<p>Christian Jankowski, <em>Heavy Weight History (Ludwik Waryński),</em> B/w photograph on baryt paper, 140 x 186,8 cm, 2013 (Photo: Szymon Rogiński). Courtesy of the artist</p>
<p>Christian Jankowski, <em>Heavy Weight History (Ludwik Waryński),</em> B/w photograph on baryt paper, 140 x 186,8 cm, 2013 (Photo: Szymon Rogiński). Courtesy of the artist</p>

No. 9: Warsaw - Moscow. Monuments of Transition

Managing editor: Krzysztof Pijarski

Christian Jankowski, Heavy Weight History (Ludwik Waryński), B/w photograph on baryt paper, 140 x 186,8 cm, 2013 (Photo: Szymon Rogiński). Courtesy of the artist

This issue was supported by the Polish Minister of Science and Higher Education, from the funds of the program for the popularization of scholarship in 2015.

Table of Contents

Introduction

  1. Warsaw – Moscow. Monuments of Transition

    Krzysztof Pijarski
    Krzysztof Pijarski, ”Warsaw – Moscow. Monuments of Transition”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 9 (2015), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2015.9.1156

    Introductory remarks to the issue.

Close-up

  1. The Stadium as a Witness. A Story of a Changing Monument

    Helena Patzer, Magdalena Góralska, Małgorzata Winkowska
    Helena Patzer, Magdalena Góralska et al., ”The Stadium as a Witness. A Story of a Changing Monument”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 9 (2015), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2015.9.1162

    In this article, we discuss the 10th Anniversary Stadium/National Stadium in Warsaw as a monument of transition, as a place where the conflicts present in the society might resurface and become visible. We look at the case of the Stadium, because of its symbolical meaning both in the time of the Polish People’s Republic and nowadays. Another reason to take a look at the Stadium is its history - the interesting process of the transformation of this space and the remaking of the whole area - which took place during the last 25 years. We were also interested in iconoclastic gestures, and so the demolition of the Decennial Stadium in 2008-10 was a case in point: an example of what happened in the public space in post-socialist Poland.

  2. Rainbow in Flames

    Weronika Plińska
    Weronika Plińska, ”Rainbow in Flames”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 9 (2015), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2015.9.1164

    The Rainbow is a public sculpture created by Julita Wójcik as an outcome of her participatory art project conducted in Wigry, North-East Poland, in 2010. In 2011, the sculpture was transported to Brussels, where it stood in front of the European Parliament, as a monument to Poland’s first EU Presidency. The sculpture returned to Poland in 2012 and it was located in Warsaw at the Square of the Savior. Between the years 2012 and 2015 the artwork was administrated by the Warsaw City Council.

    The Rainbow was destroyed and renovated several times as a visible result of struggles between various groups of its “defenders” and “attackers”. In this article, drawing from my ethnographic data and presenting selected ways of its appropriation, I will argue that the Rainbow surrounded by its material and immaterial infrastructures operates as a powerful device – it is a Gellian “trap” (Gell 1996, 1998), understood, after Roger Sansi, as a “gift” which interpellates the emergent political subjects of those who respond to it as "receivers" (Sansi 2014).

  3. Monumentality Ephemerated

    Nina Sosna
    Nina Sosna, ”Monumentality Ephemerated”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 9 (2015), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2015.9.1167

    Moscow monuments paradoxically flicker between heavy materiality and elusive memory that they intend to shape. The sequence of erasures of the material layers of historical structures that occurred since 1917 was reinforced by the modern technologies of transmitting and collecting data outside of human minds and resulted in the dispersion of the visual field and loss of orientation within it, thus destabilizing the position of the subject in its surroundings. This vertigo effect is studied in the article – using a conceptual framework provided by Lyotard and Stiegler – on the example of the VDNKH (Exhibition of Achievements of National Economy), a site where ideological and practical problems were solved at one stroke, where two histories of two states converge, and an abyss into a dead zone of visuality opens.

