Soldier’s Experience. Aesthetic and Political Frames of Modernist Paradigm Cover Image
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Doświadczenie żołnierza. Estetyczne i polityczne ramy nowoczesności
Soldier’s Experience. Aesthetic and Political Frames of Modernist Paradigm

Author(s): Dorota Sajewska
Subject(s): Cultural history
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: Erwin Piscator; doświadczenie; pierwsza wojna światowa; ciało żołnierza; teatr polityczny; performatywność; media wizualne

Summary/Abstract: As a point of departure for the analysis of the “soldier’s experience”, the author proposes Walter Benjamin’s distinction between the concepts of Erfahrung und Erlebnis. The German philosopher regarded this distinction as a symptom of the fundamental transformation of individual and collective perception, which occurred under the influence of the Great War. Therefore, the article analyses the soldier’s body – above all its visual representations. The author examines ideological aspects of the visual framing of “precarious life” – both in archival documents (on the basis of photographs from field hospitals, photo albums, films from military and medical archives), as well as in purely artistic forms (projections, films, and photomontages used in the experimental political theatre of a former WWI soldier – Erwin Piscator).

  • Issue Year: 445/2014
  • Issue No: 04
  • Page Range: 53-63
  • Page Count: 11
  • Language: Polish