Timothy Snyder is without a doubt a reasonable polemist. One of the few Western researchers who distinguish in the East details smaller than the Urals. It's not his fault (rather advantage) that he has a large media at his disposal Impact factor . Nevertheless, it is extremely annoying that you have to wait for months for the voice of the American professor (it is necessary to check where the list kept by commercial companies the universities employ him are located) for obvious issues and threats to appear in the public discussion in Poland. Snyder wrote that Putin's Russia will use the knowledge that Stalin's Russia has accumulated and which will cause a global food crisis. He wrote the truth, but almost everyone knew it since March, since it turned out that the Russians would not
“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).”
We still don't know who designed the New Centre Łódź - but we all know who designed the real jeans. These real ones were designed by a brilliant tailor from Łódź. Bernard Lichtenstein left our city with a group of residents of Kamienna Street in 1937. In 1947, he designed the most famous jeans in America - Wrangler 13MWZ. Friends with Marlon Brando, he helps James Dean sew his own pants. Dean for the film role assumes Lee . In September 1955, when the future symbol of America's outsider, Colin Wilson, dies in a car accident, his Outsider Has already mostly written. All that remains is to connect Wells with Sartre and a new existentialism is ready. "Freedom and imagination are muscles that we don't practice." Colin Wilson walks in jeans and looks into the world of mescaline. The
Another picture, and already a bit of concrete. Just on the corner, also a little at the crossroads: nostalgia, one's own strengthlessness and an overseas mirage. It can be an argument for the fact that sometimes the middle of even such short streets runs Way of life. Hopper has made up the pub in such a way that whether we want it or not, we will endlessly wonder what flavor the americano from the jug serves inside (night). After all, this is not espresso, cappuccino, marocchino or granita. You can feel the stinginess of what the future offers in this painted drink. And the nearest - even before dawn - hours and the next years, maybe decades, do not tempt with a range of impressions. As in the real American , colour rather than taste keeps us on our feet, strengthens, gives a moment to
Today, building a model of the city, accurate enough to reach the scale of individual life, is beyond the reach of not only technology but even our imagination. Transition between constantly analyzed Urban sprawl And completely ignored Human sprawl Still remains an unexplored cognitive gap. Urban planners, planners, sociologists of cities endlessly lament the statistics describing the phenomenon on a social scale. Somewhere far away, completely detached from the realities of the city, the problem of alienation, a growing sense of acute life discomfort and disintegration of mental life is supposedly studied by psychologists, psychiatrists, therapists. For a mysterious reason, it is still recognized that the quantitative aspect of the study of urban life provides enough information to make
“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, – said Olga Tokarczuk during the Góry Literatury Festival and unleashed a storm. This statement is difficult to accept, but I understand why such words were uttered by the Nobel Prize winner.” (W. Szot, wyborcza.pl ). And how much emotion a writer can evoke, even at the very moment when a heatwave collides with a wall of hailstones! It is comforting to know that literature continues to arouse interest in the midst of such mayhem. If these words had not been
Heat 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 implant, to weave into everything around it. What color accompanies this, what is worn in summer? White, still white. Let’s see what it can mean. Two paintings, a good chunk of time between them, white dominates both. At least that’s how they are described. Rafael’s La velata remains anonymous, we are not sure who posed. We know as much as we can see: the unobvious amber around her neck, the strand of hair instead of a second hand reminding us of the passing moment, the crimp of a dress of white moiré, thickly woven
August 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 here and there. Today it is already quite common, and it is a good measure of the westernization, the transformation of Polish culture at the beginning of the 21st century. Rationality, as it is commonly portrayed in the West, is based on the absolute compulsion to ask about the loss and profit account. This type of rationality is impossible under certain (unfortunately repetitive) historical circumstances in the East. Of course, there have always been those who said that the uprising was not a
This year's July is a thing of the past. Will it be a Historical July, such as e.g. Lublin July 1980 full of strikes that excited, but it never occurred to anyone, that they were a strange sign of approaching a completely different era? On July 29, after four o'clock, MS Chrobry sailed out of our beautiful Gdynia, heading to South America. Among the 1042 passengers, two novice writers, Czesław Straszewicz and Witold Gombrowicz, were equipped with first-class tickets by Jerzy Giedroyc (then a ministerial official dealing with the promotion of Polish culture). On August 20, 1939, around 11:00, the ship sailed to Buenos Aires. On September 1, 1939, he found it on the way back at the height of Pernambuco. He did not survive the Brave War. Straszewicz and Gombrowicz yes. Straszewicz decided to
We 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 “clouds”? In modern art, one that imitates properly our natural perspective above the clouds, the Judgment Scene takes place. The doomsday in our western imagination rests on firm clouds. Let’s segregate data. Let’s make more backups.
