Goldsmiths - University of London

Dr Joanna Zylinska

Website: http://www.joannazylinska.net

Joanna Zylinska is a cultural theorist writing on technology, ethics and art. She is one of the editors of Culture Machine, an international peer-reviewed journal of cultural studies and cultural theory. She combines her philosophical writings with photographic art practice.

Presentations and exhibitions

Originally trained as a theorist, in 2007 Zylinska enrolled on the renowned, practice-based MA in Photographic Studies at the University of Westminster, from which she graduated (with distinction) in September 2009. Her work explores the process of photographic mediation. She is particularly interested in reflecting, both practically and conceptually, on photography’s technical dimension. Rather than uncritically celebrate or fall into hysteria about ‘the digital age’, for Zylinska digitality is an intrinsic condition of photography, both in its past and present forms. Her art practice develops along the lines of ‘philosophy as photography’, where image-making becomes a form of working through the relations between medium and matter. It brings together old and new photographic techniques to produce images that creatively remediate the history of photography as well as its kinship with other media.

Solo

2009: ‘Will you ever go back?’, solo show to accompany the conference’ The Ghosts of the Past: Everyday Life 20 years After the Fall of Communism’ at the University of East London.

Group

2011: 'Home and Away', ISE Cultural Foundation, New York (awarded the Emerging Curators' Grant from ISE) (forthcoming)

2011: 'Park Road, London', Excavating Utopia show collaboratively developed with the Redeye Lightbox group, Liverpool International Photography Festival Look2011, May-June  

2011: 'Media and the Senses', exhibition accompanying a conference on the senses, Goldsmiths, University of London (May)

2010: Summer House: 'Home and Away', Castlefield Gallery, Manchester

2010: 'Between Bodies', Monash University Prato Centre, Palazzo Vaj, Italy

2010: ‘Home and Away’, FAB: Bath’s Fringe Art Festival, The Octagon

2010: ‘I Don’t Go to the Movies’, Madame Lillies Gallery, London

2009: ‘Solid States/Liquid Objects’, Shifted Gallery, Melbourne, Australia (joint show with Nina Sellars)

2009: ‘Dying to know’, P3 Gallery, London

2009: ‘Dying to know’ (interim show), London Gallery West.

2008: ‘The Coming Community’ and ‘We Have Always Been Digital’, Homeless Gallery, Shoreditch Town Hall, London.

Grants & awards

2011: JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee). Key partner, alongside Coventry University, University of Kent and Open Humanities Press, on the Living Books About Life: LiviBL project supported by the JISC e-Content Programme Strand A: Enriching via Collaboration.

2011: Beaverbrook Foundation/McGill University. Beaverbrook Visiting Fellow.

2010: ADM-HEA (Art-Design-Media Subject Centre of the Higher Education Academy). Grant to devise a new type of student reader, called ‘the liquid reader’, drawing on ideas and technologies behind the Open Humanities Press and its Liquid Book Project.

2010: Goldsmiths Learning Enhancement Unit (GLEU). Goldsmiths Learning Enhancement Fellowship.

2009:  ESPRC. Collaborator on Work Package 3 (Virtual Futures) led by the University of Salford as part of the wider MediaCity bid (Framework for Research and Innovation at MediaCityUK)

2004: The British Academy. Overseas Conference Grant to attend the 28th Annual Conference of the International Association of Philosophy and Literature, Virtual Materialities, Syracuse University, USA.

2003: The British Academy. Overseas Conference Grant to attend a Culture Machine-hosted seminar on deconstruction, media and cultural studies at ACLA, San Diego, USA.

1997: The British Council. Research fellowship at the School of English and American Studies, University of East Anglia.

1996: Tempus PHARE Foundation. Research fellowship at the School of Human Studies, University of Teesside.