  4. The Bolotnaya Square: Urban Design in Moscow between social activities and political protests

    Evgenia Abramova
    Evgenia Abramova, ”The Bolotnaya Square: Urban Design in Moscow...”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 9 (2015), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2015.9.1169

    The article is aimed to explore the so-called Turn to the City in Moscow, as a part of which the city has experienced a growth of interest in the redevelopment of the post-Soviet urban structure; and urban design is considered one of the tools of this redevelopment. On the one hand, the turn to urban design is based on the attention to public, green, and pedestrian places and social activities within these places; on the other hand it is able to undermine the power of oppositional movements in the city, which also take place on the redeveloped sites. These contradictions between social activities and political protest is analyzed in the case study of the Bolotnaya Square, which became widely famous as a public place during the political actions of 2011- 2012.

  5. Lubyanka Square - the Monument of an Unresolved Conflict

    Alexander Makhov
    Alexander Makhov, ”Lubyanka Square - the Monument of an Unresolved Conflict”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 9 (2015), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2015.9.1171

    The article considers the case of Lubyanka Square in Moscow which became a monument of the Soviet security agency and a place of an unresolved conflict between different groups of the Russian society. Looking into the history of the square and the genesis of its visual image, the author tries to find out the origins of the great importance of the Lubyanka square in the Russian public sphere today.

Viewpoint

  1. 1/280

    FIlip Skrońc
    FIlip Skrońc, ”1/280”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 9 (2015), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2015.9.1173

    Presentation of the project "1/280."

  2. The Stadium

    Kuba Rubaj
    Kuba Rubaj, ”The Stadium”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 9 (2015), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2015.9.1174

    Presentation of the project The Stadium. 

  3. Just Say No

    Ekaterina Lazareva
    Ekaterina Lazareva, ”Just Say No”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 9 (2015), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2015.9.1175

    Presentation of the project Just Say No (2013).

Panorama

  1. Poor Images

    Marek Krajewski
    Marek Krajewski, ”Poor Images”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 9 (2015), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2015.9.1040

    The author seeks answers for two basic questions. First, he reflects on the very notion of poor images, and their relation to strong, vital and causative representations. The answer to this question enables to see through the structure of contemporary visual field, and to point the ability of certain images to act and influence people to act. Secondly, the author asks, what the images of the poor are, and if they may in certain conditions become strong and influential representations. Here, the answer serves as an indication that the domination of given social categories is grounded in the control over the means of images' distribution and it is the power hard to oppose. However the pessimism of conclusions in the article is seeming as the author tries to show, that the poor have the causative power of their own if only they don't aim at producing the images supposed to be strong and powerful.

  2. Undoing the State of Exception. Walter Benjamin and the Critique of the Law's Violence

    Michał Pospiszyl
    Michał Pospiszyl, ”Undoing the State of Exception. Walter Benjamin and the Critique...”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 9 (2015), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2015.9.1041

    The essay consists of four parts. In the first, the author presents theoretical tricks used by Walter Benjamin against fascism, arguing that in many respects they resemble Charlie Chaplin’s burlesque films and that they should be read in the context of the notion of the comic developed in The Origin of German Tragic Drama. The second part is an attempt at a new interpretation of Benjamin’s Critique of Violence. It shows a strict correlation between the concept of pure means and the one of pure or divine violence, which corresponds to the relation between dialectic image (as pure violence) and the hitherto repressed history of the resistance of subaltern classes (realized in the sphere of pure means) liberated by this image. In the third part, one may find a reconstruction of the debate between Benjamin and Adorno, in which its main stake is the concept of nature (anti-essentialist in Benjamin and proto-fascist in Adorno). In the fourth part, the author argues that this anti-essentialist concept of nature stands at the origin of the Benjaminian critique of fascism, which culminates in the notion of the real/carnivalesque state of exception.

