Tag: 5inlodz-idems

One 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 corner, situated next to a row of five cobalt-decorated, distinctive Delft tiles. One might inquire whether Schulz would have been disinterested in such a fetish. The suggestion of a connection between the kitchen and the alcove is so subtle that it is not discernible in the living room. It is evident that the wall and floor in question occupy a considerable portion of the painting, with the tiles spanning approximately twenty centimetres in width. This is in stark contrast to the limited representation of the wall and floor in the painting, which collectively occupy a mere ten centimetres.  This is undoubtedly one of the most remarkable spaces depicted in European painting. One might consider the housekeeper’s glowing blue gown as a mountain massif, akin to the wild Carpathian range of the Angel, which represents an anthropomorphic landscape imbued with mythological significance. In this landscape, eroticism condensates like dew each night. This is evidenced by the figure of Cupido depicted in the first panel from the left. If one were to examine this space exclusively, one would quickly lose the ability to discern scale. It would not be possible to determine whether the subject was a mere half a metre of kitchen wall or an expansive, misty sky spanning half a kilometre.  The fragment of a Vermeer painting in question allows for the accommodation of a vast array of fantastical elements. This is accompanied by an inherent ambiguity of meaning, contingent upon the assumption that the

The 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 Art Exhibition in Venice. The main exhibition was curated by Adriano Pedrosa, the Brazilian artistic director of the São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP). “Andrzej Wróblewski is our great legend, and it is our hope that he will become, if not a legend for everyone, then at least a recognisable figure on the international art scene.” It is not guaranteed that this will come to fruition. In a conversation with Agnieszka Kowalska conducted in 2012 on the occasion of an international seminar devoted to the artist’s life and work, the head of Warsaw’s Museum of Modern Art, Joanna Mytkowska, noted that the artist’s work was still awaiting recognition on the international art scene. Andrzej Wróblewski was an accomplished painter. An instinctive painter, he was able to emphasise the seemingly inexplicable precision of his observations, contrasting them and presenting them in a way that demanded attention and comprehension. The post-war reality in Poland was characterised by sharp contrasts and mutually exclusive choices. One might posit that it was a particularly „picturesque” period in Polish history. This picturesque quality was a recurring theme in the region’s historical narrative, particularly in the context of the Counter-Reformation.  In a written statement released upon the formation of the Self-Study Group in 1948, Wróblewski articulated the group’s objective as being “to paint a picture that would help distinguish between good and evil.” It is difficult to imagine any artist who would not want to do so. In 1949, a painting was

One 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 backwards, reveals the motif of two people carrying a wardrobe with a mirror (yes, yes, Henryk Kluba and Jakub Goldberg lugging a wardrobe along a Baltic beach in Polanski’s 1958 etude, that was already the „second season” of this symbolic transport service in film history). Will we see season three, and will the motif of carrying something as big and heavy as a wardrobe fill the frames and our minds?  It would be nice, because every thread that is picked up, every thread that is connected – this is a typical Łódź wisdom – is a joy to behold. Reality has to be constantly mended and repaired, because we are still unable to produce Reality 2.0.  What might a frame of porters providing a transport service look like in 2024? Banally, it will not be an image perceived and fixed by the human gaze. The first better algorithm asked to mill over a scene from a Themersons’ film will instantly sniff out a series of frames as sterile, extremely functional, and anonymous as the face of a courier who has already turned around and is speeding away before we have managed to collect our current parcel.  Look at how seamlessly the image machine crosses bits of human anatomy with objects. Pure functionality, just legs and boxes in a smooth space. We can see it as little more than playing with the metamorphosis of an old 20th century avant-garde using AI. We can also think, if

