We are more willing to look at bad images, images that carry negative emotions. We cannot help looking at them; that is why we have a bundle of instincts, so that our organism can sometimes protect itself independently of a head crammed with thoughts. If we detect signs of danger, we will watch in that direction intently. Politics and marketing have always exploited this, as has anyone seeking another person’s attention. It is worth remembering that we view such images in recession—and this does not mean the state of the economy. It means the way these images operate: they compel recessio , an involuntary, instinctive ‘stepping back’. A manoeuvre like any other, one might think, since we are guaranteed freedom of movement. The trouble is that, while moving backwards, our eyes remain fixed
And we rewrite Reymont's "The Promised Land" not because (as Professor Krzysztof Pomian wants) we were overwhelmed by the "madness of cataloging" people according to their character (writing). Although "in truth" such passion does not leave Europe to this day. It is still widely believed that art history deals with distinguishing Gothic from the Renaissance, Renaissance from Mannerism, Mannerism from Baroque, and Baroque from Classicism. The same styles in the history of music have a completely different meaning and chronological scope. It is even different in the history of literature. European culture is an intricate lace cut in overlapping categories, orders, and event catalogues. Radical minimalism of modernism ( Less is more ) exterminated most of the genre names of executive styles
The finger is treated as a symbol of the Holy Spirit. An abstract and incomprehensible power is contained within a small, weak part of the human body (see Ambrose, Expositio evangelii secundum Lucam, VII.93, Commentary on the Gospel according to Luke). The metaphor of the ‘Book of the World’ (liber mundi) is widely known. Scholastic imagination popularised this comparison. In the twelfth century, Hugh of Saint Victor wrote: ‘Universum enim mundus iste sensibilis quasi quidam liber est scriptus digito Dei, hoc est virtute divina creatus, et singulae creaturae quasi figurae’. (Didascalion de studio legendi 7.4; PL 176) ‘This whole sensible world is like a book written by the finger of God, that is, created by divine power, and individual creatures are figures within it.’ In the same
This character is worth remembering. Reading in Feather sketches Report on the fall of France in the summer of 1940 from the perspective of a cyclist, it is much easier to free yourself from the patriotic and cliché evaluation of many strange characters who, instead of "defending their homeland", fighting, are wandering around Europe today. Bobkowski, the son of a general, was one of the first to volunteer for the Polish army in France. He was not accepted. The importance of the literary work of this economist, Guatemalan modeler, man desperately trying to remain independent of the circumstances for Polish culture is comparable to the importance of Gombrowicz. He had simple views: "A free man, an intellectual, a writer and a truly free poet, who wants to be free, will have something of a
It is amazing that in a world supposedly entirely woven of pixels, rasters, beats and in a country that values folk culture so much, only now, in June 2023, the Museum of the Cut-out was opened. Modernity is one big cutout, a collage of a madman with scissors for cutting people in his hand. The museum was built on the site of the Royal Paper Factory founded in 1755 in Konstancin on the Jeziorka River. The scaled folk cutout covering the Polish pavilion at the Expo in Shanghai in 2010 appealed to the world ( https://www.bryla.pl/bryla1,85301,7561313,Polski_Pawilon_na_EXPO_robi_furore.html ). Despite this, it was not until thirteen years later that we arrived at a facility that collected traditional cutouts. More than twenty meters of folders with cutouts were collected in the archive. The
We need not retrieve or download anything; we need not worry about quality. Let us learn from them, and not only during the festive season. A fresco in San Fermo Maggiore in Verona, said in this universe to ‘have infinite boundaries’.
