The Socialist Artistic Identity and the Bilateral Agreements in the Balkans (1945-1949)

Author(s): Irina Cărăbaș / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2017

After the Second World War, a new regional identity was configured through collaboration agreements not only between the USSR and each of the Eastern Bloc countries but, at the same time, through less hierarchical relationships between the newly installed communist regimes. These relationships also entailed cultural conventions, which stipulated joint events and exhibitions or documentary trips for artists. This article focuses on the artistic exchanges between Romania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia in the early years of the postwar era giving special attention to the art institutions that were assigned to operate them. Such international relationships are revealing for the local negotiations concerning the relation between artists and the state, but also for the political prospects in the Balkans. Moreover, the early artistic exchanges set out a series of practices that were maintained throughout the entire socialist period and therefore contributed to charting a common artistic identity. Although the Soviet cultural model settled certain borders and modes of action in each country through imported art institutions or policies, the artistic exchanges within the Eastern Bloc had also an independent life, which sometimes even bypassed it. Furthermore, in each country, Socialist Realism was configured at the intersection of Soviet directives, local artistic hierarchies and practices, and bilateral exchanges.

De la beauté de ma mère à celle de ma fille sur le « mur »

Author(s): Carla Şuteu / Language(s): French Issue: 3/2014

I wrote a novel, "Tita". An homage to my mother. I was deeply affected by her death. After the common writing experience I realized that nobody dies. Is just a change of location. A mechanism to double our love capacity…

Image, parole et ouverture. Commentaires sur le manuscrit Français 112(1) de la B.n.F., folio 78

Author(s): Alexandra Ilina / Language(s): French Issue: 2/2013

Automatons are persistent in the memory of medieval literature as a form of raising the issue of Creation and as a remnant of the Ovidian myth, in conjunction with the Oriental tradition. Masculine or feminine automatons brush on humanity, but alas their lack of ontological determination stems from their artificial status, representing the statute of the art object in the medieval world view in parallel with more practical modes of discussing the image.

Doctor mirabilis, caelestis et diabilis

Author(s): Laura Dumitrescu / Language(s): French Issue: 1/2012

"The Seventh Seal" is not only a major cinematographic work, but also a major form of reception of the Middle Ages during the XXth Century. The central role played by the Death is an essential bounding between the XVth Century, obsessed with the war, the deasese and the beginning of the XXth Century, facing the same demons.

Des scarabées

Author(s): Ancuţa Mortu / Language(s): French Issue: 1/2012

This paper discusses the image-text relations and puts forth the idea that visual experience is not fully accounted for by the model of textuality. A parallel is drawn between Henri Michaux’s work and Wittgenstein’s remarks about rule following in order to illustrate the pragmatic values of vision.

Lolita: Nabokov – Kubrick – Lyne. Adaptări și instanțe auctoriale

Author(s): Andreea Morar / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 1/2017

The purpose of this research article is to analyze adaptation as a form of expression that creates a bridge between the written word and the image. Given the fact that literature and cinematography are two intertwined arts and that the relationship between them is the object of research of many scholars, our analysis is focused on the role of the author (as the producer of the original text) and on the role of the auteur (the adapting film director). The central theme of our work revolves around the concept of narrativity which is a characteristic that defines both text and film. Vladimir Nabokov’s novel, Lolita, is the departing point in our research which deals with the way the text was adapted for the big screen by Stanley Kubrick and Adrian Lyne. In our study we will give answers to questions concerning the nature of adaptation, as well as its consequences.

Deconstructing Narratives. Third Generation Arts-Based Research on Image-Connected Memories Rooted in Silences

Author(s): Zsuzsi Flohr / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2023

This article is an attempt to employ arts-based research, a non-traditional, interdisciplinary methodology to create a non-exiting “family archive” from anecdotes photographs and scattered documents. The “family archive” is based on interviews of family members who were born after the Holocaust and supplemented with additional research conducted at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Arolsen Archives, Yad Vashem, and other archives. The text itself navigates the reader between the different truths, plumbing the fundamental disagreements between the interviewees who belong to the Second Generation, the generation of postmemory. In the center of the interviews there is a backpack which plays an important role as it is a “ghost”, functioning as a magical object, a vessel of the family fable. The recreated backpack helped to push aside the taboo on speaking about the Holocaust, and opened up an active dialogue, by bringing together comparative and interdisciplinary approaches through visual art. This intellectual and artistic move seeks to give credit where credit was not given before, for those narratives which were never listened to earlier.

