The Icon as Iconoclash

Ikona jako ikonostarcie

Author(s): Joseph Leo Koerner / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 03/2013

Keywords: image; icon; iconoclasm; anthropology

A translation into the Polish of an article originally published in the book: Iconoclash (Karlsruhe 2002), with a new introduction by the author. The topic involves the “image wars” waged during the Reformation. Koerner showed their conceptual complexity, the co-dependence of both attitudes – iconoclastic and iconophilic, the dialectical relation of violence against images and the violence of images: image breaking always shadows image making; religious images are engines of the iconoclash (a term introduced by Bruno Latour: a moment of transition between having images and having done with images) that periodically destroys and renews them.

The Odyssey of Guernica. The Image, Power, Death, and Historical Memory

Odyseja Guerniki. Obraz, władza, śmierć i pamięć historyczna

Author(s): Marcin Napiórkowski / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 03/2013

Keywords: image; anthropology; Guernica

The article deals with the cultural biography of Guernica by Pablo Picasso, locating it within the context of the anthropology of memory. Twentieth-century transformations of culture, within whose range the cult of the victors has been supplanted by the cult of the victims, became the reason why depictions of death – once an important instrument of the legitimisation of all authority – now comprise the key tool of delegitimisation. In the text this thesis is exemplified by the successive stages of the wanderings of Guernica: from the time of its origin, “exile” in Europe and the USA, and “meaningful absence” in Francoist Spain to controversies connected with a return to its native land. At the time, Picasso’s painting served as a tool of iconoclasm (a weapon in the “war of images”) while becoming the object of numerous attacks.

Iconoclasm as Discourse: from Antiquity to Byzantium

Ikonoklazm jako dyskurs

Author(s): Jaś Elsner / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 03/2013

Keywords: iconoclasm; history; image; Bysantium

Iconoclasm from archaic Greek antiquity into Byzantium was an attack on the real presence of the depicted prototype through an assault on its material image. But during the moment of Byzantine Iconoclasm in the eighth and ninth centuries, for the first time, thinks on both sides of the debate – Iconophiles and Iconoclasts – considered the image entirely as representation. This is a transformative moment in the discourse of images in the entire Western tradition. For it liberated the image from an emphasis on ontology to place it in an epistemological relation to its referent. The impulse in Byzantium to re-evaluate the meanings of images emerged from debates within ancient pre-Christian culture, between Christians and pagans, and between Christians, Jews, and Muslims. It was a profound influence on the understandings of images in the later Middle Ages and the Reformation.

“On This Side of the Eyelashes”. Non-place, Non-person, Photo-graphy

„Po tej stronie rzęs”. Nie-miejsce, nie-osoba, foto-grafia

Author(s): Wojciech Michera / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 03/2013

Keywords: image; anthropology; photography

The fundamental part of this essay is an analysis of a fragment from the autobiography of Roland Barthes, i.e. a photograph showing a theatrical spectacle in which Barthes took part in the courtyard of the Sorbonne, and a commentary connected with the photograph in question. By referring to other texts, both by Barthes and, i.a. Lacan, Foucault, Benveniste and Derrida, author demonstrated that within this visual-literary discourse the masked figure of the “author-actor” is not solely an “arbitrary and external sign of identity” (as is sometimes believed) but a non-person (non-personne), “non-place” (non-lieu), and a figure radically questioning the subjectivity of the narrator. A careful (narratological) analysis of this scene shows that the “mask” is negated, and ceases to be a “symbol”, thus assuming the subversive features that Barthes linked with the concept of “photography”.

The CIA Can Only Watch

Jak dostrzec Bin Ladena, by już nigdy go nie zobaczyć?

Author(s): Agata Sierbińska / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 03/2013

Keywords: anthropology; image; politics; representation

On 2 May 2011 Barack Obama informed about an action conducted by the elitist Navy SEALs, which ended in the death of Osama bin Laden. The White House illustrated this piece of information with a photograph showing American officials looking at a screen, probably beyond the take and showing the course of events. The photograph inspired numerous commentaries: why did the American authorities not publish the most anticipated image, that of the corpse of Osama bin Laden, what was the significance of the gestures performed by the persons gathered at the White House command centre; it also became extremely popular material for authors of Internet memes. In the presented text the history of the photograph becomes a visor showing the unclear status of portrayals of Osama bin Laden and Barack Obama; likenesses possess a separate identity (or life) and effectively resist those who trie to kill them or use them for private purposes.

