Desmond
Harding The Urban Imaginary and the Space of the City
In recent
decades new theories and practices of urbanism and city planning
have coalesced to form a highly visible domain of transdisciplinary
discourses for studying cities as both distinct socio-cultural
spaces as well as componential parts of wider networked systems,
regional and global. One consequence of this development is an
increasing awareness on the part of urban scholars that social
processes are informed as much by symbolic and discursive practices
as they are grounded in capitalist political economic practices. The
Urban Imaginary and the Space of the City examines the ways in which
the empirical city and its subjectively perceived image in Western
culture endures as a complex and discontinuous site of convergent
interests rather than a logically or conceptually clarified idea.
Ewa Rewers
From the Town Genius Loci to Town Oligopticons
It is becoming
increasingly difficult to describe towns while using historical
categories, terms or ontological metaphors such as genius loci.
Secular, fragmentary, and anomic post-industrial towns subjected to
communication and information do not enroot us “here”, in our
places, but change us into moving images of the consumer, the
tourist, the passerby, the demonstrator, and the hardworking
resident, and together with the images of the streets and squares
transfer us “elsewhere”. Despite the fact that today it is rather
the product of marketing strategies than a live metaphor, genius
loci continues to inspire researchers. What can be done so that its
sense-creating force would not vanish while imprisoned in an
historical costume? A proposal formulated in this text leads to a
confrontation of the town genius loci with another metaphor – the
oligopticon – with whose assistance B. Latour described Paris at the
end of the twentieth century. Between genius loci and oligopticon
there exists a bond based on a common meaning: both are known as the
“tireless guard”. By blending the social and technological aspects
of life in the city, oligopticon, similarly to genius loci, extracts
from urban space an endless number of sites (the multiple versions
of Paris in Paris, Poznań in Poznań, Gdańsk in Gdańsk), which
together create a certain entity; true, it remains inaccessible for
the sort of perception which has not been subjugated to the media,
but it does not resemble anything else, and is mysterious and
undefined.
Krzysztof
Rutkowski Wandering Writing. Paris as a Book of Signs
Le Livre des
passages is strange work and must be read in an equally unusual
manner: this is a book which opens itself on a page of its own
choice and compels the eye of the reader-flâneur to delve into a
certain fragment, particle or voice. A Book of Passages written by a
tramp calls for a reader who is a vagabond, a brigand, and an
assailant.
For Benjamin,
just as for Balzac, Nerval and Baudelaire, Paris was a book of signs
endowed with an inexhaustible narration potential, resembling a
generator of the senses, working incessantly and at top speed. The
task of the poet-flâneur consists, therefore, of indicating the
multi-voice, ungrasped and ungraspable richness of simultaneously
transpiring narrations.
Tomasz
Szerszeń The Towns of Walter Benjamin
Throughout his
whole life Walter Benjamin created mini-portraits of towns,
synthetic “images of thought”, sometimes no larger than the text on
a postcard. They mark the places in which the life of the author of
Le Livre des passages merges, as closely as possible, with writing
and the text. This is the place where that which is theoretical and
that which is experienced are already inseparable and
undistinguishable. Benjamin’s images of cities are never a
journalistic “capturing of life”: following the example of the poet
Stefan George, he introduced the concept of denkbilder, which
contains tension between the past and the present, between
recollection and experience. Benjamin believed in the cabalistic
power of the word. Just as Proust treated names, so he conceived the
names of towns as symbols: Berlin, Jerusalem, Marseilles, Moscow,
Naples, New York, Paris, Riga, San Indignant...
Gabriela
Świtek The Transcriptions of the Gesamtkunstwerk
The article
addresses the question of the Gesamtkunstwerk as a key-word with
which to describe the ideal of modern culture. The programme of a
Gesamtkunstwerk was first explicitly formulated in the
mid-nineteenth century by Richard Wagner in his essays Art and
Revolution and The Artwork of the Future written in exile in Zurich
after the failure of the German revolution in 1849. Traditionally
seen as the invention of the nineteenth-century, the notion of
Gesamtkunstwerk, has been applied to a great variety of phenomena,
ranging from the theatre, music, architecture, urban projects and
political systems. Despite the elusive nature of the concept, some
attempts have been made to set forth its essential characteristics;
Harald Szeemann’s exhibition Der Hang zum Gesamtkunswerk.
