Joanna Zylinska


Joanna Żylińska is a United Kingdom writer and researcher. She is the Professor of New Media and Communications, and Co-Head of the Department of Media and Communications, at Goldsmiths, University of London. In 2017 she proposed a “feminist counter-apocalypse” as an alternative to the dangers of the "Exit of Man", Artificial Intelligence and Populism.

Life

Żylińska was born in 1971. She was brought up in Poland where the idea of being an intellectual was an ambition that she wanted to follow. She moved to the UK during her graduate studies. She is interested in new media and art and particularly the effects of emerging technology.
She has discussed the nature of the Borg in . She noticed that while other alien species are usually tolerated by humans in Star Trek, the Borg are viewed differently because of their cybernetic alterations and their loss of autonomy. Members of the Star Trek crew who are assimilated into the Collective are viewed as "polluted by technology" and less than human. Zylinska draws comparisons between the technological distinction of humanity and machine in Star Trek and the work of artists such as Stelarc who uses his own body to experiment with technology.
In 2013 she took on the role of curator when she oversaw as Artistic Director the large Latin American new media festival. The festival was titled, Transitio_MX05 Biomediations, and was held in Mexico City.
Gary Hall together with Clare Birchall and Open Humanities Press, Żylińska helped create the Jisc-funded project starting in 2014 LivBL: Living Books about Life, a sustainable series of electronic open access books about life - with life understood both philosophically and biologically - providing a bridge between the humanities and the sciences. The books are open and can be updated on-line.
Her 2017 book "Nonhuman Photography" deals with the subject of what she calls non-human imaging. She argues that we need to redefine image making to make it less human-centric. Art should include not only recent automated astronomy pictures, computational photography, Google Earth but also older created images such as fossils. She experiments herself with images and she is intrigued by the tragicomical idea of the "end of man".
In 2018 she published "The End of Man: A Feminist Counterapocalypse". It was a book and film which proposed a “feminist counter-apocalypse” as an alternative to the dangers of the "Exit Man", Artificial Intelligence and Populism.

Works include