Good, bad, and “new” photographs of Shoah

Dobre, złe i „nowe” zdjęcia Zagłady

Author(s): Agnieszka Pajączkowska / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 03/2013

Keywords: image; Holocaust; photography

The article provides a case study – an analysis of so called “diggers photography” used as a starting point and main basis for a book Golden Harvest: Events at the Periphery of the Holocaust by Jan T. Gross and Irena Grudzińska-Gross. Unveiling the methods of constructing the picture meaning that is expressed in the book, the author attempts to deconstruct a strategy of using photography medium as transparent “truth” and natural “evidence”. The consideration of photographical medium as problematic and dialectic, involves an analysis of unknown picture from Yad Vaschem Archive, well-known Self Portrait as a Drowned Man by Hippolyte Bayard and thought of Georges Didi-Huberman from his books Images in Spite of All and Quand les images prennent position, L’oeil de l’histoire: Tome 1.

Lucky to Be Alive, or How to Survive in the World/in an Image

Lucky to be alive, czyli jak przetrwać w świecie / jak przetrwać w obrazie

Author(s): Paulina Kwiatkowska / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 03/2013

Keywords: image; anthropology

The author ruminated about the relation between the film image and reality, film “subjectivism” and “objectivism”, and selected as her point of departure an attempt at a theoretical view of montage as the basic practice applied by censorship. In exceptional cases, censorship, whose task is usually the elimination of all that appears to be menacing or disturbing in the film matter, proves to be a practice consisting of an implantation into the film image of elements used for taming it and rendering it unambiguous. Those alien elements, inserted into the film via montage, function in the manner of a fig leaf, which, however, cannot be interpreted exclusively in the categories of authority and its pacifying or moralising activity within the domain of art. In his last film: Eyes Wide Shut, Stanley Kubrick, permitting, or perhaps outright provoking the inevitable intervention of censorship into the key orgy scene, revealed the very essence of our fear of images, which in the cinema often turn into fear of the camera and the power that it wins over the perception of the protagonist and the spectator.

Clothes that awakened images of horror

O ubraniach, które zbudziły obrazy koszmaru

Author(s): Agata Zborowska / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 03/2013

Keywords: image; fashion; Holocaust

On 27 January 1995 at the Paris Fashion Week the Comme des Garçons fashion house presented collection entitled Sleep. Among the clothes there were sets consisting of blue-and-white, vertically striped trousers and shirts. The direct reference was supposed to be clothing resembling classic men’s pyjamas. The show provoked great interest in the media, which presented unanimously negative interpretations of the show. They noticed that on the same day, exactly 50 years before the show, the soldiers opened the gates of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Comme des Garçons in popular opinion had made a conscious reference to the uniforms of the concentration camp’s prisoners. The author analysed the origins and consequences of the censorship that resulted in the collection not only physically disappearing, but also almost all of its traces have been eliminated.

In Defence of the Poor Image

W obronie nędznego obrazu

Author(s): Hito Steyerl / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 03/2013

Keywords: image; anthropology

When we demand HD quality projection on a cinematic screen, with perfect image and sound, we succumb to a certain, by no means indifferent and obvious ideological vision of the image. Hito Steyerl proved that by focusing on quality and fetishising quality capitalism has led to the exclusion of a considerable part of image creativity that no longer matches the present-day economic structure of full-screen cinemas, DVD HD, etc. The author drew attention to the fact that low quality digital images - transmitted by net users – offer a chance for an independent renascence of the auteur cinema, the cinematic essay, etc. If we abandon our attachment to quality, we shall restore into circulation – thanks to enthusiasts who today possess suitable measures for illegally copying the classics of the film avangadre – a considerable part of the independent progressive and valuable image-printed oeuvre, which does not fit today’s capitalist vision of the circulation of images. The author thus protests against the fetishisation of the power of images and urges to turn towards poor images.

Intimate Relations with Little Iza. The Attack against the Arsenal Gallery in Białystok in 2001-2005

Intymne zbliżenie z malutką Izą. Ataki na Galerię Arsenał w Białymstoku w latach 2001-2005

Author(s): Kamil Kopania / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 03/2013

Keywords: image; art; gallery; iconoclasm

A discussion of the story and context of attacks conducted by representatives of rightist parties against the Arsenal Gallery in Białystok. Attempts at censoring the exposition on display at the Gallery took place on 2001-2005 and assumed various forms and intensity. Artists showing their works were accused of creating pseudo-art, insulting religious feelings, and even promoting paedophilia. The article presents the methods applied by representatives of right-wing parties intent on disavowing the Gallery and demonstrated the absurdity of the charges formulated against it. Kamil Kopania also outlined the media and social reception of the controversies.

