"Theory of Seeing" | four-part film series

Translating "Theory of Seeing" into film demands more than simply presenting the notions contained within it. Film is not a transparent medium, but an apparatus that organizes the act of seeing through framing, editing, movement, light and time. It is therefore a tool through which Strzemiński’s ideas can be put to a practical test, demonstrating how a picture emerges at the intersection of the eye, memory, knowledge and experience. Each episode becomes an experiment, which does not so much explain the theory as set it in motion.

This project fits within the tradition of experimental films about art, in which the camera is not used to reproduce artworks, but becomes an analytical tool. A key reference is The Film Form Workshop in Łódź which treats film as a laboratory of perception, investigating the relationship between the apparatus and the viewer. Another precedent is John Berger’s and Mike Dibb’s television series "Ways of seeing", which used the serial format to critically examine the social and political conditions of looking at art. 

Each episode offers an original contemporary interpretation of Strzemiński’s thought. Wilhelm Sasnal connects museum conservation and the materiality of a picture with the memory of the Holocaust, asking about the limits of abstraction in relation to historical experience. Mykola Ridnyi confronts the theory of moving vision with the optics of war, relating it to the history of Strzemiński’s physical impairment and a fictional story about a sniper. Agnieszka Polska transposes his insights into the cybernetic context, the attention economy, and images generated by artificial intelligence. Anton Vidokle and Liam Gillick treat the book’s theses as a series of exercises performed by an actor, a camera and a city. The series is held together by titular sequences created by Laura Pawela using found footage.

The series joins a constellation that has been taking shape over several decades and includes Strzemiński’s book, the historical space of the Neoplastic Room, the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź’s permanent collection display "Ways of Seeing" and contemporary interpretations formulated through film. It will be complemented by a website dedicated to the book and the series, prepared in collaboration with e-flux and featuring source materials as well as new texts by Luiza Nader and Elena Vogman.

Each element serves a different function: the book articulates a theory of transformations in visual consciousness, the films put its concepts to a contemporary test, the exhibitions allow them to be examined through a physical encounter with artworks in the museum space, and the website opens up a field for further research and interpretation. The elements of the constellation do not form a linear sequence, but explain and update one another. "Theory of Seeing" thus becomes not a closed treatise, but a still-active tool and a script for experiments in how we see and in what we have yet to learn how to see.

International premiere of the film series will take place on 17th of November 2026 at e-flux in New York.

First Polish screening will take place on 28th and 29th of November 2026 at National Centre for Film Culture in Łódź.

About the episodes:

„Theory of Vision”, Liam Gillick, Anton Vidokle, 18' 25"

In the film by Liam Gillick and Anton Vidokle, the actor’s body becomes entangled in visual patterns inspired by Strzemiński’s ”Theory of Vision”, however, set within the urban spaces of Łódź. The protagonist – the author’s spokesperson, or perhaps an abstract observing subject – moves amongst planes, axes, lines and grids, repeating book’s passages on realism. Is he re-enacting a role? Or are we perhaps watching the ‘making of’ a theory – a thought in the process of formation, full of hesitations and questions, searching for the right words? A film that is both hypnotic and formally rigorous.

„Grey Zone”, Mykola Ridnyi, 18'

“This is a film about the conflict between two identities – that of an artist and that of a soldier,” says Mykola Ridnyi. In ”Grey Zone”, he draws on a biographical context absent from Strzemiński’s theory – the experience of a soldier and military engineer who suffered an eye injury during the First World War. The film’s protagonist is a sniper, whose perspective is mediated by the rifle’s sight. Ridnyi revisits questions present in his earlier works – how does the development of visual technology influence modern warfare?

„Cow, Pig, Flax”, Wilhelm Sasnal, 17' 5"

Wilhelm Sasnal’s film is a multi-layered polemic against Strzemiński’s ”Theory of Vision”. Sensual, free-spirited and physical. It contrasts the concrete with the abstract, the senses with the intellect, and the fairy tale with discourse. Drawing on motifs from Hans Christian Andersen’s story, Sasnal poses the question: what if it is not only we look at the landscape, but the landscape also looks at us? “My aim was to balance the forces,” says Sansal, “it is not just people who look, but everything looks at everyone.”