What 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 lives without pleasure, dies without his will. Is this such a cheerful story, I don’t know? (…) I’m not a cynic, (…) it’s life.”  If it turns out badly we will get not only a couple of films, but also a TV series about Hłasko.  One might cite, for example, Hłasko 1670. A bit of costumes, a bit of disguise, a lot of issues to the camera, straight to the eye, some cinematic dialogue „just like from Hłasko”.  The subtly glinting cynicism on the screen represents a highly lucrative business strategy in the context of film projection. It is possible that the outcome will not be as unfavourable as anticipated. It is conceivable that Andrzej Titkow (author of the 1986 film Beautiful Twenty-Something, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Es1DnbGvvJo) may succeed in making a fourth film based on Hłaska’s Sowa, córka piekarza (The Owl, the Baker’s Daughter), which he considers the least successful of Hłaska’s novels. In a discussion with Tadeusz Sobolewski, Titkow articulated his approach to filmmaking: “My ideal is direct action. There are films created from an external perspective, where the director and camera maintain a distance from the subject matter, presenting it in a detached manner. My approach is to work (…) from the inside out.” (Interview with Tadeusz Sobolewski, “Kino”, 2 March 1993). Cynicism recommends approaching at most a stick distance to anything in this world. In a cynical sense, there are more pressing matters to attend to. Contemporary cynicism is aesthetically displeasing, but in moderation

It 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

But 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 its premiere, “The Harvester” was the number one feature film in fourteen countries around the world. Before dismissing the universal significance of Tadeusz Dołęga-Mostowicz’s writing, it is instructive to examine the historical context. In this relentless pursuit of progress, we are the slowest to alter the narratives that are repeated ad nauseam. This is what unites us, this is what gives us hope. Is it the unbearable monotony of repetition, of memory, that unites us? Indeed, that is precisely what unites us, and it is often acute. It is not a simple history, it is not a simple choice, it is not a simple path.  History, memory, and identity are not about repetition; they are not about telling the same thing over and over again. This is a challenging concept to grasp in the context of modern media, where election broadcasts are often presented in blocks between commercials. When a story is repeated, it is not necessarily a reflection of a genuine narrative but rather a form of efficient marketing, a strategy employed by large businesses that own the rights to broadcast content and forms. It is plausible to suggest that our identity, our sacred privacy, and our uniqueness are subject to similar forces. The question of faith remains a sensitive issue in Europe. The term Alien Staff may be unfamiliar to some. It was once a sleek, functional object based on Interrogative Design, yet relatively unknown. It had no “reach”. Similarly, the term Netflix

Marcel 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 politician. In the latter, already in earthly paradise in the USA, she was the (third) wife of André Breton and one of the most charismatic artists of the Paris Surrealist group after the Second World War.  She became Elisa, someone who could fit the unspeakable into a small box. Given the size of today’s parcel network, this ability is invaluable. Elisa Breton died in 2000, before the sense of the world’s pixelated modularity had gone global and the market for delivering anything to the nearest parcel machine had taken off. Every now and then, someone gets caught up in the pointless but tormenting question: what distinguishes art from non-art? La boîte surréaliste, the Surrealist Box, will help you understand this question.  Imagine that a pressing state legislative need made it compulsory for every candidate in every election to compile and publish such a personality box of „not knowing what”. By the time a group of professional assistants from la boîte surréaliste had been trained, we would have seen things no one had ever dreamed of. Imagine heaps of such boxes „spontaneously” offered as vota or ex-vota in various sacred places in this country. Even French surrealists with a pedigree would have eyes like saucers. ___ Elisa Breton, Untitled, 1970, Israel Museum, Jerusalem. 

Indeed, 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 to appreciate  the painted world. Such prompts will probably be with us forever, unless the power goes out.  As long as we retain our own feelings, our own casual glances, our own opinions, everything is fine. The term „older paintings” is used to describe those works of art that have been created prior to the advent of the  contemporary iconosphere of mass culture. Such paintings are those of Rene Magritte, whose motifs have become ubiquitous in popular culture. Magritte’s work often employs a teasing and indirect approach to the viewer, encouraging them to consider connections between his art and other, older paintings. These connections may not be immediately apparent, yet they are there for those willing to look beyond the surface of the work. In the second half of the 1960s, Magritte painted La Leçon de musique, which repeats the title behind the conventional name of a three-hundred-year-older painting by Johannes Vermeer. For a Vermeer, the painting is relatively large (74 × 64.1 cm), and its numerous distracting details are particularly fascinating. These include the patterns on the carpets, the whiteness of the jug, the clipped portrait on the wall, and finally the mirror, which is a mirror of a size that in the 17th century was a solid sign of status and wealth. In order to ascertain the meaning of the title, it is necessary to consider the image as a whole. This necessitates a process of elimination, whereby the viewer must look beyond