Europäische Utopien seit 1800 (Zurich, 1983) is a case in point. As
Odo Marquard notes, the concept of Gesamtkunstwerk is already
implied in Schelling’s philosophy of art and its identity system:
the system (das Gesamte) becomes an artwork and the artwork becomes
a system. Although the early German Romantics did not use the term
itself, Friedrich Schlegel’s famous Athenaeum Fragment 116 is also
considered as an anticipation of the nineteenth-century concept of
Gesamtkunstwerk. The Romantic claim for the synthesis of the arts
and poeticization of life opened a path for a modern utopia, where
art has been endowed with a ‘redemptive’ power, and had far-reaching
consequences for the development of modern aesthetics. Although the
notion of the Gesamtkunstwerk now seems archaic or ‘suspicious’ –
especially in the context of postmodernism and its valuation of the
fragmentary – it has reappeared in the expanded field of
contemporary art and architecture, especially in happenings,
installations and projects in public spaces
Ryszard
Engelking Insanity in a Strange Town
The author
discusses the origin and history of the publication of Nerval’s
Pandora and accentuates the differences between the narrator
traversing the city (flâneur) and the insane narrator in Pandora.
Piotr Jakub
Fereński The Curiosities of Vienna
In his Eine
Reise in das Innere von Wien, Gerhard Roth accepted a historical
perspective and combined two types of reflectiveness. By focusing on
symbols, values and ideas, he filled his essays with a concentrated
mixture of data, dates, figures and statistics. At the same time, he
proposed a rather untypical journey to the innermost recesses of the
Austrian capital. In its course, Roth reaches out for that which is
concealed (in the subconscious) and thus creates a “different”
portrait of the city as a silent (although by no means mute) witness
of tumultuous history. The past and the present assume the form of
quarters, streets, squares and assorted buildings that house
institutions, brimming with law and violence, war and festivities,
amusement and malady. At the same time, Roth does not shy from
maligning the history of the state, the authorities, the Church,
etc. An in-depth reflection on history and culture is accompanied by
demystification tendencies not devoid of political demonstration.
Joanna
Kulas Mysterious Polish Towns
The presented
essay contains a historical-literary outline of Polish adaptations
of Les mystères de Paris by Eugène Sue during the second half of the
nineteenth century. The author analysed Tajemnice Warszawy (The
Mysteries of Warsaw, 1908) by A. W. Koszutski, Tajemnice Krakowa
(The Mysteries of Cracow, 1870) by Michał Bałucki, Tajemnice Nalewek
(The Mysteries of Nalewki, 1889) by Henryk Nagiel and Tajemnice
Warszawy (The Mysteries of Warsaw, 1887) by Bojomir Bończa within
the context of the development of popular literature. The article
indicates the fundamental elements of the genre: the fairy-tale
structure with a morally satisfying end, the one-dimensional
protagonists, the didactic commentaries and frequent passages
addressed to the reader, the motif of love and money as the prime
motor forces of the plot, the expanded dialogues and, first and
foremost, the specific feature of mystery in the depiction of the
city, the protagonist and their past. By resorting to the
instruments used by the sociology of literature, the author proposes
a critique of the assessment of the Polish mystery novel undertaken
by Józef Abhors, and sketches the mechanism of the functioning of
this genre of popular literature. In doing so, she shows the method
of involving the reader into the course of the narration by means of
a created illusion of reality, and thus discloses its persuasive
strategy.
Barbara
Bossak-Herbst Gdańsk in Novels by Paweł Huelle and Stefan
Chwin – an Attempted Reconstruction
The presented
article is an attempt at reconstructing models of the identity of
places present in biographical novels and stories by two celebrated
authors and leaders of public opinion. The author seeks an answer to
the question: which parts of the Tri-City are subjected to the most
intense symbolisation in the oeuvre of the two men of letters? Do
their works contain recurring combinations of values associated with
concrete places in the space of Gdańsk? How is the identity of
people perceived within the context of the cultural identity of the
place?
