Elon Musk at 5inLodz – An Introduction to Human Culture in an Age of Rapid Change
“For every rich person, there must be something that explains their wealth: hereditary traits, inheritance, greed, intelligence, falsehoodity, exploitation of the poor, being in the right place at the right time, having high-ranking friends, luck, highway robbery, or whatever. What things lead to being rich is, of course, highly context-dependent. It is precisely because of the differences in context that none of us currently has a chance to enrich ourselves with the methods of Genghis-khan, (totall different) methods of Andrew Carnegie's descendants or (still different) Liberaci, and so on. Thus, the extreme sensitivity to the context of ways to become rich makes it unlikely to exist a theory of becoming rich (contrary to what numerous guides sold at airports try to convince us to do).” (quoted by: J. Fodor, M. Piattelli-Palmarini Darwin's mistake, trans. M. Gokieli, Warsaw 2018, p. 200 – 201).
The goal of 5inLodz has never been to become the dominant brand sold at airports. Even if you urgently index each of the words from each of the five books sent to Łódź by Elon Musk or Al Pacino, you will not be more like its donor.
5inLodz tries to extend the context as far as possible, beyond the limits of imagination. Con-text (con-texto) is a word entangled in our history in Łódź. This is a word describing: braiding, weaving, joining together. To be precise, we operate: Cum contextum.
Or (even more precisely) - we operate between Con-texto A Con-ficio. Please be careful, no: Con-fiction, – onis: Invention, but Con-fico, con-cicere, con feci, con-fectum: draw up, make, execute, complete, bring to fruition, write down, collect, download (people). This is how we work, this is how we weave different characters together to bring it to fruition.
Somewhere in the background there is an old Polish: counter effect. 5inLodz is a counter effect. Something incomprehensible and annoyingly similar to ourselves. Something deceptively similar, yet clearly different. Only in such an ambiguous environment are we able to develop fast enough to face reality.
Do questions arise? Too many sphinxes?
"Our cities are full of unrecognized sphinxes that do not stop a thoughtful passerby until he begins to observe himself, do not stop him and do not set him with deadly riddles. But if this sage asking sphinxes can guess them, thanks to these monsters without shape, he will re-explore his own chasm. Modern radiation of unusualness, that's what will stop him from now on." (quoted by: Louis Aragon, Parisian villager, trans. Adam Ważyk, 1976).
Artur Międzyrzecki in 1971 explained: "The modern light of unusualness - that's what will keep it."
By arranging more books on the shelves, we build a street of sphinxes. For today's city seemingly completely unnecessary. After another sphinx, things will clear up by themselves. Extremely.
Unusual for anyone who can remember an old book by C.S. Lewis “Rejected image. Introduction to medieval and Renaissance literature". This is probably one of the first books that accentuates the ability to turn off, exclude, close the whole world. Do you remember the day you didn't turn anything on? Enable/disable, enable and disable, disable and enable.
By creating sets of 5 books, we are trying to create a matrix so huge that will be so immeasurable that it will be able to embrace what still remains excluded. Topics that are not in the political focus, topics ignored by the media. If we do not create a platform capable of attracting public attention, large enough to accommodate cultural cataclysms and sudden climate change (in every sense of the word), we will never be able to figure out how to slow down this process.