The world had much of Lynch.
2025-01-17And the world had a lot of him. For a moment, so crotchety, Łódź had him too. It had a wonderful master. Lynch reinvented us, reinvented the centre of Łódź. Among the factory ruins, he found the mystery that inspired his imagination. „Unusual remnants of the Industrial Revolution! There are hardly any places like this […]
From time to time (thoughtfully, preferably at the start of a weekend) it’s worth getting up on a ladder
2024-12-04It doesn’t have to be wooden or ergonomic, as long as it’s sturdy, leans against the edge of the frame and leads somewhere higher, whatever that means. Of course, a ladder comes in very handy when we are just talking on the phone and our conversation is with someone, or something at a distance and […]
January 23rd, 2006. Minus 18 degrees Celsius. Łódź, Poland.
2024-11-14There are few cars on the streets of Łódź, most of them stuck in huge snowdrifts. Ice-covered roads glisten in the sun. At 10am, the notary’s office on Żwirki Street is still empty. Slowly, journalists and reporters began to trickle in. Then the heroes of the day arrived: American director David Lynch, architect and businessman […]
Everything is fixed in the collective memory
2024-10-27It is always juicy and green, like the grass on a football pitch. The opening of the new building of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw has been going on for a few days now. From the point of view of Łódź, it is time to return to the noble cultural and even sporting […]
The item is currently in vogue, yet evinces no particular enthusiasm
2024-09-29In an age where technology reigns supreme, the outward expression of disquietude takes the form of subtle, impartial cosmetics on a countenance that exudes indifference. The two figures depicted in the photograph are united by a number of factors, including bipedalism, age and employment at the same advertising agency. There is much more to us […]
Talkativeness
2024-09-24We have lived continuously in a civilisation and culture that has developed harmoniously since at least the beginning of the modern era. It is an energetic civilisation, fascinated by the possibilities offered by technology and the pragmatically applied rational gift of categorising and ordering everything it encounters. When we try to confirm such a coherent, […]
Today you need sand and hands to pour it into sacks
2024-09-23There is no need for symbols. But what are we to do, stuck far from the rushing currents in the relentless tide of information? So let’s focus on symbols for a moment. They carry more meaning than “the latest information”. The motif of death in water runs from Psalms 69 to T. S. Eliot’s The […]
Schulz likely would name the milkmaid Aniela and she would be responsible for shaking the entire house.
2024-08-27One might inquire as to the location of Drohobych or Delphi. It is not possible to ascertain what the name was for the one that Vermeer saw around 1657-1658. If we accept the expert opinion (which is not always reliable in the case of paintings), we can discern a foot warmer in the lower right […]
Will “Two (young) married women” take part in the 2025 presidential election?
2024-08-24The precise details remain elusive. It is established that Andrzej Wróblewski was an accomplished painter. Given the artist’s reputation, it is unsurprising that an exhibition of his work was held in the heart of Venice, specifically within the Procuratie Vecchie in St Mark’s Square. This is one of two Polish exhibitions at the 60th International […]
What will porters look like in the year 2024?
2024-08-20One of the few surviving avant-garde films from the inter-war period (from 1937), i.e. films that sought to convey the unseen obvious, is Przygoda człowieka poczciwego (The Adventure of a Kind Man), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlaFGPiioPQ by Stefan and Franciszka Themerson, with music composed by Stefan Kisielewski. The backwards plot, about the consequences of a good-natured clerk walking […]
The revitalisation of Włókiennicza street has spoilt a lot
2024-08-19What happens to sensitives and momma’s boys from a good home when they watch war with their sharp, ten-year-old eyes? They grow up to be tough cynics. In 1958, shortly after receiving the Publishers’ Prize, Hłasko, then aged 24, gave the following interview to Polish Radio: „Madam, a man is born without his will, then […]
Grab the head and hold it
2024-06-20It is evident that the human imagination tends to conceptualise inhuman powers in a relatively straightforward and consistent manner. The Climax by Aubrey Beardsley, Aris (Daryl Hannah), the replicant „basic pleasure model”; Blade Runner (1982), by Ridley Scott, iPhone, 2021
„…to a spacious place free from restriction, to the comfort of your table laden with choice food.