The 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 case is Memory, which means the Future. In this manner, Łódź demonstrated respect and care for the continuity of culture. This is how Łódź remembers. Great creators are our future. For us, Jan Kaczmarek will always be one of them. He is the one who, in the unanimous opinion of the city and ourselves, deserved his own peculiar, seemingly flat star – like a Łódź sidewalk. Last year he celebrated his 70th birthday – he was born in Konin, and grew up in Poznań. He was a citizen of the world by choice. He was a beautiful man and a difficult genius, a fulfilled artist as well. He had to overcome many challenges in his life. He spent a significant part of his life navigating the intricate matter of dreams, scenes, and performances. He was a man perfectly at home in this nebula of meanings. Please convey to Jan Kaczmarek that there is no future without dreamers! Our city is part of a great dream. Both we and this city are here because our predecessors knew how to dream. Jan Kaczmarek has a star in Łódź. In a deeply human sense, Jan is from here. However, Łódź also deserves Jan Kaczmarek’s star. The artist composed music for over seventy films. A constellation comprising of seventy distinct points is regarded  by ancient astrologers as a significant and comprehensive representation of an intriguing human life. Astronomers posit that stars reside in clusters that lack any form of

We 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. We have calculated that the last day of December, and therefore the year, is 4 minutes longer than the shortest day. Do you know anyone who cares about this? For thousands of years, the winter solstice between 21 and 22 December in the northern hemisphere has provided clues to the construction of dozens of key sites for ancient communities. For a long time, an architect was someone who could calculate and draw what connected a wall or gate to a star, and, who knows, maybe even to a god. Modernity is intoxicated by its own ability to count instantly, to count everything in order to to get there faster. We call this functionality, pragmatism. It is the foundation, rudimentum, substructio of our everyday lives. For some reason, we are still impressed by the moment when we see with our own eyes how the older way of counting appears with the rising Sun. How rays, pillars, and walls coexist and harmonise for a brief moment, like well-tuned strings. We swallow our saliva, make strong resolutions, send MMS messages to people we have long forgotten. These are important functions of enduring architecture. ___ Karnak at the solstice from the left and right; in the middle: the LSS Społem Hall, from a slightly later period.

In 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 here can fluctuate considerably. In such conditions, the imagination directly overlaps with violence, agency, desires, dominance, and submission. The concept of the sacrum and fate becomes a poignant, impassively acting force. The industrial machine is as simple and ruthless entity. It is understandable why our analytical minds gravitate towards viewing it as a purely technical factor, one that can be exploited for mass production. However, it is crucial to consider the nuances that matter more: such as its size, speed (number of changes), developing distribution networks, capturing the market, and ultimately profit. It is still common to describe industrial (and post-industrial) cities in terms of sports cars, with numerous technical parameters being considered. Nevertheless, there is a tendency to overlook the instinctive forces and reflexes that are activated by such symbolic specification. It is often said that Jerzy Nowosielski painted (wrote) icons. This is indeed the case. If we analyse the icon as an image, without any preconceptions, and reveal how it is and how it will be it can be considered a “label” that fits what is seen in his works painted in Łódź between 1950 and 1962. Even Łódź can be considered an icon. In more precise terms, the Łódź Museum of Art at the corner of Gdańska and Więckowskiego streets is the location of the only cinematic iconostasis in the world, constructed for the excellent exhibition Nowosielski in Łódź, which took place from 10 October, 2023, to 25 February, 2024. Nowosielski spent

In 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, emphasise, to draw attention to something. We still like to think of drawings in this way in today’s culture. We like to think of our unnoticed everyday life in the anachronistic way. It reassures us; we rock ourselves (and others) nonchalantly in such a sentimental repetition of gestures, phrases, translations from decades ago, as if in a relaxing, personal armchair. Scientists have already established beyond doubt that the year 2024 is not 1954, or even 1963 (when the first sketches of what we now call the Matrix appeared in the mind of the same Steinberg). It is worth remembering this, even without giving up the relaxing rocking. In 2024, there are incomparably more people who want to draw their own boundaries, their own guiding lines, their own perspectives. It seems to us, the spectators, that we can distinguish brighter and slightly darker visions in this tangle. This is our small role: to observe the full spectrum of clearly detached emotions; from irritation to delight. Even without leaving our deep privacy, we participate in this collective scene, we can be seen in frame number 2024. Let us not believe too much that the final effect depends primarily on the gestures of the main actors, on their dramatic acting: signed, unsigned, crossed out, underlined, erased. Many of them probably believe that they are self-sufficient, like the mutually drawing hands in Steinberg’s drawing, that if they play it well, they will fill the whole frame with themselves. Yes,

