Jan Sowa

Jan Sowa is a materialist-dialectic theoretician and social researcher. With a PhD in sociology and doctoral habilitation in cultural studies, he concentrates on researching modernity. The author and editor of several dozen books, including King’s phantom body. Peripheral struggle with modern form, Sport does not exist. Olympics in the performance society (together with Krzysztof Wolański) and Solidarity 2.0 or Democracy as a Form of Life. Jan Sowa is the professor at the Department of Culture Theory at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw.

See also

09.06.2022

Jan Sowa

Guided Tour

The exhibition Seeing Stones and Spaces Beyond the Valley is guided by Jan Sowa. Guided tour in Polish is included in the price of...
02.12.2020

Joint publication of Biennale Warszawa and the Institute of Polish Culture, University of Warsaw

The Cultures of Anticipated Futures

The book  features contributions from remarkable and internationally acclaimed authors, such as Niklas Luhmann, which should attract...
02.11.2020

An interview with Dilar Dirik

Learning from Rojava

JAN SOWA: In recent years, the Middle East has defied a lot of stereotypes, forcing many to rethink what is possible in the...
13.05.2020

Press release

“The Missing Denominator” – new book edited by Jan Sowa

The latest publication edited by sociologist Jan Sowa comprises a collection of texts whose shared point of departure was the...
12.05.2020

New book edited by Jan Sowa

“The Missing Denominator”

The challenge is not how to make these people accept Western rationality, but how to stop the affluent Northern classes from...
22.04.2020

Jan Sowa

Post-in-Between-Capitalism

Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow … Between the conception And the creation Between the...
01.04.2020

Press release

“COVID-19. The World After the Pandemic”
A new series from Biennale Warszawa

Soon, a text by Jan J. Zygmuntowski, Biennale Warszawa will inaugurate  the series “COVID-19. The World After the...
31.03.2020

COVID-19
The World After
the Pandemic

In its current efforts to conceive and organise a “different” future, Biennale Warszawa has been exploring the causes and...
25.02.2020

Polish Social Forum

Social School of Anti-capitalism

Semester II
08.10.2019

Meeting with Didier Eribon

The anatomy of shame and social exclusion

Karakter and Biennale Warszawa invite you on 24 October at 18.00 to a meeting with Didier Eribon, author of an acclaimed book...
17.09.2019

Polish Social Forum

Social School of Anti-capitalism

Semester 1
01.07.2019

Let's Organise Our Future!

Curatorial texts
Biennale Warszawa 2019

“Let’s organise our future!” — the first edition of Biennale Warszawa is over. Now, we encourage you to read curatorial...
24.04.2019

Presentation of the book edited by Jan Sowa

Solidarity 2.0, or democracy as a form of life

A meeting with social activists and researchers of democracy summarising six months of lectures, seminars and debates, organized...
24.04.2019

SYMPOSIUM

Avantgarde Decentered: (Semi)Peripheries of Capitalism and Universal History

When it came to analysing social and economic development on the global scale, much of 20th century social science was dominated...
24.04.2019

Presentation of the research project of Biennale Warszawa and the Academy of Fine Arts

Mapping multicultural Warsaw

In 2018, researchers working for Biennale Warszawa under the direction of Katarzyna Wojnar PhD from EUROREG UW prepared an interactive map...
24.04.2019

SYMPOSIUM

The Missing Denominator – Universalism and Progressive Cultural Politics

Universalism seems to be one of the most ambivalent and contradictory, yet also valuable elements of European cultural legacy. On the...
24.04.2019

Polish Social Forum

The idea of the Polish Social Forum responds to the need to organise the future, i.e. looking for realistic alternatives in the...
17.01.2019

A City Curating Reader. Public Art Munich 2018

City architects, city curators? Presentation and discussion

Udział wezmą: Agata Siwiak, Joanna Warsza, Aleksandra Wasilkowska Moderation: Jan Sowa In 2018 Joanna Warsza was acting as a curator...
03.01.2019

Biennale International – open discussion panel

An open discussion panel accompanying the international meeting of biennale representatives.
29.12.2018

International meeting of biennales from Central and Eastern Europe

Biennale International

On January 10-13, 2019 in Warsaw, an international meeting will be held, attended by the representatives of biennales in Prague...
23.11.2018