2024-06-18But now you are laden with the judgment due the wicked; judgment and justice have taken hold of you. Be careful that no one entices you by riches; do not let a large bribe turn you aside.” – Siri! Please tell me another story. Grandfather has gone somewhere… On 28 September 2023, the day of […]
In Surrealist circles, „it” was called la boîte surréaliste
2024-06-10Marcel Duchamp, both Man Ray and Joseph Cornell, also André Breton, did „this kind of thing”. The greats of 20th century art. We will, however, turn to a female biography. Born in 1906, Elisa Latte Elena Bindhoff Enet lived more than one life. In the first, she was a pianist and the wife of a […]
It’s our modus operandi to examine „Cranachs”, „Caravaggias”, „Vermeers”
2024-06-07Indeed, the opportunity to view such paintings is frequently the reason for planning a trip or holiday. In the present era we do this with a mobile phone in hand, with access to a plethora of pages that explain the paintings in question in great detail, suggesting where to look, from what angle, and how […]
Tell Jan Kaczmarek that there is no future without dreamers
2024-05-22The film for which Jan received an Oscar was entitled Dreamer. It is noteworthy that Jan Andrzej Paweł Kaczmarek has received numerous other awards, to the extent that it may appear that he has received every possible honor. Awards are always “for something,” for past achievements. One becomes a star “for something”, which in this […]
We count longer than we can remember
2024-05-18We have always been counting. We eagerly count what we will surely never reach. The first monumental Neolithic architectural structures, such as Göbekli Tepe, dating back thousands of years, were based on the astronomical system. Every language we know and can recognise emerged in a world that had long been mastered counting. We count precisely. […]
In Łódź, a number of seemingly simple phenomena appear to be quite complex
2024-05-15In Łódź, there are numerous legends that attest to the transformative effect that „the city” has had on its habitants. Such change, as a myth, is a convention of remembering the violent social transformations that took place in the great industrial Molochs of urbanisation in the 19th and 20th centuries. It may be because life […]
The plethora of strong personalities pushes forward, directly, with one finger, drawing the picture of the situation
2024-05-13In the mid-1950s, when the motif of the hands creating each other appeared in Saul Steinberg’s drawing, newspaper illustrations (the one on the left is from “The New Yorker”) were very simple. Just a line, no halftones, no shading, no nuance. Long ago, when a drawing appeared in a newspaper, it was there to sharpen, […]
It is necessary to determine which of the two possibilities is more probable
2024-05-09The two possibilities are as follows: either the algorithm is responsible for all the changes to the original, or the content of the altered speech was crafted by a human. This scene is a tribute to the art of rhetoric (Ars rhetorica). The scene depicts the genesis (out of nothing) of a cult, fanaticism, and […]
As is customary at this time of year,
2024-05-07two months after the distribution of all the Oscar statuettes, after viewing all the requisite cinematic works, it’s worthwhile to examine the biography of engineer Stefan Kudelski. Despite being an exemplar of a man who did not direct, act in, wrote, or compose a single film, yet received two Oscars (and two Emmy awards, often […]
This could be an important exhibition
2024-05-06From 20th of April to 24th of November, in the Procuratie Vecchie building on St. Mark’s Square in Venice, the exhibition “In the First Person” by Andrzej Wróblewski can be seen. It is one of the accompanying exhibitions of this year’s Biennale, with Biennale curator Adriano Pedrosa as the inviting party. The exhibition features over […]
She said she didn’t believe in truth, but she did believe in honesty
2024-05-04She said she believed in tenderness as the most universal language on earth. She said she didn’t believe in God, but she believed in humanity. Any of these statements could be the headline on the biggest portals and newspapers in Europe. None of them will. Anyway, the denomination doesn’t have to be highly exposed, centrally […]
Travel? Of course, yes!