Professional activities

Peer-reviewing and editorial work

Member of the Editorial Board for the journal Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, published by the National Communication Association and Routledge/Taylor & Francis

Member of the International Editorial Advisory Board for the journal Policy Studies in Ethics, Law and Technology published by the Berkeley Electronic Press

Member of the Editorial Board for the Critical Posthumanisms book series published by Rodopi and edited by Ivan Callus and Stefan Herbrechter

Commissioning Editor for the Culture Machine book series published by Berg (2000-2004)

Co-editor and, from 2001 to 2009 Reviews Editor, for Culture Machine, an international open-access peer-reviewed journal of cultural studies and media theory

Member of the Editorial Board of Mediactive (a journal of contemporary culture and politics published by Lawrence & Wishart)

Reviewer for a number of academic journals, including Body and Society, Cultural Studies, European Journal of Cultural Studies, Signs, Subjectivity, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, parallax, Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, j_spot: Journal of Social and Political Thought, Contemporary Women’s Writing and Culture Machine

Reviewer of book proposals and manuscripts in the area of media and cultural studies for Routledge, the MIT Press, Continuum, Berg, Edinburgh University Press, Rodopi and Manchester University Press

Reviewer for the Philosophy of Communication section of the International Communication Association

Referee for Council for the Humanities of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO, the Dutch research council)

Referee for the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada

Referee of tenure applications and external member at appointment panels at US and UK universities

Fellowships

Beaverbrook Visiting Scholar, Media Department, McGill University, Canada (spring 2011)

Fellow of the London Graduate School (a cross-London international graduate programme and research centre in critical theory run from Kingston University), from 2010

Membership of professional bodies

Member of the advisory board/ a UEL affiliate of the University of East London Centre for Cultural Studies Research

Founding member (via Culture Machine) of NEIJ: Network for Editors of Interdisciplinary Journals

Member of the advisory board for the research project on the Russian Internet, Russian-cyberspace.org, based at Cambridge University

Member of ACS (Association for Cultural Studies), MeCCSA (Media, Communications & Cultural Studies Association) and IAPL (International Association for Philosophy and Literature)

Member of the Somatechnics Research Centre at Macquarie University, Australia

Other activities

Organiser and chair of the Tissue Cultures stream for the conference TEXTURES: the 6th European Meeting of the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts in Riga, Latvia, 15-20.06.2010.

Consultancy work for Flamingo International on future technological trends, October 2009.

Founder Member of the Network for Editors of Interdisciplinary Journals (NEIJ) and co-organiser of the symposium, ‘Interdisciplinarity in the Arts and Humanities: Research, Policy, Publishing’, London, 20.03.2009, hosted by the Network.

Co-organiser (as part of Goldsmiths’ Creative Media Forum) of a symposium on photographic theory and practice, ‘Photographic Mediations’, at Coventry School of Art and Design, Coventry University, 6.11.2008.  
Feature writer for ‘This is the Order’, an arts and culture supplement to the Huck magazine (article ‘We Are Cyborgs’, Sept. 2008)

Participant in a documentary ‘My Manifesto’ (originally made for Polish TV, then released as a DVD by an independent international art label) about the work of the contemporary Polish sculptor, Bronislaw Krzysztof

Co-organiser of the international interdisciplinary conference: ‘Cultural Studies: Between Politics and Ethics’, Bath Spa University College, 6-8.07.2001. (Reviewed in Scope: an Online Journal of Film Studies.)

Community activities

Participant in a conversation with Eduardo Kac (international bioartist), Donlon Books art bookshop, London, 20.06.2009.

Plenary speaker at ‘Network Effect’, a British Council initiative that brings young future leaders together from all over Europe to discuss key issues of concern facing their societies, and to develop the networks and leadership skills needed to tackle these new kinds of challenges. Theme: ‘Inclusive Culture? Identity and Prejudice’, 5-7.03.2008, The British Council, Budapest (paper, ‘It’s a wonderful world: from plastic surgery to nation rebuilding').

Invited speaker to discuss my book, Imaginary Neighbors: Mediating Polish Jewish-Relations after the Holocaust, at the Jewish Book Week event in London, ‘Poles and Jews: Troubled Neighbours?’, 2.03.2008.

Invited speaker at the Liverpool Art Gallery FACT, responding to the FACT-commissioned video-art project 'Robot Films' by US artists Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, 27.09.03.