„The Birth of a Prediction Machine”, Agnieszka Polska, 19' 45"

Agnieszka Polska’s collage-style film essay expands on Strzemiński’s reflections by incorporating the context of contemporary neuroscience and images generated by artificial intelligence. A child is born. What does it see? What will it see? In Polska’s view, the contemporary iconosphere becomes a space of radical uncertainty, colonised by corporations and algorithms. The question Polska asks is what happens when our internal model of reality loses all credibility?.

About the artists:

Anton Vidokle - artist and editor of e-flux journal. He was born in Moscow and lives in New York and Berlin. Vidokle’s work has been exhibited internationally at Documenta 13 and the 56th Venice Biennale. Vidokle’s films have been presented at Bergen Assembly, Shanghai Biennale, Berlinale International Film Festival, Forum Expanded, Gwangju Biennale, Center Pompidou, Tate Modern, Garage Museum, Istanbul Biennial, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Tensta Konsthalll, Blaffer Art Museum, Stedelijk Museum, Lincoln Center, MMCA Seoul, the Latvian Center for Contemporary Art, and others. He served as chief curator of the 14th Shanghai Biennale: Cosmos Cinema, and in 2024 he was appointed artistic director for the 13th Seoul Mediacity Biennale.

Liam Gillick - New York based artist known for contributions in sculpture, video, architecture and text. His work focuses on contemporary management of labor, time, and aesthetics extended through a distinctive conception of exhibition as a medium in its own right. His work is divided between abstraction based on social and political structures of the present and texts, films and graphics that often appear to contradict and comment upon the apparent clarity of his structures. Gillick’s work has been included in numerous important exhibitions including Documenta and the Venice, Berlin, Shanghai and Istanbul Biennales - representing Germany in 2009 in Venice. Solo museum exhibitions have taken place at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and Tate in London.

Mykola Ridnyi - born in Kharkiv, Ukraine. He lives and works in Berlin where he holds a guest professorship in the multimedia art class at the Berlin University of the Arts. In recent films, video installations and photography cycles, he experiments with nonlinear montage and a collage of documentary and fiction. He works with reenactment, often based on research in Ukrainian and European politics, history and cinema. Ridnyi reflects on social and political reality and shows the contrast between the fragility and resilience of individual and collective histories. The body of his work created within the last decade addresses the question of how to talk about violence and war without multiplying its brutality in visual language. His works have been presented internationally at various institutions and festivals, including the Manifesta 16 Ruhr (2026), The Kyiv Biennial (2024, 2017, 2015), the Kochi Biennial (2022), the 56-th Venice Biennale (2015) among the others.

Wilhelm Sasnal - lives and works in Kraków, Poland. In 1999 he received his diploma from the Department of Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków. His work addresses subjects ranging from the seriousness of historical events like the Holocaust to recognizable icons of popular culture, as well as the people, including his family, places, and everyday objects around him. From early in his career, alongside his painterly work, Sasnal makes films—at first short video works, then feature - length films with Anka Sasnal. In recent years, he made seven feature films: ”Swineherd” (2008); ”It Looks Pretty from a Distance” (2011); ”Aleksander” (2013); ”Parasite” (2013); ”The Sun, the Sun Blinded Me” (2016); ”We Haven’t Lost Our Way” (2022), and ”The Assistant” in 2025. Their movies explore the social and political atmospheres of their local realm, often becoming visual allegories of wider conflicts or intimate narratives. Most of his film works are made on 8 mm or 16 mm film stock.

Agnieszka Polska - visual artist, film and theatre director based in Berlin. Polska employs computer-generated media to explore themes of individual agency, social responsibility, and the shaping of historical narratives within environments driven by rapid technological changes and the flow of information. Her work bridges the past and the digital present, using hallucinatory animations and poetic storytelling to delve into the ethical ambiguities of contemporary society. Polska’s art has been showcased internationally, including exhibitions at the New Museum and MoMA in New York, Centre Pompidou in Paris, Tate Modern in London, and the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C. She has held solo exhibitions at Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, M HKA in Antwerp, Frye Art Museum in Seattle, Nottingham Contemporary, and Salzburger Kunstverein. She participated in the 57th Venice Biennale, 11th Gwangju Biennale, 19th and 24th Biennale of Sydney, 14th Shanghai Biennale, and 13th Istanbul Biennial. In 2023, she premiered her first theatre play, ”The Talking Car”, in the frame of BoCA Biennale, Lisbon.

Task: ”Theory of Seeing as part of the Inspiring Culture 2025–2026 programme, implemented in cooperation with e-flux and the Polish Cultural Institute New York”

Co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland as part of the Inspiring Culture 2025–2026 programme.