2024-05-03May holidays! Our legs carry us on their own. Our journeys are almost always dreamlike. Journeys we imagine without opening our eyes. Blind journeys? The kind that struck Odysseus for trivial reasons and carried him for a decade from one adventure to another, but not towards home. Journeys to places from which few have returned, […]
Photo of the Year
2024-04-28You have to realize how intense the circulation of new photos and media images is. It is something as powerful as the Gulf Stream, the current that runs between America and Europe. It’s a current that binds these two continents together in an extraordinary way. Better it stays that way. The photo is as it […]
The madman was invented by Cervantes
2024-04-26A man with a past, financial problems, just an unhappy little grey man, a dusty veteran of Lepanto. He invented someone who fights against a wicked world, who stands up to it, who takes on every giant, a hero straight out of a twentieth-century western, lonely, simple, confident in his assessment of the situation. Why […]
Let us read Joyce – let us sketch Łódź
2024-02-27Election is about to come up, might there still be a chance to unexpectedly veer off course? Or even break away? Or even stay. And do some good in the city. If the date is to be believed, Maciej Słomczyński penned these three sentences on July 14th, 1969. This sentence opens a short, seven-page text […]
The „tangibility of architecture” is an essential ability
2024-02-20to understand anything in a city. „The tangibility of the concept (of architecture)” is both a crucial characteristic/ability to understand anything and a linguistically sensual turn of phrase that poses its own challenges as well. Language and its rules allow us to write about „intangible concepts.” Is this phrase merely a linguistic expression, lacking a […]
The elections are near, the important ones
2024-02-15It’s time to focus on the city. Time for the Brain. But not the brain of Chief Architect yet. The brain (cerebrum) is called the largest electrical organ of a human. We are fascinated by the brain’s electrical activity. Similarly, every city can be described and studied as a hub of life that transmits, generates, […]
As we all know, we have several worlds at our disposal
2024-02-06They are not always available „on demand” (in the standard of World on Demand – WOD), but they are always revolving close to us. Perhaps it is for this reason that we „shooted” a next project at our Foundation. The future began to heavily impinge upon the present. The Future Games were supposed to calm […]
The hero should be only one, effectively limiting confusion in a fairy tale.
2024-01-30In fairy tales, so many incomprehensible things happen at once that chaos is easily bred. Asymmetry works well in the realm of fairy tales, allowing for clear distinctions. Especially in fairy tales, injustice is always asymmetrical, fueling and driving the action. A rapid action is a fundamental parameter of a good fairy tale and media […]
Without the aid of childlike imagination, we may struggle to cope with such a demanding repertoire.
2024-01-28Certainly, politics has always, and probably everywhere, been a spectacle, an often unbearable theatricalization of everything that comes along. Our trouble, now, in the winter of 2024, lies in the fact that this theatricalization has also encompassed the law. And it tries to generalize spectacularly emotional behaviors in this area as well. Applause, whistles, booing […]
Nothing helps quite like the sweet thought that others were fortunate
2024-01-22On January 22, 2021, Henryk Jerzy Chmielewski passed away at the age of 97. Before the war, he was associated with the Polish Socialist Party, and as he mentioned, he was involved in drawing „political caricatures”. During World War II, he fought in General Kleeberg’s army until October 6, 1939. After escaping from a prisoner […]
Would you like to see with your own eyes
2024-01-19how, a few years after the war, do women’s calves became socialist in content, yet still alluring in form over a few seasons? Do you want to understand better what connects the reticent, cunning Eros with the perspective of streets in Bałuty district? You have to go to this exhibition. Four small rooms in the […]
All this is certainly not you
2024-01-16The one on the left is an ancient cave scratch, perhaps over three, or maybe just two and a half thousand years old. In our minds, it looks like someone entering a labyrinth, In the middle, not you either; this is, after all, the ad quadratum, ad circulum man we are reminded of to the […]
The Next Star of Bethlehem Will Appear Only in 2080
2024-01-08The next elections are already scheduled for April this year. Reportedly, both the Gospel of Luke, detailing Christ’s childhood most elaborately, and the Gospel of Matthew, also focusing on this period, are at times far from the truth. From a religious standpoint, this sounds bad: a gospel far from the truth. It only sounds so […]
Back then, it was winter. And then there was Michalina Wisłocka
2024-01-07Today, they scare us with the cold to come. What do they know, only as much as trickles down from the screen. But it was cold. Somewhere between 1978 and 1979. They later called it the “winter of the century,” even those who still remembered the winters of the forties, winters sometimes far away. There […]
Sweet snaps from Instagram are often overexposed
2023-12-30and look pale against the backdrop of solidly written and painted fantasies on FB. Girls… 2024 will be the year of predators. It means it will belong to you. Western culture has the knack – mumbo jumbo – to transform what’s dangerous into what’s delightfully pleasant, encouraging purchases, whetting the appetite for more from life. […]
Important things are simple, very simple
2023-12-24Holidays, with their long, mechanically, ritually repeated tradition, so ancient that they no longer remember what actually differentiates chronos from aion and kairos, even though all three words denote time, invalidate attempts to show that the situation is exceptional, extraordinary, dramatic. In this aspect, holidays are blatantly unfair, favoring those who attack, who introduce changes. […]
A tunnel in the middle of Łódź sounds like an idea from an adventure movie
2023-12-22Doesn’t matter, in Łódź, we are accustomed to massive narrative fantasies and their carefree display. We have tamed them, reacquainted ourselves with them in the 21st century. The city has its rhythm, no longer the old one of three shifts, but still in the old pace: “to the bitter end”, “at a rate”. Łódź flows, […]
We know not just one five-year
2023-12-08Not the one with braids, but the one discussed with fear at meetings, academies, plenums as a five-year plan that must be realized. Socialism had perfectly bureaucratic plans. Thanks to this, the future was something domesticated, always knowing what not to jump out with foolishly. How is it now? Quite well! Judging by the evolution […]
So? The Class Died?