Tina Turner "read" Edgar Allan Poe's books. Gombrowicz hated Balzak. In 1958 he wrote: "I hate his Human Comedy . Think how easily the best soup spoils when you add a teaspoon of old fat or a little toothpaste to it. (...) It's easier to hate someone for pobbing their nose than to love them for creating a symphony. Because the little thing is characteristic and defines a person in his daily dimension." (Diaries, Week , 1958). We read Gombrowicz. And now, how to mix those random and often expired ingredients in our 5inKotle? Stir to the right, or rather to the left, to detire at least the moment when it will be revealed that what at Cooked Perhaps To figure In the card (or rather on the panel: Order & collect ) as Human comedy? Such is the fate of sustainable projects, foundations
On May 28, the elections "about everything", the presidential election in Turkey, were decided. The degree of polarity of views in Turkey was very similar to that in our country. The level of emotions, the number of invectives used instead of arguments too. A tale about the fundamental choice between patriotic conservatism and cosmopolitan leftism is similar. Involvement of the state apparatus on one side too. The Turks chose. What is important in all this for us? Realizing that the calculated electoral "attractions" that await us this summer are something repetitive, something happening in seemingly completely different cultures. Let's practice the slogan popular in the first round of the Turkish election: " We are all Turks.” We may need it. Although it is possible that in the end it
Please think about the fact that it matters whether a good quality explosion or a Chinese or Korean fake will happen to us. Of course, the accuracy, quality, range of the weapon with which you kill affects the effectiveness of killing, but not necessarily the one we fight must pay attention to it. War in Ukraine is not a form of rivalry they are able to understand Residents Europe, who, as Tuwim wrote: "(...) - they see everything about d d z i e l n i e: That house... that Stasiek... that horse... that tree..." For now, both we and the media understand everything in the course of the war in Ukraine. What not to understand here: war is only a form of economic and cultural pressure, conducted by means more brutal than usual. Hostile takeover is a term well known to bankers and businessmen
Only because you read in Polish, in one of the Slavic languages of Eastern Europe, or until recently ‘lived’ on Włókiennicza Street in Łódź? Well, you only think so. In two sentences, as tersely as possible, Roberto Calasso ( The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony , translated by S. Kasprzysiak, { Le nozze di Cadmo e Armonia }) recalled what connects the complete clouding of reason with something worth playing for: the annulment of Fate’s sentence. ‘For love of Admetus, Apollo made the Moirai drunk, and this may have been the wildest celebration of which any mention has reached us, yet about which we can say nothing more than that it took place. The Moirai, the fair-armed maidens who spin the thread of every mortal’s life, appear in Plutarch’s imagination as the “daughters of Ananke”
Chaplin's well-composed, carefully viewed iconography replaces a long and boring lecture on the cultural anthropology of the 20th century. What you would find out at the end of it you will see in the ending frames Ballet Mécanique Leger and Murphe from 1924. Chaplin's puppet is falling apart (reconfigures?) Into fragments, crumbles under the influence of the crazy, mechanical, swaying movement of the camera and light, after the first Great War. Exactly a hundred years ago, in the mid-twenties, the process of slewing a new, "steel" man will begin. One that will not fall apart, will not hesitate, fulfill every order. Charles Spencer Chaplin was born on April 16, 1889 in London. What do you wish for your one hundred and thirty-fourth birthday? Certainly not the Legion of Honor, if it is
Sudan is the ancient land of Kus, from which all the gold of Egypt came for centuries, it is the location of the biblical mines of King Solomon. Khartoum is about six million people in one city on the Nile. Fighting is going on in the city, with the use of aviation. It is available to the army commanded by Abd al-Fattah Abd ar-Rahman al-Burhan. Their opponent of the Rapid Reaction Force Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo seems to be losing. Probably, because during the fighting in the city little is known. Besides, it's far away. For now, it is not worth learning the names of the main actors. From a non-Polish, but more Western perspective, the war in the vicinity of Donetsk and Bakhmut looks similar. Invest time and attention in distinguishing Shoygu and Gierasimov from Prigozhin? Study who is a real
The current uproar, revealing a vague anxiety about the rate at which successive algorithms acquire communication skills, invites comparison with legislating for a reality buckling under technological pressure in the mid-nineteenth century. We will, of course, protect ourselves by every possible legal means. Law firms and committees now drafting regulations for the new technology will—naturally, in order to streamline their work—draw on the capabilities of ChatGPT . There is nothing wrong with that; quite the contrary. But it is time for us to exchange a few words among ourselves ‘on the subject’ of the belief that human-made law constrains technology. A vision—a clear, carefully calculated vision—of the benefits of ‘faster’ communication, faster mechanical information processing and an
The mystery is not transmitted. The beginning of the biblical tradition of anointing the future ruler by the prophet can be found in the sixteenth chapter of the Book of Samuel (1Sam 16). Two verses are key: the seventh and thirteenth. In the seventh, the prism of the invisible and inconceivable is established, in the thirteenth, such an order acquires the dimension of durability. The curtain set up by the guards turned the chancel of Westminster Cathedral into an inaccessible sancta sanctorum at the time of the anointing with oil stored in an eagle-shaped ampulle since the coronation of Charles II in 1661. However, the spectacle of receiving a royal sacred is built not only from covering the climax moment, but above all from the number of young faces around. The Middle Eastern anointing
Foundation acts are often traces of desperation, signs of crisis. Fortunately, it happens that they are symptoms of his solstice, his over-overcoming, leaving him behind, in the dead realm of historical knowledge, which only Benjamin's looks at " Angel of History” . It would be fortunate, it would be wonderful if, using the May Third dawn of freedom and perfect conditions of the air, a ghost flew directly into the heads of scholars of women and husbands in the Republic of Poland thinking about the role of the constitution and brought like a serviceable courier a strong conviction that it was high time to slightly change the fairy tale and start talking about kinship, about brotherhood, about the common sense of the Constitution of May 3 and the Bender Constitution, written by the Cossack