Kultura designu. Nowe obszary teorii i praktyki

Author(s): Agata Szydłowska,Karolina J. Dudek / Language(s): Polish Issue: 23/2022

Ostrożny Prometeusz? Kilka kroków ku filozofii dizajnu, ze specjalnym uwzględnieniem Petera Sloterdijka

Author(s): Bruno Latour / Language(s): Polish Issue: 23/2022

Ontologiczny design - krytyczne zaangażowanie na rzecz radykalnie zrównoważonej przyszłości

Author(s): Jakub Barszczewski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 23/2022

Contemporary reflection on design postulates a radical change in thinking in this regard. In addition to a more conventional critique of the entanglement of design in the logic of profit and the legitimacy of the capitalist organisation of social life, attention is also drawn to the limitations that result from the fact that this activity is rooted in Eurocentric and Cartesian ontology. In analogy to the contemporary debate in the social sciences on the agency of “invisible actors” (including non-human actors, nature, and space), the design theorists described in this text (Anne-Marie Willis, Ezio Manzini, Tony Fry, Cameron Tonkinwise, Madina Tlostanova) look for a different perspective from which to examine the relationship between designers and the worlds they create. Increasingly, emphasis is being placed on the fact that the practice of designing is not just an individual act of creation but can also be interpreted in terms of a distributed agency whose effects have a feedback impact on people and thus produce a basis for innovative social practices. Ecological and postcolonial criticism of design points to the need to adopt an anti-dualistic, anti-anthropocentric, and relationalist approach to reality, as this would allow for an emancipatory reformulation of the existing relationship between the individual, nature, and the community. This type of reflection on design is also an attempt to reinterpret the problem of innovation and development. Thus, design becomes a critical and utopian endeavour to invent a new way of organising society and its relation to non-human actors.

„Proces projektowy” – o podzielaniu doświadczenia społecznego

Author(s): Ewa Klekot / Language(s): Polish Issue: 23/2022

Danish anthropologist Kirsten Hastrup has declared that if “We cannot experience the world from the perspective of others, we can still share their social experience.” My own perspective in the field of design – which involves sharing the social experience of anthropologists in a number of ways – encourages me to offer a phenomenological reflection on the “design process.” My position as an anthropologist and ethnographer combining her research with teaching at a design school has resulted in collaboration with designers in co-taught courses, research projects, exhibitions, and publications. The different pragmatics of ethnography and education have encouraged me to develop tools for a discursive rendering of the processes in which I partake: both for my own research purposes and for designers and design students to use in reflecting on their own activities while working on their projects. “Design process” is an emic, designerly expression, defined by the most prominent writers on the topic. I attempt to reflect on its non-hylemorphic understanding of creativity and its contextualisation within the Ingoldian sense of following the material.

Jak nie-projektantów uczyć projektowania

Author(s): Mariusz Wszołek,Krzysztof Moszczyński,Thomas Lewe / Language(s): Polish Issue: 23/2022

Currently, the system of design education faces the challenge of redefining the possible scope and ways of educating future designers. The complexity of the world around us, both in the technological and geopolitical dimensions, as well as tasks related to climate protection and public health, pose entirely new challenges to the practice of design. A distinctive voice in regard to criticism of design education is the “Future of Design Education” project, which was strengthened by Donald Norman and Paul A. Kirschner’s famous text titled “The Teaching and Learning of Design.” Norman and Kirschner noticed a fundamental deficit in the education of designers in regard to their compatibility with so-called modernity: its complexity and challenges. In addition, the authors pointed to the lack of an interdisciplinary environment of knowledge, competence, and skills in educating future designers. The “Future of Design Education” initiative is an open forum for the exchange of ideas and experiences in design education – its goal is to try to rethink and redesign design education. The mere appearance of such an initiative allows us to draw two conclusions: (1) the design community has noticed deficits in the education system; (2) the design environment is self-reflective when attempting change through design. Design has changed from being goal-oriented to being criterion-oriented – the object of design is no longer the object but its usability, accessibility, or serviceability. In design, the context of products, services, or communication becomes crucial – contemporary education in the field of design should therefore focus on a holistic approach to design methodology and should supplement education with social, technical, economic, and environmental contexts. The design community’s current discussion on redesigning design education seems crucial. However, it is closed to the external perspective – interdisciplinarity, which is emphasised at every step in the theoretical sense, although it is not commonly used in ongoing discussions. The text addresses an even broader issue: teaching design to non-designers, thinking about design as a superior problem-solving competence and seeing designers as moderators and animators of social change.