Paweł Huelle
creates a selective and vivid portrait of Gdańsk, which appears to
be one of his oeuvre’s “chief protagonists”. Even more extensive
descriptions of cities and the author’s experiences are to be found
in novels by Stefan Chwin, who pays great attention to his closest
surrounding. Both authors symbolically designate Gdańsk by pursuing
an archaeology of its residents’ social memory and the
micro-politics of local identity, enjoyed by numerous recipients.
Agnieszka
Sabor Jerusalem: a Question of Life and Death
The presented
text is a subjective and by no means analytical portrait of a city.
In several scenes from tlife of Jerusalem, the author stresses the
tension between the cultural compulsion of “sacred behaviour” in the
city and her own incapability to perform such exalted gestures. She
also emphasizes the tension between Jerusalem (with its pressure of
Holy History) and Tel Aviv (with its youth and unhampered freedom).
Anna
Pochłódka “It All Started in This Town”. Papal Symbols in the
Visual Surrounding of Wadowice
The article
describes the visual surrounding of the hometown of John Paul II
from the vantage point of the pope’s person, and including
commemorative plaques, monuments, and information. With this purpose
in mind the author applied the concept of the iconosphere, with
photographs as an essential element of the article.
Signs
referring to papal qualities may be arranged in circles of the
dissemination of the sacrum, whose centre is the parish church of
the Presentation of the Holy Virgin Mary in the town market square.
The first circle is thus the square itself, with the municipal
office building featuring an inscription: “The Wadowice
self-government ever faithful to John Paul II”. The market square
also includes a Museum – the Family Home of John Paul II and a
Municipal Museum, which at the time of the research displayed an
exposition on the pope. A separate part of the space is composed of
shops offering devotionalia dominated by likenesses of the pope. The
second circle is the town. Within this range the papal narration is
organised by the Karol Wojtyła Route composed of sites important in
the life of the future pope and accompanied by numerous
uncoordinated references. The third circle is the John Paul II Rail
Trail, linking Wadowice and Cracow by means of a special “papal”
train. The fourth and fifth circles of the dissemination of the
sacrum encompass Poland and the whole world. Apparently, symbols of
papacy constitute the myth of Wadowice conceived as a papal town.
Zofia Król
Literature and Bananas. The Reality of a City in The Book of
Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa
The titular
“disquiet” is the outcome of an opposition to outside reality,
unattainable and highly desirable. Life – symbolised by unpurchased
bananas – follows its course outside the windows, in the streets of
Lisbon. The civil servant trapped in an office is much too mired in
self-reflections and absorbed in revelling in his misery to be able
to overcome disquiet and experience the presence of the world...
Magdalena
Barbaruk Buenos Aires. Fantasy vs. Metaphysics
A presentation
of the assorted dimensions of the fantastic qualities of Buenos
Aires: firstly, this is an invented city whose ontical locus is the
word (assuming that the town had been created by the toponym
“Bu-enos Aires” the text analyses etymologies, transcription
variants, and attempts at changing the name); secondly, the town is
architecturally monotonous (the city’s Hippodameian plan and
symbolic centre, the Recoleta cemetery), and thus has produced the
best fantasy literature; thirdly, Buenos is the realisation of a
fantastic Enlightenment project by D. F. Sarmiento.
The author
depicts the city as a labyrinth, indicating two contexts of
deciphering it: town planning (the town envisaged as a gigantic
chessboard, a labyrinth of graves) and symbolic (a labyrinth of
letters), showing that we are dealing with an ironic (postmodern?)
variant which holds little promise of arriving at the sacral centre.
Patrycja
Cembrzyńska In Search of a Celestial Haven – a Cosmic Odyssey
The dialogue
Timaeus by Plato remarks that we should direct our thoughts towards
the realm of the eternal stars, and that our spirit is not at home
here, on Earth. Its true homeland is the heavens: “[…] we are a
plant not of an earthly but of a heavenly growth”. Is it possible to
live differently than on Earth? Fantasies of celestial cities were
pursued by Jonathan Swift, Georgiy Krutikov, and Wenzel Hablik.