2023-12-07How is a decent, still reading, slightly conservative (but not too much) working intellectual supposed to watch a remake, a farce (vulgar – vulgaris means in Latin just ordinary, common, everyday, known) of the Broadcast of the High Chamber’s Proceedings? How can they not lose touch with the most vital, elementary, ludic layer of national […]
Let’s stroll, reciprocating the genuine smile of each snowman we encounter
2023-12-05“During periods of snow accumulation, avoid steep slopes and do not enter dangerous gullies where snow avalanches may occur”. Let’s not pretend. This is a very useful piece of advice. Even when the Central Communication Port (CPK) is established in the heart of Poland, which may be the chosen country, we remain a species not […]
Bare Knees on Camera. Could that have swayed the opposition’s victory?
2023-11-26Judging by the journalist’s expression, emotions were ruling everything at that time. By November, we had gotten over it. Try to imagine (back in October) the President’s bare knees. – I advise reading Hrabal. – Jerzy Owsiak convinced us many years ago. However, he never donated Hrabal’s books to our Library 5inLodz.pl. Perhaps it was […]
Does anyone know what tunes Mateusz Morawiecki whistles while working?
2023-11-24Does Penderecki play better than Lewandowski did recently (in the national team)? Is it possible in 2024 to get a grant for reconstructing his scores, obviously using AI? Let’s gossip. Only gossip can counter the concrete-hardening collective memory, a memory of culture as vast and varied as a runway inscribed with neat letters in the […]
What is fundamental, what is constitutive, ought to be simple
2023-10-14It should be evident to all, since it refers to, sustains, and encompasses everyone and everything, it should not itself cause trouble to anyone. What should be, “but is not, does not get written in the register.” Perhaps from this common, folk belief stems the linguistic and functional stagnation of many constitutions. The more erudite, […]
The pre-election week always sidelines sex
2023-10-11In long-standing uncertainty, most species either give up or significantly reduce sexual activity. A comparative study of the level of sexualization in images from the second half of the 20th century and this decade’s iconosphere might be a clear proof of a change as uncomfortably noticeable (and lacking in sex appeal) as global warming. In […]
Don’t laugh, but Łódź is Łódź! It has always been at the forefront of changes that gradually enveloped the rest of the country
2023-10-08The 34th Comic and Games Festival in Łódź has just concluded. In 1991, at a time when no one knew what the new, “Western” reality in Łódź would look like, the National Convention of Comic Creators appeared. Comics, a quintessentially Western form, are now ubiquitous but still associated with the West and its immersion in […]
What do you say to a moment of immorally relaxing lasciviousness? We can do a little bit, obviously…
2023-10-03But we also know that a good haggle is needed. Like in trading – quick reflexes are essential. You can be for it or against it, everyone (for each person) will find at least a small, satisfying role for their own fantasy in such a convention. One has to seek a moment of relief amidst […]
Everything can transform into anything: a city into a meadow, a wolf into a lamb, the small into the immense, the dead into the living, the evil into the good
2023-10-01Isn’t this kind of transformation displayed on the facades of Łódź? It’s worth stating clearly from the start that this festival is akin to the theater, which Grotowski called a degenerated ritual, degenerated because in ancient rituals there were no spectators, only participants. This year, you can go straight from the festival to another dark […]
Today, we won’t agree on who Lech Wałęsa was and who he is
2023-09-29Let’s leave it aside when unimaginable things happen. On September 29, 2023, Lech Wałęsa turned eighty years old. An electrician by trade, who signed something on behalf of the majority several times without any authorization. A weave of writing and spirit, not obvious to post-1945 European history, inexplicably transferred directly from a biblical context, overturned […]
Gdynia, Gdynia, Gdynia (FPFF 48) and our team won in Łódź
