Václav Janoščík is an educator, theorist, and curator. He currently works at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. He is the author and editor of books and publications on issues of contemporary thought, ranging from new materialism, speculative realism, accelerationism to future studies, and media theories. He engages in the critique of popular culture, politics of emotions, gaming, the intersection of ontology and everyday life, and the philosophy of technology, thinking, and reconciliation.
At JAMA 77, he will deliver a lecture on the onto-imagination of dystopia, about which he writes: “The present is often framed as crisis-ridden, problematic, or even dystopian, whether in the context of ongoing war (and the breakdown of the Western view of history as progress), climate change (and the reevaluation of relationships with non-human existences), populism or xenophobia (and the more general crisis of democratic consensus), or COVID (and the search for a new social everyday life). In recent years, I have been exploring how this affective politics is inscribed and opened up in popular culture, TV series, or video games, how its forms are transformed, or even how to use dystopia for orientation and understanding of the contemporary world. With this lecture for JAMA, I would like to summarize and conclude this research cycle. I will attempt to introduce my own concepts of dystopian realism, speculative histories, or behavioral capital, but also return to the beginning, to the possibilities of shaping the world, to the context of ontology and imagination, cosmos, and technique.”
LANGUAGE: CZECH
