How to read and interpret Flusser’s Protean and transdisciplinary legacy of “communicology,” comprising of non-linear and overlapping narratives, literature, philosophy and communications theory. The experience of being an emigré uprooted him from his own culture, language, and severed his ties with inter-war Prague. The publication of his collected works in German was left unfinished and the manuscripts dealing with the conditions of freedom, technological paradigms, society and art are processed in archives.
Flusser was also one of the persons responsible for integrating the “Czech new-media image” into the wider European context. Since the 1980s, we can trace Flusser’s influence across all of Europe, and especially in Central Europe (for example in Hungary, Poland, or Slovenia) they resonated with the new geopolitical and social situations.
Flusser’s images and theories were initially received with excitement, becoming slowly “domesticated,” altered, forgotten and reduced to a few theses on codes, technical images, media and digital photography. Is there still, in 2017, much in Flusser’s texts which merits revisitation, or are they simply an object of academic scholarship and historical archive work?
Invited guests:
PhDr Milena Slavická
is an art historian, curator and author. She graduated from Charles Univeristy with a degree in History and Art History, later working for the National Gallery. Between 1990 and 1996 she was editor-in-chief for the magazine Výtvarné umění. She has been lecturing at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. As author she published her debut Povídky Jamrtálské. Along with philosopher and translator Jiří Fiala she edited and published the publication Vilém Flusser – The Power of the Image, Selected Philosophical Texts from the 80s and 90s.
Mgr. Kamil Nabělek
is a theorist, art historian and curator. He teaches at the departments of Art History and Architecture at the Technical University of Liberec. He deals with the work of Vilém Flusser in his dissertation.
Mgr. Miloš Vojtěchovský
is a curator, publicist, practician, historian and art theorist. He teaches at the Centre for Audiovisual Studies at FAMU. He is a co-organized and conceptual author of the symposium entitled Excavating the Future which was held at the Goethe Institute in 2001.