The gift of the word with which architectural portals are abundantly covered always pleases, even without visualization. It is worth looking at the structure according to the architectural reflex. Boldly constructing the future is Łódź's specialty, at least since the era when the city went head-to-head with Chicago. The nine title elements seem to look like parts of a sentence, but it's not a sentence, it's just its equivalent. The verb was missing, which may be symptomatic. The investor has already burned himself once and is not so sure of the implementation to immediately put a ruling in the title. Maybe he prefers to wait with this ruling, for what the conservator of monuments, the architect city and many others guarding our Łódź idyll by virtue of the law. To facilitate their work, we
This tradition has been going on since 1889. Let's take advantage of, who knows, maybe one of the last celebrations without the participation of union algorithms, without non-conceivable robots sliding in the May Day march, why employee rights are not for them. Celebration somewhere further from the former Eastern Bloc? Maybe Reykjavik? Looking for good models for a moment of May freedom, it is worth looking at the couple in the middle of the orchestra playing on the street. Drum and tambourine, Icelandic rhythm section: can be an icon Fyrsti maí – May 1, Far away on a cold volcanic island. When we read the captions under the photos, it gets really happy: The Workers' Wind Orchestra performs sunny samba on Ingólfstorgi Square. Sunny samba will also be useful in our country tormented by
What does it actually mean? Fact, or rather his Latin ancestor - Factum – appeared in compositions, such as: Factum is . It can be translated in the simplest: fact Is , or just as well: Was done . Facts, until they are done, realized (which confirms Est/is, third Verb singular person Esse – to be, to exist), fabricated, until they happen and are noticed, they do not exist. Who makes the facts? In fact, all of them. Some come out better, others don't come out at all. It is very difficult to assess the quality of the fact. Even if we insist on the "objectivity" of facts, although they are more an act, an event, an accident than the objects that take part in it, we do not have objective scales to rank, arrange, stack them according to importance, common usefulness, "importance", etc. This
Experts' opinions are different, some advise to water once a year, others recommend not to overdo it with frequency if we want to enjoy the vibrant colour longer. Four hundred and fifty thousand paper flowers. Yellow, distributed on April 19 in Warsaw and several other cities in Poland is an unpragmatic but beautiful action. A very, very special, unfortunately painful aspect of what "beautiful action" is, an action that does not really matter with the realities is recalled on the day of the outbreak of the Ghetto Uprising. In a piece of the city where about thousands of people crowded and died. It was the first uprising in the city during World War II. What happens to a city where desperation and rage are being voiced? It is impossible to study this as part of some research disciplines
Popularized thanks to the account of the Crimean War in the mid-19th century. Western media, large editorial offices gradually announce that in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, they will broadcast only such reports that do not require a reporter to fly by plane. So the report will be subordinated to land and sea transport. With today's abundance of sources available through the Internet globally, this is not an "information" problem. We will continue to be "up to date" with the knowledge of everything. In the long run, in combination with the constant, slightly manic, European concern for the credibility and directness of what we treat as knowledge of the world, it is a significant caesura. In an even longer, crazy future, such as baroque, it is the exclusion of air from the
We are releating ourselves from the Family, skiing and holidays are quite an effort. Immediately after them, statistically, crazy plans should appear more often, to drop everything as in an old joke and leave, go alone, far beyond the borders Net , have a moment for yourself, because at Christmas it didn't work out again. If a journey through real space suits you, start with illustrated editions Ulysses Joyc. Calm down, you don't have to read, it's, as the joycelogists determined a long time ago, the first (101 years ago) fully autonomous novel, it flows by itself. Apparently like some ancient stream (Styks, Lete), all the same thing, the important thing is that you don't have to do it yourself - literally - nothing. If a passenger glances at himself, here and there. The text was quite
Even the mass use of GTP chats will not help them to write justifications more efficiently. The excitement of the dexterity of the image-producing AI exposes the layer of language proficiency in human communication. As long as the topic of attention is "artificial intelligence", the problem will not exist. It will appear when instead of ex-machine intelligence we start talking about machine imagination. And "real" troubles will get our sense of the coherence and sense of the social world when someone starts to talk about "artificial conscience" and its obvious (based on statistics) advantages over the human conscience, very unreliable and imperfect. Then you can slowly paint on the horizon in large holographic letters the verse from Dante, the most famous one: " Lasciate fires ...", the
How many times have we experienced this at Atlas Sztuki. Scenes that look intriguing in old art turn into grotesque farce in the iconography of the twentieth century. Nothing suggests that the twenty-first will alter this civilisational trend. Imagination is a critically endangered species; contrary to avant-garde declarations, it needs a vast, marshy ecosystem in order to survive. Yet land improvement and drainage remain highly profitable sectors of the economy. „When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go and anoint Jesus. Very early on the first day of the week, they came to the tomb after sunrise. They said to one another, ‘Who will roll away the stone from the entrance to the tomb for us?’ But when they looked
Strength Mystery play "Flowing" straight from the flowing blood guards can be somewhere in the area of Bachmut media spectacular. In fact, in Atlas Sztuki we want to deal with such paintings "from the holiday". The action of the Christmas image - the icon - is contained in the last word of the fifth verse of the sixteenth chapter of the oldest Gospel of Mark. It should be a strong, direct, amazing action, completely changing the situation. Certainly not falling into the register of what is related only to appearance or aesthetics. Media scholars write about a cyclically recurring crisis of trust towards new media and shifting attention in search of another, "better" one. Blood is a very old medium, not as attractive as it is said to be. Eloquentia sanguinans In Tacitus means: greedy of