Seminar by Jan Sowa

Humanities beyond the academia

The change whose harbingers we can observe in the contemporary world concerns the formula of education and academia as well. After all,...
23.11.2018

Curator: Michał Kuziak

Humanities of the future

A series of seminars by Michał Kuziak
09.11.2018

Lecture by Jan Sowa

The Art of Not Being Governed, in other words, democracy as a form of life

The protection of democracy has become the number one task for many environments and organizations – both in Poland and elsewhere in...
08.11.2018

Jan Sowa

SKIP THE LINE!
Guided tour of the exhibition
Jan Sowa
07.11.2018

Director: Paweł Wodziński

Solidarity. The New Project

In “Solidarity. The New Project” directed by Paweł Wodziński some unique archival materials are used.
06.11.2018

Curator: Jan Sowa

Solidarity 2.0
or Democracy as a Form of Life

The events of recent years have already accustomed us to crises, breakdowns and political disasters. We often hear the opinion...
13.06.2018

Lecture by Jan Sowa

Is global democracy possible?
Part II: Visions of the future

Nowadays, it is difficult to ignore the feeling that humanity is in a crucial moment of its development, which can also turn out...
05.06.2018

The talk with Maria Świetlik and Marcin Koziej will be led by Jan Sowa

Technologies (for) democracy: opportunities, challenges, threats

A rapid development of information and communication technologies in the last half-century has brought ambivalent social and political...
28.05.2018

Lecture by Jan Sowa

Is global democracy possible?
Part I: two centuries of democratization

Parliamentarism has been undergoing a continuous development over the last two centuries. During this time, it has expanded in two...
24.05.2018

Lecture by Monika Płatek

What is fair? Corrective justice and other ways of democratizing law in theory and in practice

The reforms of the judicial system conducted in Poland in recent years have provoked heated discussions about the separation of powers, as...
07.05.2018

Lecture by Jan Sowa

Populism – a threat or a symptom of democracy?

The increasing popularity of conservative populism forces us to rethink this phenomenon on a systematic basis. Contrary...
22.04.2018

Lecture by Jan Sowa

Workers’ and economic democracy: can the economy be managed democratically?

The last two centuries have been systematic and impressive growth of democratic forms of organizing social life. Parliamentarism, however...
05.04.2018

Lecture by Jan Sowa

Democracy of fleeing – squats, communes, autonomous zones and other demons of liberal...

In the mainstream of the public debate, both the conservatives and the liberals try to construct a peculiar symmetry in which the...
21.03.2018

Lecture by Jan Sowa

A general assembly as the core of radical political mobilizations: Arab Spring, Indignant Ones,...

In 2011, a wave of democratic mobilizations and revolutions swept through the world. Its trajectory was quite paradoxical, because...
18.03.2018

Lecture by Bartłomiej Błesznowski

Cooperatism – an ideology of the economically organized democracy. History and timeliness

The subject of the efforts of the emancipation movements of the nineteenth and twentieth century was primarily the material situation of the...
17.03.2018

Lecture by Stephen Wright

Art as Commoning and Compatibility

According to Paul Devautour “Compatibility has replaced specificity as a key factor shaping artistic practice” Modernist...
07.03.2018

Lecture by Jan Sowa

The city as an arena of democracy – from the Italian republics to the libertarian...

Inquiry regarding democratic forms of social and political life is, to a large extent, a question of scale. Democracy was...
18.02.2018

Lecture by Jan Sowa

Democratic alternatives to the parliamentary representation from the Greek polis to liquid...

Although the most often we search for the sources of modern democracy in ancient Greece, we rarely know how much Greek democracy...
06.02.2018

Lecture by Dilar Dirik. After the lecture, discussion will be led by Beata Kowalska

Democratic Federation of Rojava – an experiment with radical democracy

Presentation of the Kurdish activist Dilar Dirik, Democratic Federation of Rojava – an experiment with radical democracy. After the...
30.01.2018

Lecture by Jan Sowa

Democracy in tribal communities

The contemporary parliamentary-democratic regimes with their inclusive political rights and the participation of all citizens in power are...
21.01.2018

Meeting with Joanna Pawluśkiewicz and Jakub Rok, the activists involved in the defence of the Białowieża Forest

The camp for the Forest as a self-organized democratic enterprise

The fight for saving Białowieża Forest was one of the most important socio-political events of 2017. It gathered people from various...
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