The 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 a surge of imagined unity (ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer), set against a grotesque backdrop of invented signs and rituals. The film The Great Dictator (1940) directed by Chaplin mocks the fetishistic attitude towards “acts of communication,” towards “communication protocols”, without which the order of modernity as we know it would disappear in the blink of an eye. The speech scene of the film Dictator (Adenoid Hynkel, by profession: “a simple Jewish-Tomainian barber” living in the fictional Tomainia) is a case in point. Until 10 May, the year was characterized by relative calm (the Phoney War) following a period of slightly unsettling events somewhere far in the east of Europe. For those who have not yet had an opportunity to view it, it is recommended that they do so during the summer of 2024. The scene to which the link (https://www.facebook.com/share/FpFLjdUPJZzPLSzW/) leads was edited, woven, and displayed by today’s machines and AI algorithms, which we are beginning to fear. As can be seen, we are indeed living at the end of the era of eyewitness facts. Upon initial observation, the scene appears identical the original from 1940. However, the closer examination reveals that the content of the speech has been significantly altered. The rest of the scene is irrelevant; they are merely puppets, listeners adorned with ridiculous badges, and pretenders. Such a puppet court is a common phenomenon surrounding any strong dictator, even in a democratic setting. We have witnessed this phenomenon before and

two 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 referred to as the “television Oscars”). It’s recommended that one familiarise onerself with the family history, commencing with the grandfather of Stefan Kudelski, Jan Tomasz Kudelski, an architect from Stanisławów. This is the story of the Lviv intelligentsia, which is quite typical of the fate of people with passion and talent, engaged in what they have chosen. People to whom an utterly improbable, unforeseeable grand history suddenly takes everything away, forcing them to flee. The Kudelski family, after a few years, found themselves in the Vichy-controlled area in the south of France. Sixteen-year-old Stefan commenced his education in Switzerland in 1945, later studying at the Polytechnic in Lausanne (However, he was unable to graduate due to his dedication to his passions). His Nagra tape recorders became legendary. The film industry and reporters were captivated by the transistor model, the Nagra III, which was launched in 1957. The Kudelski Group, which has a somewhat unusual name, continues to thrive today, led since 1991 by his son, Andrzej. It might be helpful to read the biographies of individuals, such as Kudelski, who was born on 27 February, 1929. In addition to anniversaries, it is important to read biographies that provide insights beyond the immediacy of current news. A balanced diet is essential for optimal cognitive function during the spring season. Pictured from left to right are: the architect Jan Tomasz Kudelski (1861-1937), grandson Stefan, and a newspaper article reporting on the engineer’s death. The image on the

From 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 sixty works on display come from the collection of Anna and Jerzy Starak, with the Starak Family Foundation, headed by Elżbieta Dzikowska, acting as the main organizer on the Polish side. The exhibition is curated by Anna Muszyńska. The tragically deceased thirty-year-old in 1957 is a key figure in Polish art in the early years after World War II. The strength and simplicity of his very distinctive painting, somewhere halfway between reportage frames and colouristic abstraction, will be noticed in Venice as an important moment in the history of European art. Art struggling to cope with the excess of war images will be placed in context by Wróblewski’s work. Wróblewski will become a figure placing the still rather indistinct outline of war trauma in the biographies of Eastern Europeans. Wróblewski’s paintings will withstand confrontation with the canvases of Francis Bacon. They are equally simple, direct, memorable, and at the same time sufficiently enigmatic. And entirely different, just like our piece of the continent compared to English dilemmas. Wróblewski’s painting keeps pace with existentialism (if not ahead of it) in its subcultural trend of the 1940s and 1950s. And, like French café existentialism, it has moments of clear enchantment with the naive simplicity of the progressive-Marxist fairy tale of the new post-war order. This is a serious asset for the ambitious art market. It is not so much Wróblewski’s biography, but the biography combined with what can be seen in his paintings, that provides ample material

