    SWPS University

    Marcin Jacoby, Ph.D. / Associate Professor, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities in Warsaw, SWPS University; Mikołaj Wiśniewski, Ph.D. / Associate Professor, SWPS University

    Cassirer Center for International Scholarship and Cooperation

    Director of the Cassirer Center llona Błocian and Associate Director of the Cassirer Center Eli Kramer
  2. Keynote 1

    Philosophical Speculation in an Image Saturated Age

    Professor Eli Kramer, Cassirer Center, University of Wrocław
  3. Break

     

  4. Session 1: Film, TV, and the Image

    The Visual Force of Sesame Street

    Sandy Pensoneau-Conway, Southern Illinois University Carbondale

    Power and Image in The Sopranos: Initiation and Disillusionment

    Karol Borczyk, University of Warsaw

    Screening and Overshadowing: Adaptation as a Struggle for Power in Sherlock Holmes (2013)

    Aleksandra Koncka, University of Warsaw
  5. Lunch Break

     

  6. Keynote 2

    Hans Bellmer's Doll Photographs and Nazism

    Pawel Dybel, Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw
  7. Break

     

  8. Session 2: Psychology of Contemporary Personal and Legal Images

    Between Memories and Pictures: Meaning-Focused Interventions Using Images of the Past and Present

    Damian Dzioba, SWPS University

    The Power of the Image in the Courtroom – How Visual Narratives Shape Perceptions of Guilt and Innocence

    Marina Khachatryan-Zagórska, Blisko Siebie Center for Diagnosis, Therapy, and Support
  9. Break

     

  10. Session 3: Violence, War, and Women of/in Contemporary Images

    Images Digging Deep: Feminist Environmental Art Facing Political Violence

    Katarzyna Bojarska, SWPS University

    Motherhood in Wartime: Between Iconography and Bodily Experience in Ukrainian Women’s Art

    Yevheniia Butsykina, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv

  1. Keynote 3

    The Image in Interdisciplinary Research

    Ilona Błocian, Cassirer Center, University of Wrocław
  2. Break

     

  3. Session 4: Interdisciplinary and Philosophical Perspectives on the Image

    Beyond or before words? Some Remarks on the Use of Images in Philosophy

    Ivan Dimitrijevic, University of Warsaw

    Aby Warburg and the woman as a symbol of power - symbols as a carrier of psycho-social

    Weronika Puczyńska, University of Wrocław
  4. Break

     

  5. Keynote 4

    Marxist Image of Nature in the Soviet Union: From the War Against Nature to Ecomarxist Attempts

    Mantas-Antanas Davidavičius, Vytautas Magnus University
  6. Break

     

  7. Session 5: The Racialization, Oppression, Liberation of Images

    Fanon, Merleau-Ponty, and Sartre Towards a Critical Philosophy of Race

    Michael Timm, Southern Illinois University Carbondale

    “Am I not a Man and a Brother?”: Visual Representations of Slavery in the Late Eighteenth Century

    Przemysław Uściński, University of Warsaw
  8. Coffee Break

     

  9. Session 6: A Genealogy of Artistic Images in Culture

    Future Imaging in Times of Crisis: Corporate Visions in WWII Advertising (virtual)

    Omer Chomski and Dr. Eliyahu Keller, Technion IIT

    The Evolution of Traditional Ukrainian Glass Jewelry from Its Origins to the Present Day

    Marharyta Puhachenko, Borys Grinchenko Kiev University

    A Gu That’s Not a Gu: The End of Art in China? (virtual)

    James Garrison, University of Massachusetts Lowell

  1. Keynote 5

    Susana Buck-Morss’ Negative Dialectics of Images

    Gintautas Mažeikis, Vytautas Magnus University
  2. Break

     

  3. Session 7: Case Studies in the Ontology of Images in Film, Photography, and Medicine

    Breaking away from the Ideology of the (Movement-)Image: The Influence of Søren Kierkegaard's Repetitional Faith on Gilles Deleuze's Cinema Volumes

    Roel Wolters, Radboud Unviersity

    Time represented in photography: An analysis of the Problem in the Film “Faces of the Beach” by Agnès Varda, Jr

    Magdalena Walkowiak, Abeloart

    Image-Example of Hermaphrodite: The Ancient Movement at the Center of Modern Medicine

    Michał Doroszenko, University of Warsaw
  4. Lunch Break

     

  5. Keynote 6

    Image and Aesthetic Experience

    Ondřej Dadejík and Martin Kaplický, Charles University and University of Southern Bohemia
  6. Break

     

  7. Session 8: Art in the Image Age

    The Worldly philosophy of Liberal Eudaimonism: Art history in Dialogue with Political Theory

    Geoffrey Bowe, Istanbul Technical University, and Mariusz Turowski, University of Wrocław

    Prototypes, Heresy and the Ontology of Pioneering Artworks (Virtual)

    Elsa Saliba, University of Genoa

    VGORAY Platform

    Daniel A. Freedman, Uzhhorod National University

  1. Keynote 7

    What is There for Porn to Say about Bodies?

