SMRN’s Forth Public Lecture
On November 1, 2025, SMRN hosted its fourth public lecture, Shards of Crystalism: A Decolonial Media Archaeology of Deleuze’s Crystal-Image, presented by Dr. Radek Przedpełski. The event was followed by a discussion with Dr. Laura U. Marks and an engaging Q&A session.
Dr. Przedpełski’s lecture proposed a decolonial ecomedia archaeology that brought into dialogue Gilles Deleuze’s concept of the crystal-image with two artistic practices produced in reform-socialist contexts during the 1970s: Krzysztof Zanussi’s Polish film The Structure of Crystal (1969) and the Sudanese Crystalist Manifesto (1976). He argued that both works mobilized the language of science, particularly crystallography and quantum physics, to articulate heterodox, anti-essentialist ideas in ways that could circulate under authoritarian regimes.
The presentation was structured around three interrelated conceptual exchanges drawn from Deleuze’s definition of the crystal-image. First, the oscillation between the actual and the virtual was examined through Zanussi’s portrayal of two physicists whose incompatible life paths remain unresolved, sustaining a state of perceptual indeterminacy. Second, drawing on Gilbert Simondon, crystallization was discussed as a dynamic relation between a “seed” and its environment, with attention to how the film’s visual and sonic elements enact this process. Finally, the lecture turned to the Sudanese Crystalists, whose manifesto and performative works radicalize the crystal structure by embracing opacity, pleasure, and indeterminacy as forms of resistance to both colonial and nationalist logics.
By tracing these resonances across film, performance, and manifesto, and across Eastern Europe and North-East Africa, Dr. Przedpełski framed crystallization not as a metaphor but as a methodological tool. In this approach, the crystal becomes a way of thinking relationally across media, geographies, and historical moments, while keeping contradictions alive in productive tension.
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