She 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 located. That usually turns out to be a bad idea. In her statement after the jury’s verdict was announced, the new European Poet of Freedom Laureate, Monika Herceg from Croatia, casually said a few important things. It is enough that there are competitions like Gdańsk Literary Prize „European Poet of Freedom,” such committees, and somehow, miraculously, they manage to make such precise choices. Remember, strong faith can circle around for years, muttering bon mots in such unremarkable, inconspicuous places as the departments of the Lenin shipyard. It can operate in places completely dominated linguistically by the order of self-assured absurdity, boldly naming everything around it.

May 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, such as the narcotic land of the Lotus Eaters. Well, with today’s (alleged) level of physical fitness – why not? With good equipment, in good company, we can go anywhere. What’s more, even the shortest of journeys will always require a mind. Even one like Homer’s, a mind that sees nothing. Equipment, company, finances, planning – yes, they are all important for good travel, but they are not enough. It’s hard to define the missing element. Perhaps it is given to those who do not see the obvious, a sensitivity to signs, to very strange, incomprehensible, certainly foreign signs. If we are not afraid of them, if we approach them to try to understand what they mean to us, then another journey begins. Each of us can do this, even barefoot. With our eyes closed. Ingres, who painted the literally huge (386 x 515 cm) Apotheosis of Homer, invented almost like Homer himself. At the same time, he could not neglect thorough preparation, could not risk the criticism that the Apotheosis was badly painted, even if strangely imagined. Hence such detailed studies of Homer’s physicality in the Louvre, a physicality that is not of primary importance for free travel.

You 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 should be. Simple, intense, it’s hard to pretend for long that exoticism, for example, prevents us from seeing what we’re looking at. A photograph by Mohammed Salem, who works for Reuters, won this year’s edition of the World Press Photo. The moment when the jury’s verdict was announced in Amsterdam was itself the scene for a good photo. A cultural institution in a former church interior, in a presbytery, the winning photo in the place of an altarpiece, with concerned officials, bureaucrats, and the press all around. It may seem that the comparison with one of the four versions of Magritte’s painting Les Amants is far-fetched. What links the Gaza photograph with the Surrealist Lovers from 1928? Covered faces, is that not enough? It is an issue as delicate as a warm sea current. The general answer, which helps to see more clearly why such images win, is a very old phrase that describs all life, probably every life: eros kai thanatos / έρως και θάνατος. How many poetry collections, how many watercolor collections have been titled like that, the perfect cliché! Love and death, that’s exactly what it means. Despite the continuous work of the stock exchange, markets, the great AI language models, and the secret laboratories, we all have so little left. For some, it seems, even less. It’s a slightly melodramatic phrase by today’s cool linguistic standards. A note on the melodramatic nature of Magritte’s painting was included in the description on

A 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 did Daumier, who painted with a single stroke painting the expressive head of the nag in a single stroke, save paint for the head of the horseman? It’s one of the most enigmatic portraits of a true madness. Five years earlier, in 1863, Gustave Doré published his magnificent, detailed illustrations for Cervantes’ novel. The graphic depiction of the moment when a galloping imagination collides with reality was to become a compulsory illustration for both the matriculation examination and the driving test for all category. In Doré’s illustrations, we gaze greedily at the nuanced details. When we look at Daumier’s painting, which could illustrate and comment on any corner of the world with equal skill, it is as if we looking into a morning mirror. It takes a moment before we sleepily realise what we are seeing. The world and the hero traversing it are like two drops of colour, one careless smear of ochre. Again,  before dusk, we will have to struggle to distinguish ourselves even a little from the background. Honoré Victorin Daumier, Don Quijote and Sancho Panza, 51 × 32 cm, Neue Pinakothek, Munich