Participant in a debate ‘Freud on the Couch’ accompanying the performance of ‘Sweet Dreams’ by the feminist theatre company Sphinx, Bath Theatre Royal, 10.06.2000.

Keynote lectures

Plenary speaker at the Current Issues in European Cultural Studies conference, 'Nature and Culture' session, at Louis de Geer in Norrköping, Sweden, organised by the Advanced Cultural Studies Institute of Sweden (ACSIS) in collaboration with the Association for Cultural Studies (ACS), 15-17.06.2011 (forthcoming).

Keynote lecture as Beaverbook Visiting Scholar, Media@McGill, Department of Art History and Communication Studies, McGill University, 13.01.2011.

Keynote speaker at a conference on literature and science, 'The Human and its Limits', University of Bergen, Norway, 9-10.12.2010.

Keynote speaker at the 6th European Meeting of the Society of the Literature, Science and the Arts (SLSA), ‘Textures’, organised by the Electronic Text + Textile network and held in Riga, Latvia, 15-20.06.2010.

Plenary speaker at The Visual Culture Studies Conference I, organised by New York University; University of the Arts, London; and University of Westminster, London and held at the University of Westminster, 27-29.05.2010.

Keynote speaker at the conference on 'Zoontotechnics (Animality/Technicity)’, Centre for Critical and Cultural Theory, Cardiff University, 12-14.05.2010.

Keynote speaker at the international symposium, ‘Solid States/Liquid Objects: Discourses of Mediation’, School of Art and Design, Monash University, Australia, 19.08.2009 (paper ‘Digital Flow: Photography on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown’).

Keynote speaker at the symposium, ‘Photography, Archive and Memory’, Centre for Research in Film and Audio-Visual Cultures, Roehampton University, London, 5.06.2009.

Keynote speaker at the international conference, ‘Thinking and Making Connections: Cybernetic Heritage in the Social and Human Sciences and Beyond’, organised by Södertörn University College in cooperation with The Nobel Museum, 10-11.11.2008.

Keynote speaker at the 2nd Slavonic Symposium, ‘Myths and Mythologies of Slavonic Nations: How to Deal with Them Today?’, University of East London, 28.04.2008. (paper ‘Democracy, mythology and mourning: on Polish-Jewish relations’)

Keynote speaker at ASCA’s 2008 International Workshop, ‘Engaging Objects’, Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, University of Amsterdam, 26-28.03.2008.

Keynote speaker at the international conference, ‘Transmediality and Transculturality’, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, 6-9.12.2007 (paper ‘The transmediality of life: a bioethical response to contemporary media culture’).

Plenary speaker the Roundtable on the Future of Cultural Studies and invited speaker at the two-part panel ‘Cultural Studies after the Left’ (paper ‘There is Nothing Outside the System? Cultural Studies, Politics, Cybernetics’), at the international conference Cultural Studies Now, University of East London, 19-22.07.2007.

Keynote speaker at the international conference, Re-Mediating Literature, Utrecht University, the Netherlands, 4-6.07.2007 (paper ‘Logos bioethikos: What if Foucault Had Had a Blog?’)

Keynote speaker at the 2nd Annual Media Subject Group Research Symposium, Thames Valley University, 23.05.2007.

Invited plenary speaker at the ‘Mediation/Ethics’ Pembroke Center Roundtable, Brown University, 15-16.03.2007.

Keynote speaker at the graduate conference, ‘Contexts, Fields, Positions: Situating Cultural Research’ (paper ‘Beyond Moralism: Cultural Studies, Politics, Ethics'), University of East London, 25-26.05.2006.

Invited plenary speaker at ‘Body-Media-Imagination’ – two papers (one on plastic surgery, the other on DNA mapping) presented at a two-leg conference organised by Prof. Mark Poster and Prof. Christoph Wulf and held at the University of California Irvine, 27-29.03.2006 and Free University Berlin, 14-16.09.2006.

Invited plenary speaker at the ‘Panic and Paranoia: Imaging, the Law and the Public Domain’ conference at the School of Art, Australian National University, Canberra, 23-24.08.2006.