  3. Eyes

    Klaus Theweleit
    Klaus Theweleit, ”Eyes”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 9 (2015), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2015.9.1043

    Polish translation of a chapter from the book Male Fantasies (1987).

  4. Traumatic Encounters

    Michael Rothberg
    Michael Rothberg, ”Traumatic Encounters”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 9 (2015), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2015.9.1044

    Polish translation of a fragment of a chapter entitled "The Work of Testimony in the Age of Decolonization: Chronicle of a Summer and the Emergence of the Holocaust Survivor" from the book Multidirectional Memory. Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization. The fragment is devoted to the role of the Holocaust memory and of the female survivor in Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin's 1961 film Chronicle of a Summer.

Perspectives

  1. Ontological Laboratory in the Making: “After Year Zero” and the Resetting of Historical Imagination

    Katarzyna Bojarska, Anselm Franke, Annett Busch
    Katarzyna Bojarska, Anselm Franke et al., ”Ontological Laboratory in the Making: “After Year Zero” and...”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 9 (2015), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2015.9.1179

    A conversation between Annett Busch, Anselm Franke and Katarzyna Bojarska about the exhibition "After Year Zero. Universal Imaginaries - Geographies of Collaboration", shown at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw between June and August, 2015.

  2. Thinking-with-Connections

    Paweł Mościcki, Adam Lipszyc, Sigrid Weigel
    Paweł Mościcki, Adam Lipszyc et al., ”Thinking-with-Connections”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 9 (2015), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2015.9.1183

    The text is an interview with prof. Sigrid Weigel (ZFL Berlin) made by Adam Lipszyc and Paweł Mościcki. It concerns the general view of Sigrid Weigel's academic career, her institutional engagments as well as research achievements.

Snapshots

  1. "What was Here... and What Will Be. The Palace of Culture and Science as a Monument of (Non) TIme

    Iwona Kurz
    Iwona Kurz, ”"What was Here... and What Will Be. The Palace of Culture ”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 9 (2015), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2015.9.1045

    An analysis of several recently published books devoted to the Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw. The text reconstructs the mannifold mythologies of the socialist realist building.

  2. What Can One See after the War?

    Agata Zborowska
    Agata Zborowska, ”What Can One See after the War?”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 9 (2015), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2015.9.1046

    The article examines the exhibition „Just after the War”, shown until January 2016 at the Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw. The article locates the exhibition in a wide socio-political context, discussing the most important threads and aims expressed by the curators: Joanna Kordjak and Agnieszka Szewczyk.

  3. War for Peace - an Escape from the Dominant Fiction

    Katarzyna Bojarska
    Katarzyna Bojarska, ”War for Peace - an Escape from the Dominant Fiction”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 9 (2015), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2015.9.1047

    The text is a critical reflection of the exhibition "War and Peace" curated by: Magdalena Linkowska, Paweł Leszkowicz, Tomasz Kitliński, Labirynt Gallery, Lublin, September 11th – October 31st 2015.

  4. The Quiet Murmurs of the Cosmos

    Paweł Mościcki
    Paweł Mościcki, ”The Quiet Murmurs of the Cosmos”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 9 (2015), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2015.9.1056

    Review of the exhibion of the works of Emil Cieślar, presented at teh Galeria Pola Magnetyczne in Warsaw.

  5. What Does the Record Re-Enact?

    Krzysztof Świrek
    Krzysztof Świrek, ”What Does the Record Re-Enact?”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 9 (2015), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2015.9.1144

    Review of the exhibition "Zofia Rydet. Record 1978-1990" held at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw (Sept. 25th, 2015 – Jan. 10th 2016). The exhibition investigates the archive developed by the Polish photographer Zofia Rydet over many years. The presentation shows that Rydet's project was multidimensional – it involved characteristics of both aesthetic and research work.

  6. Laboratory of the Body

    Izabela Szymańska
    Izabela Szymańska, ”Laboratory of the Body”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 9 (2015), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2015.9.1146

    The article is a review of the "Let's Dance" exhibition.