Prof. In a letter to the participants of the opening of the exhibition "Seismograph of the Age of Acceleration" emphasized the role of reflection on historical and social transformation in the formation of Witkacy's artistic and literary horizon. The organizers of the exhibition, in turn, emphasized the relevance of the artist's intuition and choices. It's hard to disagree with these opinions. In the drama Shoemakers Completed by Witkacy in 1934 raised with the zeal of creating a new world And the journeyman exclaims: "A whore does not tremble, beer does not treak - no radio, cinema and spiders of all kinds of minds! Work in itself - this is the highest goal - Work and for yourself” (Act II, 256). Jan Błoński wrote that in this drama "philosophy mixes (...) with triviality and rudeness
President Macron’s concerned remarks about the need to accord Russia special treatment were not immediately met with complete understanding. They certainly made us realise at once just how differently our European minds are furnished depending on our distance from the East. This cannot easily be changed. One can try, using examples firmly rooted in French culture, to show that sooner or later everyone—even the most exceptional and unpredictable ‘statesmen’—realises that, like simple shepherds, they remain in Arcadia only briefly. The profiles and faces of Russia’s warlords are far better suited to Et in Arcadia ego in Guercino’s Italian version than to Poussin’s picture, as manicured as the gardens of Versailles. Guercino frightens us with the remnants of life clinging to a skull. It is
Łódź sways and Structures vibrate. Large structures more so, overturned ones ‘louder’. Try to overturn Łódź. Knocked out of its everyday rhythm, the city will begin to ‘sound’ differently in many unexpected places. W20, which declares an interest in architecture and the City as a whole, should right now be listening with engineering precision for the places from which ‘spontaneous’ vibrations can be heard. For engine designers, this information is priceless. And a city generates a number of revolutions several orders of magnitude greater than an engine. The principle is similar, however: movement is generated by micro-explosions, as in the cylinder of an internal-combustion engine. Vibroacoustics, this time as a way of measuring panicked excitation: The Combustion Cycle and Folk Culture
Come on To the English . Mr. Prime Minister will send a report and we, here on land, will have tomorrow A clear overview of the current situation On the section of the "eastern flank" we live in. Just be a little careful with the political rituals. In a country so saturated with the power of poetic imagination, it is easy to become a part of a myth and spend a very long time among the sharp shadows of fog. Even if a person thinks (that he thinks) pragmatically and uses his rights. Boris Johnson/PAP/EPA/ANDY RAIN like our MP from Upita. Professor Joachim Śliwa, looking for a mummy (as you know, an Egyptologist must) compiled a very informative and emblematic posthumous story of a "MP from Upita" (today: the village of Upyté, less than 300 people, as many as in one skyscraper), who was the
"We win Wimbledon," says Russia tennis chief after Rybakina triumph. It's vacation, let's practice logical thinking. Mr. Smith thought of something at the moment when Big Ben's clues pointed to five twelve. The same thing - thought by a strange coincidence, Herr Schmidt, standing on Alexanderplatz. The hands of one of the twenty-four clocks corresponding to all time zones showed five twelve. Her Schmidt stood under a shield corresponding to the time in Berlin (Central European Summer Time, Berlin, GMT+2). Mrs. Kowalska realized exactly the same thing as she looked around the crowded Cloths at the moment when the trumpeter was already opening the window on the St. Mary's Tower. A sign that noon was approaching in Krakow. The same thought flashed through the head of Mr. Fierar stomping with
“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 the existence of the theory of becoming rich improbable (despite what numerous guides sold at airports try to convince us to
Well-tempered ( Wohltemperierte ) vibrations transmit energy, but they cannot change anything. They will neither cool nor warm us by even half a degree. Sounding at their loudest, they will not stop glaciers melting, floods or summer hailstorms. They will bring relief and rescue to no endangered species except Homo sapiens—and even then only to those living in the West . An explanation of this experience remains beyond our reach. For listening to Bach can indisputably both cool and warm us, and bring relief. Some write that it can even save. Rationality fares poorly in explaining our personal experiences. Words such as harmony, beauty and metaphysics do not name anything that can be treated as the cause of a change we actually feel. Unus mundus —a world without cracks, integrated