'The Secret of Life: Bio-ethics between Corporeal and Corporate Obligations', presented at the international conference 'Rhetoric, Politics, Ethics', at Ghent University, Belgium, 21-23.04.2005.

Plenary speaker at the roundtable 'The Body - Virtual or Material?' at the 28th Annual Conference of the International Association of Philosophy and Literature (IAPL), Virtual Materialities, Syracuse University, USA, 19-25.05.2004.

Research interests

Zylinska's research interests focus on new technologies and new media; debates around subjectivity and the body, including the discourses of the 'cyborg' and the 'post-human'; digital art and bioart; photography in the digital age; the ethical implications of new technologies; the relationship between culture, ethics and politics; and Polish-Jewish relations. She is currently completing a new book on the idea of mediation, Life after New Media (with Sarah Kember) for the MIT Press, and working on a translation of Stanislaw Lem's major philosophical treatise, Summa Technologiae, for the University of Minnesota's Electronic Mediations series. Together with Clare Birchall, Gary Hall and Open Humanities Press, she's also working on the JISC-funded project LivBL: Living Books about Life, a series of co-edited, electronic open access books about life - with life understood both philosophically and biologically - which provide a bridge between the humanities and the sciences.

Selected publications

Books

(2009) Bioethics in the Age of New Media (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press)

(2007) Imaginary Neighbors: Mediating Polish-Jewish Relations after the Holocaust (collection co-edited with Dorota Glowacka) (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press)

(2005) The Ethics of Cultural Studies (London and New York: Continuum)

(2002) The Cyborg Experiments: the Extensions of the Body in the Media Age (London and New York: Continuum). (edited collection)

(2001) On Spiders, Cyborgs and Being Scared: the Feminine and the Sublime (Manchester: Manchester University Press)

Books in progress

(2011) Life after New Media (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press) (monograph written with Sarah Kember; first draft completed)

(2012) Lem, Stanislaw, Summa Technologiae (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press): currently undertaking a translation of Lem’s major philosophical treatise (120,000 words) on technology, evolution and systems theory for the UMP’s Electronic Mediations series edited by N. Katherine Hayles, Mark Poster and Samuel Weber; and writing an introduction to the volume.

Articles (a selection) 

(2011) ‘Bioethics Otherwise, or, How to Live with Machines, Humans, and Other Animals’, in Tom Cohen and Henry Sussman (eds) Telemorphosis: Theory in the Era of Climate Change , v. 1 (Open Humanities Press, forthcoming).

(2010) ‘On Bad Archives, Unruly Snappers and Liquid Photographs’, Photographies, vol. 3, issue 2, August, pp. 139-153.

(2010) ‘Playing God, Playing Adam: The Politics and Ethics of Enhancement’, Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, Vol. 7, No 2, pp. 149-161.

(2010) ‘I Don’t Go to the Movies’, Culture Machine, Vol. 11, non-pag.

(2010) ‘Creative Media between Invention and Critique, or What’s Still at Stake in Performativity’ (with Sarah Kember), Culture Machine, Vol. 11, non-pag.

(2009) ‘You Killed Barack Obama, 2008’, Journal of Visual Culture, vol. 8 no 2, p. 190 [image and text].

(2009) ‘A Body that Looks for Other Bodies to Exist: Orlan’s Prosthetic Gifts’ and (co-authored with Sarah Kember)’  ‘Creative Media: Performance, Invention, Critique’, in Maria Chatzichristodoulou [aka Maria X], Janis Jefferies and Rachel Zerihan (eds) Interfaces of Performance (Aldergate: Ashgate).

(2009) 'Is There Life in Cybernetics?: Designing a Posthumanist Bioethics', in Rosi Braidotti, Claire Colebook and Patrick Hanafin (eds) Law After Deleuze (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).

(2007) '"Who Is My Neighbor?": Ethics under Duress', in Imaginary Neighbors: Mediating Polish-Jewish Relations after the Holocaust, eds Dorota Glowacka and Joanna Zylinska (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press)