Subsequently, the era of space flights led to dreams of discovering
a Promised Land in the universe. The Stanford Torus inter-stellar
colony conceived by NASA inspired Jarosław Kozakiewicz, the author
of Satopticon, which instead of being a New Atlantis turns out to be
a penal colony.
Dariusz
Czaja Fragments of a Venetian Discourse
This text is
part of a book (in print) on the ways of portraying Venice in
imagery and word. Upon the basis of a number of selected examples
(including an essay by E. Bieńkowska: Co mówią kamienie Wenecji?
(What Do the Stones of Venice Say?), a sketch by G. Simmel: Venedig,
a novel by J. Andruchowycz: Perwersja (Perversion) the author
demonstrates various possible strategies of representing the town in
linguistic discourses. By applying the semiotic concepts of a town’s
Text (in order to designate a holistic corpus of individual texts
about Venice), he accentuates the motifs that organise them,
searches for their enrolment in narration schemes, and follows the
game, conflict and tension involving contradictory likenesses of the
town.
Radosława Olewicz
A Wartime Town.
A Report from
Besieged Sarajevo
This
anthropological story deals with Sarajevo, a town submerged in war,
where contrary to all odds life continues to follow its course;
daily events are salvaged thank to human ingenuity and “the texts of
culture”. The author paid special attention to analysing the topos
of the “closed town”, with its logic ofa “world turned upside down”,
a characteristic suspension of “normal” time, and a special
comprehension of space. In doing so, she shows the similarity
between the descriptions of time and space of wartime Sarajevo and
Leningrad under siege.
Jacek
Sempoliński The Provinces, Dreams. Excess
The author
maintains that a contemporary work of art does not exist as such
only in a thicket of words. Today, we are witnessing the presence of
several thousand world-outlook conceptions of art, which the artist
must know in order to meet the prevailing demands and become a
creator for every occasion. The paradox of this situation consists
of the fact that someone who is to be the most creative component of
this process ceases to be such because the only creative people are
those who talk about it while objectifying the artist. An excess of
words and artistic undertakings is a feature characteristic for
contemporary culture.
Zbigniew
Benedyktowicz “The Archaic Landscape”. On the Provinces, the
Experiencing of the Town,
Warsaw and the
Photographs by Leonard Sempoliński – a conversation with Jacek
Sempoliński
A conversation
with an outstanding artist and painter about anthropology, painting,
pre-war Warsaw, the Praga district and photographs by the artist’s
father, Leonard Sempoliński.
Aleksandra
Melbechowska-Luty Jacek Sempoliński
The author
outlines the artistic biography and geography of the titular artist,
whose life followed two courses – between the large city and rural
existence. The artist became acquainted with the towns of Italy,
France, Spain and The Netherlands, while simultaneously immersing
himself in the life of the Polish province, where he worked.
Sempoliński experienced the landscape as a sign of an energy that
creates being and as ontological knowledge about the construction of
space and matter.
Hubert
Kowalski The Sculpted Decoration of the Kazimierzowski Palace
The history of
the titular edifice goes back to the first half of the seventeenth
century when its construction was initiated by Zygmunt III Vasa.
Originally, the building fulfilled the function of a suburban villa,
regarded as a supplement of the official royal residence at the
Royal Castle. The palace was erected in the Baroque style, but
successive redesigning changed its appearance to Late Baroque and
Classicistic. Totally damaged by fire in 1944, the palace was
reconstructed after the second world war.
The large
number of the transformations of the palace solid makes it
impossible to recreate the sculpted decorations, but basing himself
on archival information, iconographic material, and preserved
elements of the embellishment the author brings the reader closer to
this interesting iconographic programme.