No Lies: the Direct Cinema as Rape

No Lies: kino bezpośrednie jako gwałt

Author(s): Vivian C. Sobchack / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 03/2013

Keywords: direct cinema; image; anthropology; No Lies

An analysis of the short-feature film: No Lies (M. Bloch, 1972) telling about the rape of a young woman while applying the cinéma vérité convention. Having conducted a survey of assorted film techniques of showing rape, the author proved the existence of parallels between the contents of a story told by the director and the way of conducting film narration. Comparing the document, full of manipulation, to raping the spectator V.C. Sobchak questioned supposed passivity branded with voyeurism and connected with the experience of watching a documentary film.

Time in The Nose by Gogol (The Nose by Ethnographer)

Czas w Nosie Gogola (nos oczyma etnografa)

Author(s): Boris Uspienski / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 03/2013

Keywords: anthropology; literature; Gogol; The Nose

Spolia (about Images on/in Images)

Spolia (o obrazach na/w obrazach)

Author(s): Roma Sendyka / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 03/2013

Keywords: image; anthropology

A presentation of discussions accompanying compositions by the Chapman Brothers “supplementing” valuable and unique works of art. The activity of the Chapman Brothers is often accused of “vandalism”, “profanation” or “maiming” works of art. The artists opted for the term: rectifying. Roma Sendyka discussed the “maiming” or correcting of artworks as a serious creative and interpretation-oriented tactic, one of the important artistic gestures of twentieth-century art. Upon the example of a transformed series of works by Goya or the composition by Edward Dwurnik from 2009, created by combining an original Dwurnik composition with a painting by another artist, Bartek Materka, the article, using the category of spoliation, discusses complicated inter-discursive strategies of creating inter-image relations.

The Rhetoric of Rape, the Language of Vandalism

Retoryka gwałtu, język wandalizmu

Author(s): Gridley McKim-Smith / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 03/2013

Keywords: image; anthropology

A presentation of structural similarity between the rhetoric of rape and the rhetoric applied by the press and museums while attacking a work of art on show. The domination of the image becomes apparent in this situation both in the readiness to conceal a scandal and ascribing to the image the label of a provocateur, i.e. the one who is guilty. Having reconstructed the fundamental rhetorical scheme, in which the assailant appears in the role of male rapist and the image corresponds to the raped woman, McKim-Smith indicated instances of unambiguity and “transgender quality” when the attacker is a woman: take the example of the famous suffragette Mary Richardson, who at the beginning of the twentieth century damaged The Rokeby Venus by Velazquez.

Up-to-date opera staging as Gesamtkunst and hermeneutics

Korszerű operarendezés mint összművészet és hermeneutika

Author(s): Ágnes Heller / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 05/2002

Keywords: modern opera staging; hermeneutics; Mozart; Wagner

Analytical study about postmodern staging of the operas of Mozart and Wagner

The revelation to Ámos

Ámos jelenései

Author(s): János Kőbányai / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 05/2002

Keywords: Judaic cultural tradition; the Holocaust; apocalypse; crucifixion of Christ

The study discusses life and works of Imre Ámos, the martyred Hungarian-Jewish painter.

Black Head

Szerecsenfej

Author(s): György Ferdinandy / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 05/2002

Keywords: childehood memories; young love; a black mistress;

A nostalgic playful short story.

Wholesome stories

Tanulságos történetek

Author(s): György Pósfai / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 05/2002

Keywords: tales; humour

It is an ironic-fantastic short story series with acerbic homour

The Complete Works of Plato with Commentaries

Platón összes művei kommentárokkal

Author(s): Gábor Bolonyai / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 05/2002

Keywords: Modern translation and publication of ancient philosophy; Plato's dialogues; ancient philosophy

The review discusses the volumes published till now of the new edition of Plato's all works at the Atlantis Publishing House, Budapest, compares the New translations to the old ones and examines the postscripts and commentaries

Márai and Homeros

Márai és Homéros

Author(s): Zsigmond Ritoók / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 05/2002

Keywords: Ancient Greek literature; Greek sources of a modern Hungarian novel; references to Homeros

The study discusses the Ancient Greek sources of Sándor Márai's novel Béke Ithakában (Peace in Ithaca), with regard in the first place to Homeros