2023-09-26At Atlas Sztuki, we don’t screen feature films. Even if it’s known (even before the premiere) that it may be a work leaving a significant mark in culture. At Atlas Sztuki, we often showed documentaries. Feature films are “displayed and played” at festivals. As long as we stick to the rules adopted by one industry […]
We need to rest
2023-09-10As often as possible, we should take breaks from watching the remarkably vivid, large-format faces and figures of the national scene. They will stay with us at least until mid-October. And with a certain degree of fatigue and irritation, most of us think and decide a bit worse. That’s why breaks are important, where one […]
The issue is not simple
2023-04-02Although it sounds nice to say that one hundred and twenty-three countries recognise the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Russia stopped by decree in 2016. The powerful rarely accept restrictions on their freedom of action. At the time of the vote in Rome in 1998 on the establishment of this court, […]
The Heaven and The Smart City
2022-11-27In a technologically crazed society all its elements should be accurately named and described. Paradise is an iconography of nakedness, a state of mutual likeness (rather ugly) that we do not want to remember. The nakedness: nuditas naturalis very quickly turned into nuditas criminalis in our empty heads. It is the same with cities. We like […]
It’s time to get used to walking around with a hussar hoof
2022-10-13Should people’s worlds be connected or rather slightly disconnected? Let’s look at an old etching. Allegory of Tolerance by Daniel Chodowiecki from 1792. Straight out of an epidemic of religious conflicts. Can you see this long lance by Minerva’s side (a personification of Wisdom and Reason)? Presumably it was a tool for determining the minimum […]
New era city scooters
2022-10-12At least in Polish cities everyone rides electric scooters this days. The weather remains Italy, it’s warm and the technology became cheaper. Young and old ones have discovered the charm of speeding. This is already a cultural shift. Law experts, according to their baroque nature, begins to write the bloated volumes of lex scooter.It’s time […]
“Literature is not” this or that
2022-08-12“The term +idiot+ (derived from the Greek +idiotes+) referred to a man who is not interested in politics, in public affairs, who closes himself exclusively in the circle of his private pleasures and is thereby unable to realise his full humanity,” writes Professor Andrzej Nowak. „ – Let’s be honest: literature is not for idiots, […]
White as an entirely impractical triviality
2022-08-03Heat or storm. The beginning of August is a time of a slight limbo, when one can waste time more than usual staring at the furiously growing herbage that has to make it in time for the next wave of heat, a smidge of wind breaking what has been dragging too long to grow, to […]
Temporal logics as romantic logics
2022-08-01August 1 in Poland is the day (precisely at 5pm, at “W” hour) when classical logic is no longer valid. The basic alternative: to fight or not disappears. To go to the uprising or not?The last question was absent in Polish culture at least until the late 1990s. That’s when it began to be raised […]
tera-peta-exa-cirrus – Why does Atlas need “cloud” access?
2022-07-25We collect data in the “clouds”. Data clouds swell up to the size of a stratocumulus. Their size is already approaching the level of tera-peta-exa-cirrus.Let us look in old art for scenes that show what happens next. What can one see above the dangerous, stormy Big Data clouds? What or who is based on the […]
We are a species that can get lost even in what it has previously invented itself.
2022-06-03The first and last letter: Alpha and Omega are a biblical symbol of control over the beginning and the end. But this is a divine attribute. It is not available to us. The element of letters complicating everything, wild, disobedient has been floating all around us. But that’s what architects are for. 15 years ago […]
Colour, colour
2022-03-12In circumstances of a violent crisis, the information begins to be transferred and reaches through quite new channels. Beyond the standard spectrum of communication. There is not much we can understand from the Chinese TV message. But the colours are immediately commented on and attract attention far beyond the usual range of the medium.