Hanna
Faryna-Paszkiewicz The Praga Landscape
The uniqueness
and character of the Praga district in Warsaw are determined by a
number of features, unchanged for centuries. Owing to its location
the district remained in an unsymmetrical configuration vis à vis
the City on the left bank of the Vistula, and in an outright
opposition expressed in the social composition of the residents, the
origin of the population (a large percentage of Russians and Jews),
an increased crime rate, and specificity consisting of an
intentional, frequently cultivated and stressed distinction compared
to other parts of the capital. This phenomenon remains discernible
up to this day: Praga, together with the fast disappearing but still
existing Różycki Bazaar, the domes of the Russian Orthodox church of
St. Mary Magdalene, or the ludic atmosphere around the Zoo, is a
separate world. The social climate and brogue of the local residents
appear to hold their own, challenged by the process of transforming,
right in front of our eyes, old factories into a cultural Mecca of
the capital, thus offering the district a chance for promotion,
which will either overwhelm it or became the reason why Praga will
lose its natural ambiance without gaining a new image in its stead.
Paweł
Elsztein The Warsaw Praga Known and Unknown
The sketch
deals with the Warsaw district of Praga, the author’s birthplace. In
a presentation of less known historical facts from the turn of the
nineteenth century P. Elsztein tries to evoke the daily ambiance of
a noisy and busy part of town, always in a hurry. In doing so, he
cites numerous descriptions by assorted publicists, poets and
writers – the chroniclers of Warsaw and especially Praga.
Iwona A.
Oliwińska Genius Loci and the Spatial Behaviour and Lifestyle
of the Residents of Szmulki
The district
of Praga and Szmulowizna had been treated for four centuries as a
distinctive and inferior part of town. Nonetheless, this fragment of
Warsaw possesses its own genius loci. It served as a haven for
people not welcome on the left bank of the Vistula (such as runaway
servants, thieves, bigamists, the poor and the homeless, petty
artisans and shopkeepers, and the Jews). It was also chosen by
representatives of the gentry, who treated the quarter as a sui
generis hinterland, and used their residences only when they came to
meet the king. Today, Praga is the destination not only by people
evicted from the other bank of the Vistula, but the place of
residence of artists and young university graduates. In the past, it
was also chosen for industrial enterprises not fit for the elegant
capital (charnel houses, tanneries, joiners’ and dye shops, wire
works, steel mills, etc.). For centuries, Praga was the site of
flourishing trade and crafts. It was, and still is, full of street
bazaars, open-air stalls, assorted small shops and workshops, where
one could purchase or repair everything. Here, time seems to run a
less hurried course, almost resembling that of a small provincial
town. This particular section of Praga North also features a
different architecture, whose development and form were influenced
by the owners of Praga and Szmulowizna and the partitioning and
local authorities. For hundreds of years, attention had not been
paid to the well-balanced progress and development of Praga and
Szmulowizna, regarded as an unattractive part of Warsaw of little
interest to investors. Not until the 1990s was the appeal of the
district, with its pre-war houses and a so-called ambiance, actually
noticed. This was the period of the revitalisation of the old and
neglected town houses (although only in select quarters). The
history, folklore and brogue of Praga were promoted. The authorities
of the district created opportunities for the newly settled artists,
transforming industrial space into its cultural counterpart, and
approving cooperation with local social partners.
Janusz
Sujecki 78 Targowa Street. The History of a Photographer’s
Studio
A brief
introduction to the history of a photographer’s studio, once working
in 78 Targowa Street.
Anna
Kuczyńska Urban Anthropology – an Area of the Concentration
of Anthropological Problems
A proposal of
a synthetic presentation of an urban anthropology project, which
could constitute a conceptual framework for assorted empirical urban
studies sufficiently extensive to encompass an anthropological
interpretation of the “world of the life” of a man of letters.
The
reflections are preceded by an outline of assorted stages in the
moulding of the concept of urban anthropology, both in Poland and in
Western science, which the author treats as a “self-reflection”
motif in urban anthropology (starting with the conception of
“expanding the object of ethnography” up to a change in the paradigm
of anthropology). In a further part of her text the author seeks
structures “merging” numerous and divergent urban themes.
The
fundamental category of being – place, and in the dimension of the
humanities – space and place, is a point of departure for
anthropological motifs: the multiplicity of the senses and meanings
of places in the town in their social, philosophical (the
experiencing of “being in space”) and artistic dimension.
