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The Embassy of Poland in Poland: The Polin Myth in the Museum of the History of Polish Jews (MHPJ) as narrative pattern and model of minority-majority relationsThe text offers an analysis of the MHJP’s core exhibition, the architecture of the Museum’s building as well as the transformations of its surroundings, seen as operations in as well as on a space that is a sign and a designate of the Holocaust...
On the one hand, the sphere of art offers the possibility to imagine a different, less oppressive and normative world, where just as in the case of cartoons even the greatest gawks, misfits, and outcasts would build friendships and alliances helping them to reach a happy ending. On the other hand, there is something of an artistic performance, at least of an illusionist show, to an intentional act...
The essay takes the 2014 book Kontaminierte Landschaften [Contaminated Landscapes] by the Austrian journalist and writer Martin Pollack as an opportunity to explore relationships between landscapes, (marked) places, and memory. In considering the relationship between the metaphorical (literary) image of contaminated landscapes and the actual crime scenes, I focus on the mass shootings of Jews by the...
The main theme of the text is the wartime and postwar history of the area of the German Nazi extermination camp Treblinka II, seen from the perspective of the production of landscape – with a special focus on the identity aspect, i.e. the nationalization of nature and the naturalization of the nation. The argument refers to imaging conventions of nature and ethnographic photography, like the German...
Until the End of the World by Wim Wenders was a large project. This essay discusses the slow process of the film’s creation, its distribution, its content and critical response, in order to point at failure as the question key to each of those topics. Purpose, success, resolution, ending, the end of the world – those notions appear either irrelevant or impossible in the context of this film. The research...
This richly illustrated text is a descriptive introduction to Dominika Macocha’s video-sculptural installation, detailing the idea behind the work, the process of its creation, and its suggested interpretations. The file is concluded with a link to the film The Mystery of Forest Lakelet.
This article is a record of a discussion concerning Dominika Macocha’s video-sculptural installation 50°31’29.7”N 22°46’39.1”E, 50°30’56.2”N 22°46’01.0”E, 50°30’41.0”N 22°45’49.5”E. The work deals with the uses of discourse and landscapes in mechanisms of camouflaging the crimes perpetrated on Jews by Poles during the Holocaust. The author lays bare and deconstructs these mechanisms – above all the...
The article focuses on the question of national, gender, and religious identity in the poetry and other writings of Wojciech Stamm, also known as Lopez Mausere and Gertruda Jarząbek. Mausere’s affiliation with the Polish Failures Club (Club der Polnischen Versager) in Berlin and the relationships between his biography and literature are examined as well. The author contends that Mausere’s concept...
In her paper, the author examines images of Central Europe created in various popular genres (campus novels, quasi-guidebooks, films, essays) as well as interpretations of the Central European myth from countries of the region. The aim is to reflect on two main Central European narratives. One is a vision of retrospective utopia of lost harmonious coexistence of cultures, religions and nations. The...
The research on workers’ culture carried out in Poland from the 1960s to the late 1980s has been recognised in this article as a failure. The author discusses the numerous attempts to conceptualise research programmes and their actual implementation in the fields of sociology, anthropology and the emerging cultural studies. She looks for the sources of their failure, reflecting on its nature and possible...
This article problematizes the Polish cinema of the 1990s by analyzing it in terms of the aesthetic of failure. Of crucial importance for that interpretation is the postcolonial perspective. Seen from this perspective, Poland of the political transformation period appears a land of unfulfilled dreams of being-like-the-West. One of the spheres where this is visible is the Polish cinematography of that...
The article focuses on the material culture of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) as portrayed in selected German films made after 1990 and set in the GDR. The objects that are used in the films serve as a special kind of artefacts, symbolizing the reality of the GDR and defining it as imperfect, below expectations, and inefficient in meeting consumer demand. An important point of reference in the...
The paper discusses images of failure in Polish photography created in 1970–2000, drawing on three particular projects: Archeology of Photography by Jerzy Lewczyński and the exhibitions The New Documentalists (2006) and Postdocument: Missing Documents: Documents of the Polish Transformation After 1989 (2012). As such, it concentrates on documentary, or post-documentary, photography which suffers no...
Omawiając koncepcje i definicje faszyzmu, autorka oferuje nowe i szersze spojrzenie na to zjawisko, wprowadzając pojęcie faszyzacji jako narzędzie analityczne. Biorąc pod uwagę fakt, że warunki, które wyprodukowały faszyzm, nie zostały zniszczone, jego elementy nadal nie zostały zdelegitymizowane, a wyobraźnia faszystowska wciąż istnieje w europejskich i pozaeuropejskich społeczeństwach, autorka argumentuje,...
This letter is a response by Dominika Macocha to the discussion between Elżbieta Janicka, Konrad Matyjaszek, Xawery Stańczyk, Katrin Stoll and Anna Zawadzka about her video-sculptural installation work “50°31’29.7”N 22°46’39.1”E, 50°30’56.2”N 22°46’01.0”E, 50°30’41.0”N 22°45’49.5”E” published in Studia Litteraria et Historica 9 (2020). The discussion has enabled the artist to look at her work from...
Prezentowana rozmowa dotyczy spuścizny Leo Lowenthala (1900–1993), który przyszedł na świat w żydowskiej rodzinie we Frankfurcie nad Menem. Lowenthal należał do pierwszego pokolenia teoretyków krytycznych działających w Instytucie Badań Społecznych Uniwersytetu Frankfurckiego pod kierownictwem Maxa Horkheimera. Przyjmując za punkt wyjścia wypracowaną przez Lowenthala koncepcję teorii krytycznej, Katrin...
W artykule analizuję niektóre niedawne próby delegitymizacji antyfaszyzmu zarówno jako zjawiska politycznego, jak i przedmiotu badań historycznych. W niemieckich środowiskach akademickich i poza nimi ten „anty-antyfaszyzm” operuje pojęciami komunistycznego skażenia. Aby przeciwstawić się takim narracjom, proponuję szerszą perspektywę historyczną. Bierze ona pod uwagę wielość antyfaszyzmu, jego różne...
Are there fascizizing ways to look at public space and aesthetics? If so, how do they manifest themselves? What characterizes the fascization of space? How and where can you recognize it? How do architecture and symbols in public space contribute to fascization of daily life? One of them is a policy of cleansing and rhetoric about recovering after an imaginary foreign domination or invasion. The aim...
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