What should characterize the attacker? Effectiveness. The most effective can even surprise. Robert Lewandowski found the moment and personally (not with his own) wrote a sentence with The Promised Land. Which sentence? Accurate, short, ironic. "Do you know who is here in Łódź? " The principle of effectiveness also applies in football. Effectiveness not only in scoring goals, but effectiveness in keeping the audience's attention on your own figure. This determines the position, career course, ability to influence the course of the game, not only on the field. Effectiveness is associated with versatility, with divided attention, with a sense of the moment and the rhythm of events. When you make a gesture, ending with a question mark, it is not clear which way it will go. And that's more or
The 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 we’ve invited Rob Krier to Lodz to help us ‘stitch together’ our badly ragged city centre. Krier: “People are not a mass, they are individuals. Why hasn’t the New Centre become a vibrant district of Lodz despite that kind of money? These are not mutually exclusive agendas. All the surrounding individuals, all the usually shunned from each other areas, fashions, groups, subcultures, fan clubs can meet in the “salvaged middle”. This does not mean they must do it, but they can
Once upon a time, in 1976, Leonid Sokolov planed wooden glasses. He called his work: "A project of glasses for every Soviet citizen " . The Soviet Union disappeared, the need to control the field of view of others remained. Unfortunately, there have also been technologies that allow very similar glasses with a narrow field of observation to be produced on a mass scale. You can get them for free today (for free, from hand). Let's use: designer glasses for a good citizen. We definitely do not intend to promote these metal - camouflage (recently heavily promoted by the Russian army for each soldier). However, it is worth looking for traces of the need to tinker with glasses. It can clearly be found in the traces of the construction of the image of one empire in the area of another. The
The comic potential of the newly launched National Repository of Objects of Culture and Science is delightful. Enter Świetlicki Marcin in its search engine and it instantly asks whether you might have meant ‘regimental common room’, offering ‘young people in a common room’ or ‘a parade on Święty Marcin Street’. Hats off, respect: few poets possess as broad a range of associations as this government portal, conceived to integrate culture and administration. It could be used to play the Parisian Surrealists’ café game cadavre exquis. And if the administration begins to use it more widely, we shall soon live in a country that matches the visions of Sławomir Mrożek. Importantly, the portal is remarkably stable: for a second day, the hussars have been charging across its home page without
Rau met with Annalena Baerbock, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Germany, probably so that a simple plan to send tanks from Poland to Ukraine and from Germany to Poland did not stop halfway. Germany writes about hesitation on the issue of Ringtausch with Poland. Considering how symbolically you can understand Ringtausch (It can also be the equivalent of: A revolving change, As well as exchanging wedding rings), the issue is significantly tense. It seems that everyone in Europe has long been with each other "after the word", but not after the gesture. The ritual stopped, froze. Hence the spooky powerlessness of the EU masked by chatter ( Parletré ). The language is commonly understood, the language of meanings resulting directly from the image, the magical language is based on the
Film festivals. Great, renowned, steeped in tradition. The Cannes Film Festival is the quintessence of the West and of its ability to absorb and assimilate everything at once. Side by side: the unfinished documentary Mariupolis 2 , directed by Mantas Kvedaravičius (who died in Mariupol on 2 April, shot by Russian soldiers), and Top Gun: Maverick (directed by Joseph Kosinski). And in between, as at any festival: applause, acclaim. Which film will win, which will make an incredible impression and ‘pin us to our seats’? It is good to return to Łódź after the festival. Łódź is like a link on the all-embracing East–West axis, a place where sooner or later we will all meet—all the fans of the twenty-first century’s cool world. In Łódź we feel both the power and the impotence of applause
Thought, thought until invented. The slogan of the design festival in 2022 was (ta): RE:GENERATION . It's good to start with a trifle, with a detail, with something that is easier to deal with. Why a colon? What does it give, what does it bring to the current situation? Could it be that he "graphically" distinguished? The first reflex of the Western, analytical mentality is the division into smaller, more manipulable elements. It is quite difficult to perform a reliable analysis without fragmenting the analyzed thing. Synthesis can be as dangerous as the compulsion to analyze everything around, but the latter habit produces micro-, nano-, pico-marks, designer fireworks that illuminate the future as stably as a spark in a lighter (attention methane!). Such micro-meanings, one-time