The second
keystone is time. The statement, recurring in “town planning”
literature in the manner of an axiom, namely, that the town is a
permanent and complex temporal structure, creates a framework for an
interpretation of a considerable part of urban experiences,
collective conceptions and social practices: individual and
collective memory, commemoration and annulment, revitalisation,
nostalgia, etc. The temporal dimension discloses the connection
between the town and culture, expressed in an ideological and
literary discourse. Yet another fundamental concept of anthropology,
i. e. the identity due to people and places, also refers to the
past.
Magdalena
Kroh 63 Targowa Street
The author,
who lived in Targowa Street (the district of Praga) for 15 years,
from 1948 to 1963, presents the reality of the district from that
period as seen by a child and a girl. A confrontation of feelings
originating in an intelligentsia home and the reality encountered on
a daily basis in her closest surrounding.
Anna
Kuczyńska “Places and Neighbourhoods”. Studies 2004-2006
A brief
introduction to the problems and range of the titular research
project, realised as part of an ethnographic laboratory conducted in
the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at Warsaw
University in 2004-2006. The studies, concentrated on places with a
diverse identity, were carried out in Warsaw and its environs.
They include
research by Agata Chełstowska, Katarzyna Gmachowska, Katarzyna Kuzko
and Magdalena Majchrzak.
Katarzyna
Gmachowska “Glass Houses”. The Żoliborz Warsaw Housing
Cooperative. A Place Embroiled in History
The author
delves into the identity of a place in urban space exemplified by
the Warsaw Housing Cooperative (WSM) in the district of Żoliborz – a
model of the town planning tendencies of modernism, emerging from
the retrospective accounts by its residents. The context for an
attempt at evoking the subjective experiencing of this particular
place is the discourse held until this day and concerning the
foundations of such ideological projects as the WSM and their
consistent realisation.
Ludwik
Stomma The Anthropology of History. Sport
The author
outlines the history of the Olympic Games, which he compares to war
hostilities. While proposing the organisation of cyclical
international sport competitions, Baron Pierre de Coubertin referred
to the tradition of the Greek games. L. Stomma considers sport not
as a venture involving cooperation or a great humanitarian idea, but
as an invaluable safety valve to alleviate confrontations and
nationalism by relegating them to the sidelines and onto a
relatively controlled course. Just as the rivalry of creeds
inevitably resulted in religious wars, so strife on the playing
fields, in one form or another, becomes transferred to the stands.
Antoni Kroh
The Old River Valley. Money, Thriftiness, Ingenuity
Continuing his
series of reminiscence entitled The Old River Valley published in “Konteksty”,
the author based himself on post-war home economics and focused his
attention on the attitude of the intelligentsia towards money and
ownership as well as its economic life and sources of livelihood.
Antoni Kroh
The Old River Valley. The Security Bond
A successive
fragment of The Old River Valley, describing the amusing history of
a security issued by the Domestic Economy Bank and bequeathed to the
author by his aunt.
Jan
Gondowicz Wasp
The
significance of the works by the French entomologist J. H. Fabre for
the formation of the world outlook of S. I. Witkiewicz – Witkacy had
been noticed quite some time ago. This particular study accentuates
the characteristic role played in the latter’s imagination by one of
the insects described by Fabre – the digger wasp sphex, due to the
fact that H. Bergson recognised its behaviour as a key example of
instinctive knowledge. Against the background of a psychomachy with
the detested Bergson, Witkacy developed a mythology of the wasp,
whose message is close to that of the mythology of the praying
mantis in the essay by R. Caillois.
Aleksander
Jackowski Stanisław Zagajewski
Reminiscences
about Stanisław Zagajewski, whose oeuvre was a negation of folk art,
difficult to grasp or classify. Zagajewski’s works were associated
with his personality and visions; self-generated, they were close to
the concept of Art Brut. Without succumbing to the impact of culture
they remained independent of styles and models. Zagajewski was a
compulsive sculptor and art constituted the sense of his life. He
was featured at numerous exhibitions and became the topic of several
films, albums and numerous texts in assorted books.
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