Election 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 “From the Translator,” concluding the eight hundred and seventeen pages of James Joyce’s Ulysses, in the PIW edition. PPR’s mintage of 40,000 (+200) copies descended like a ghost and powerfully changed the face of “this land”. And Słomczyński’s sentences will remain with us long into the 21st century. “There is a great group of fortunate people in the world who dismiss as obvious nonsense everything they cannot understand at first glance. These people demand from art only the utmost swiftness in duplicating what is closest and best known to them. In short, they demand what they do not have to learn and can grasp without much effort, which in turn would have to lead to the development and refinement of that delicate internal apparatus that serves man to generate emotions.” The first sentence astounds for its prophetic accuracy over half a century ago. By what miracle or whim of imagination could almost the entirety of todays so-called “political class” in the city be so faithfully and laconically described? At the end of the sixties, the concept of “class” as something that describes society was, of course, widespread in communist Poland, but to predict that in half a century’s time something as abstract as the “political class” would coincide (in its own mind) with the “group of lucky ones” is unfathomable. The third sentence is the most distant from our known version of the present day. Słomczyński could not have foreseen that instead of the “delicate

to 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 referent, devoid of content existing beyond words? These are the kinds of questions we probably ask ourselves all over Poland – not only in Łódź. And, of course, not only in Łódź they remain unanswered. The most sensible thing to do would be to raise such imaginary problems in „Hunting Club”. Such a Hunting Club has been created in our city by local architects. They set up their hunting boxes under a lamp post (that’s where it’s the darkest), at an abandoned tram stop. And, of course, they immediately became inaudible (invisible). We liked this action very much. Although there’s a good chance that the annoying elusiveness will be recognized and described as simply „not yet caught.” And hunting down, hitting such elusive notions simply requires better night vision, higher maintenance on training, etc. And time is in short supply… Elections! The position of Łódź hunters is shared by those we usually call pragmatic technocrats. Surprisingly, this identification is often used in politics and rather as a positive category. Architects must strongly intuit this. If we carelessly ask not a hunter, but, for example, a sincere existentialist-modernist architect, about the „tangibility of concepts”, we may learn that in addition to abstract „elusiveness,” we sometimes experience – on our own skin – the touch of concepts (even those seemingly abstract ones). „Touch” is a polite and subdued word. We sometimes experience the crushing touch of concepts. And surprisingly different concepts from Justice, through Fear, Common Sense

They 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 situation a bit and commence the construction of the Tenement of a Future Age in Łódź. Naturally, in the eastern row of the future Kobro Market in a New Center of Łódź, opposite the Tenement of a Promised Land, as part of the same 21K project. As always, it was about the Baron of Łódź – Münchhausen. Not everyone has as much vigor as the baron who climbed to the Moon using a rope. What about the others, who don’t possess such strength? And yet, one must move through the streets of Łódź. One can freely travel between mundus sensibilis and mundus intelligibilis. In Greek (as usual), it sounds even better, as one can travel between two universes (κόσμος αἰσθητός and κόσμος νοητός). One of the safest, most touching naiveties of an „engineering” vision of easy communication in the future can be seen in Grandville’s illustration from the 1844 book Un Autre Monde”. When you listen to (or read about) the great technologies of the future, and everything seems understandable to you, remember Grandville’s sturdy bridge. Its cosmic span of arches heralds the Parisian Eiffel Tower, which will be built forty years later. And just think, in Łódź it is somewhat different, than somewhere else. Łódź, in its efforts to deal with the future, still remembers that it is a new growth, something that sprang up rapidly in the middle of the feudal estates of the Sieradz-Łęczyca Land. And it subordinated everything to itself.

Certainly, 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 – the entire theatrical, ludic immediacy starts to displace legal argumentation. With such theatricalization, the skill of reading between the lines, catching legal nuances, referring to the text, becomes of little use. If this process becomes widespread, we will again be proud of our theatrical avant-garde, though it will not be an inexpensive experiment. Theatrum mundi is a term describing the reality of many cultures, fitting what happens in many countries. But why are we, of all people, treated to the delight that the latest premiere in our puppet media theater looks like an avant-garde synthesis of two tales: Frankenstein and The Big Mystery of Teddy Bear Uszatek? To laugh or to cry? It’s unclear, all the more so as there are numerous voices of criticism, believing that this spectacular muddle really revolves around Devil’s Games.