Partnerstwo z rozsądku. Rola i miejsce nauk społecznych we współczesnym projektowaniu

Author(s): Tomasz Bierkowski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 23/2022

Zobaczyć i doświadczyć. O edukacji wizualnej artystów i projektantów rozmawiają Anna Barlik i Jan Buczek

Author(s): Anna Barlik,Jan Buczek / Language(s): Polish Issue: 23/2022

The Invention of Hugo Cabret: From Novel to the Oscar-Winning Film Hugo

Author(s): Ioana-Georgiana Mititelu / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2023

The present paper aims to discuss the journey from page to screen of ”The Invention” of Hugo Cabret, a gripping novel written and illustrated by Brian Selznick. Throughout this process, critical approaches will be examined to understand how specific narrative elements have been condensed or reimagined for the purpose of cinematic flow. This article delves into the fascinating world of film production and emphasizes the harmonious relationship between film and literature.

Broken Spaces and Walled-off Realities

Author(s): Zoltán Veres / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2023

This paper proposes a closer view into how space is structured with one single purpose: to exercise power, both in physical and structural, or rather physical–structural form, bending and twisting human behavior around it. Separation walls embody frustration that stems from unresolved traumas of the past that perpetuate the impotence to solve or re-solve these traumas. Individuals living in the shadows of such walls have incorporated the pain of these traumas into their identities, a pain that leads to an external expression of the incorporation that is then directed towards the wall changing its purpose, turning it into a canvas of creative capitulation in front of the power represented by it. The artifacts that start populating and decorating such walls function as a form of aesthetic domestication, shifting impotence into potency, offering a new semiotic field for the definition of the term “aesthetic resistance.” The objects discussed in this paper include the Berlin Wall and the Israeli–Palestinian separation wall (as seen from Netiv HaAsara and Bethlehem). Walls are not specifically defined in this text. They can be metaphorical, and conventional (without material representation), they can be represented by differences that separate people, institutions, and political structures from each other. This text has not been written with the desire to offer a thorough academic introduction into “teichopolitics” (the politics of walls); instead, it provides a phenomenological “description” of a sort of different experiences regarding various ways of seeing, feeling, and understanding walls.

Сторические сюжеты в изобразительном искусстве в период царствования Петра Великого

Author(s): Elena Tomášková / Language(s): Russian Issue: 2/2016

The paper discusses the distinctive features of Russian art at turn of 17th–18th centuries during the reign of Peter the Great. A special attention is paid to the gradual emergence of secular principles in painting in the late 17th century and development of historical stories. The genesis of portrait of Peter's time, originating in the Parsuna painting is observed. The effect of the Russian state on the development of different genres and a reflection of historical subjects in painting are revealed. The interrelation of Peter’s engravings and the scientific and educational activities are shown here. The analysis of works of art is carried out.

The concept of sacrificial metamorphosis in Bernini’s Saint Teresa and Orlan’s Saint Orlan

Author(s): Eleni Gemtou / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2023

Through a profound analysis and comparison of Bernini’s Ecstasy of Saint Teresa (1647–1652) and Orlan’s The Reincarnation of Saint Orlan (1990s), the aim of this paper is to highlight distinct understandings of the idea of the sacrificial metamorphosis of the human body through the art of different cultural eras. Starting from the assumption that art is a political act, I will argue that Saint Teresa’s sacrificial transformation, in the sense of abandoning her human nature for her spiritualization, served the propaganda policy of the Catholic Church, while in Orlan’s work I aim to identify its connections to both feministic and philosophical issues. Furthermore, the quite violent character of the latter raises questions about limits in artistic expression.

Трансформиране на пространството на печатната книга чрез типографските експерименти на авангардистите в началото на XX век

Author(s): Boyana Pavlova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 59/2023

The linguistic content of a given text can take different visual forms through its typographic composition. These forms could be conventional, but they also could be unconventional, in which the visual content is inseparable from the linguistic content. There were plenty of design experiments with the text in the manuscript and printed books until the beginning of the 20th century. As a part of a larger research (PhD thesis The experimental forms of typography in the fictional and periodical printed editions), this article is focused on the avant-gardists’ typographic experiments that not only deviate from the layout standard of the period but also legitimate the unconventional typographic practice, turn it into a new visual language and thus transform the printed book’s space. On the one hand, the avant-garde movements in the visual arts have a great impact on the printed book’s typography. On the other hand, this transformed book space influences its cultural environment.

От пространството на Лучо Фонтана до средата на Сабуро Мураками

Author(s): Vyara Popova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 59/2023

Through Lucio Fontana’s spatialism, the text explores the illustration of three-dimensional Euclidean space, desolate as an external form, and its further development as a time-space continuum or environment constructed from the inside out in Saburo Murakami’s 1956 performance Passing Through.