    J. Szpilka, SWPS University
  2. Break

     

  3. Session 9: Powerful Images of Blood and Bodies

    Transforming Visual Narrative in Oncology through Artistic Microscopic Photography

    Małgorzata Lisowska, Value Based Healthcare Center Europe (Poland)

    The Iconography of Blood Libel – Tool of the Antisemitic Propaganda Which Lasts to Date? Exemplified by the Iconography of Andreas of Rinn

    Rafał Potaczała, University of Wrocław

    Guinea Pigs: an Anarchive of Fabulations of Multiple Sclerosis as a Somatopolitical Manifesto (virtual)

    Thany Sanchez, Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo (PUC-SP)
  4. Lunch Break

     

  5. Keynote 8

    Some Transnational and Interclass Readings of Camp in Polish Visual Culture (virtual)

    Tomasz Basiuk, University of Warsaw
  6. Break

     

  7. Session 10: The Image of Sexuality Past and Present

    Greek Visions of Eros: Desire and Reality

    Marcin Rychter, University of Warsaw

    Pornography as an Image of Power: Dworkin’s Radical Critique

    Patryk Wojciechowski, University of Warsaw

    Adult Adolescents and Scopophilia: Appearance, Appeal and Political Passivity in Consumer Capitalism

    Zuzanna Antonowicz, University of Warsaw
  8. Break

     

  9. Session 11: Politics and the Image

    Perplexing Images. The Dynamics of the People and Imaginal Hegemonies (virtual)

    Karol Morawski, University of Wrocław

    Seeing Against Silence: Feminist Cartooning and the Subversive Power of Image in Post-Revolutionary Iran (virtual)

    Reza Shirmarz, Southern Illinois University Carbondale

    “Rock March” Festivals in Photography as Symbolic Representation of Political Changes

    Tomas Pabedinskas, Vytautas Magnus University
  10. Option Conference Dinner

    Warszawa Wschodnia, Soho Factory, Mińska 29A/bud. 46, 03-808, Warsaw, Poland

  1. Keynote 9

    Images of Divine Things: Jonathan Edwards and the Logic of Images

    Kenneth Stikkers, Southern Illinois University Carbondale
  2. Break

     

  3. Keynote 10

    Power, Seduction and Invisibility: Mellville’s Images

    Mikołaj Wiśniewski, SWPS University
  4. Break

     

  5. Special Session

    The Polish Blake Project

    Eliza Borkowska, SWPS University
  6. Lunch

     

  7. Keynote 11

    A Terrible Interpretation of the Stars: Image, Seduction and Anxiety in Clemens J. Setz

    Adam Lipszyc, Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw
  8. Break

     

  9. Session 12: Strange, Infernal, and Shadowy Literary Images

    Seeing Double: The Strange Case of Godkin Twins in John Banville’s Birchwood

    Irena Księżopolska, University of Warsaw

    “Even worse than death”: The Infernal Power Cycle in Arkady and Boris Strugatskys’s Inhabited Island

    Antonina Mazurek, University of Warsaw

    The Shadow of the Waxwing and Other Avian Imagery Across the Works of Vladimir Nabokov and Joanna Newsom

    Cecylia Meredith
  10. Break

     

  11. Session 13: World Building, Politics, and Literature

    Corona Astralis and the Sisters: Poetry as the source of world-building in Tension

    Grzegorz Zyzik, University of Opole

    Kitsch and the Politics of Visual Seduction: Literary (De)Construction of Power in Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being

    Mateusz Szostek, University of Warsaw

    Powerful Images of Power: Representation of Police Power in Future State: Dark Detective

    Ibrahim Alcinkaya, University of Warsaw

Download the List of Abstracts (PDF)

Register

If you would like to attend the conference in person, please fill out the registration form below:

If you would like to attend the conference online, you can join us directly via Zoom using the following link: zoom.us/j/96955879281

Organizers

  • Faculty of Humanities in Warsaw, SWPS University, logo
  • A set of logos: University of Wroclłaaw, Research University, Arqus Alliance
  • University of Wrocław, Cassirer Center logo

Scientific Committee

  • Mikołaj Wiśniewski, Ph.D. / Associate Professor, SWPS University
  • Ilona Błocian, Ph.D. / Associate Professor, University of Wrocław
  • Eli Orner Kramer, Ph.D. / Associate Professor, University of Wrocław

Organizing Committee

  • Mikołaj Wiśniewski, Ph.D. / Associate Professor, SWPS University
  • Ilona Błocian, Ph.D. / Associate Professor, University of Wrocław
  • Eli Orner Kramer, Ph.D. / Associate Professor, University of Wrocław

Venue

Faculty of Humanities in Warsaw, SWPS University, Chodakowska 19/31, room S305