Techniques and Technologies to Compensate for Powerlessness

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F00216305%3A26420%2F24%3APU155385" target="_blank" >RIV/00216305:26420/24:PU155385 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="https://iluminace.cz/artkey/ilu-202402-0004_techniques-and-technologies-to-compensate-for-powerlessness.php" target="_blank" >https://iluminace.cz/artkey/ilu-202402-0004_techniques-and-technologies-to-compensate-for-powerlessness.php</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.58193/ilu.1782" target="_blank" >10.58193/ilu.1782</a>

Result language

čeština

Original language name

Techniky a technologie na kompenzaci bezmoci

Original language description

The video essay Techniques and Technologies to Compensate for Powerlessness is an artistic research output that exemplifies Matěj Pavlík’s approach to historiography, developed through individual projects and interdisciplinary collaborations. Pavlík’s work often focuses on a reflexive approach to fiction, speculation, or myth-making. In this essay, the artist examines the role of borderline science technologies invented in late socialist Czechoslovakia. These technologies (e.g., telesthesia, healing, and locating geopathogenic zones) were linked to research in borderline scientific fields like psychotronics and psychoenergetics. The artist critically analyzes these technologies, highlighting their socio- political and economic contexts. Pavlík suggests that these technologies were responses to the specific crises of high modernity, compensating for feelings of alienation or powerlessness. How can we grasp these techniques and technologies in the present? He hypothesizes that the emergence and proliferation of these borderline scientific practices, particularly healing, in late socialist Czechoslovakia might reflect the era’s disillusionment and the failure of Marxist ideals of emancipation. The attempt to treat individuals and the public space at the hands of the late socialist healer may thus have been a way to individualize social risks and harms. Throughout the video essay, Pavlík argues that the institutionalization of these „wondrous“ techniques and technologies was an attempt to inhabit and adapt to the so-called pharmakon of late modernity: the poison and cure called the Scientific and Technological Revolution.

Czech name

Techniky a technologie na kompenzaci bezmoci

Czech description

The video essay Techniques and Technologies to Compensate for Powerlessness is an artistic research output that exemplifies Matěj Pavlík’s approach to historiography, developed through individual projects and interdisciplinary collaborations. Pavlík’s work often focuses on a reflexive approach to fiction, speculation, or myth-making. In this essay, the artist examines the role of borderline science technologies invented in late socialist Czechoslovakia. These technologies (e.g., telesthesia, healing, and locating geopathogenic zones) were linked to research in borderline scientific fields like psychotronics and psychoenergetics. The artist critically analyzes these technologies, highlighting their socio- political and economic contexts. Pavlík suggests that these technologies were responses to the specific crises of high modernity, compensating for feelings of alienation or powerlessness. How can we grasp these techniques and technologies in the present? He hypothesizes that the emergence and proliferation of these borderline scientific practices, particularly healing, in late socialist Czechoslovakia might reflect the era’s disillusionment and the failure of Marxist ideals of emancipation. The attempt to treat individuals and the public space at the hands of the late socialist healer may thus have been a way to individualize social risks and harms. Throughout the video essay, Pavlík argues that the institutionalization of these „wondrous“ techniques and technologies was an attempt to inhabit and adapt to the so-called pharmakon of late modernity: the poison and cure called the Scientific and Technological Revolution.

Type

J_SC - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the SCOPUS database

CEP classification

—

OECD FORD branch

60400 - Arts (arts, history of arts, performing arts, music)

Project

—

Continuities

S - Specificky vyzkum na vysokych skolach

Publication year

2024

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Name of the periodical

Iluminace. Časopis pro teorii, historii a estetiku filmu

ISSN

0862-397X

e-ISSN

—

Volume of the periodical

neuveden

Issue of the periodical within the volume

36

Country of publishing house

CZ - CZECH REPUBLIC

Number of pages

7

Pages from-to

71-78

UT code for WoS article

—

EID of the result in the Scopus database

2-s2.0-85211349942