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Icelandic music documentaries represent an intriguing evolution of approach to the issues related to the expression of respect for tradition, history and collective memory. National identity for the characters of Friðrik Þór Friðriksson’s Rock in Reykjavik (1981) is a relic of the past and incomprehensible obsession of the older generation. Directed by Ari Magnússon Screaming Masterpiece (2005) presents Icelanders as a nation which is proud of its past and highly inspired by the history and traditions of their homeland. Another rockumentary, Heima (2007), emphasizes the social aspects of everyday re-creation of the national community, focusing on the small cultural differences and promoting the idea of local patriotism. Viking heritage, the originality and uniqueness of the Icelandic language and of its nature no longer interest the authors of the latest non-fictional productions that are created after the financial crisis of the year 2008.
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Lata 1929-1932 to ważny, twórczy i przełomowy okres w życiu Oskara Schlemmera. Po dziewięciu bogatych w wydarzenia latach spędzonych w Bauhausie w Weimarze i Dessau w październiku 1929 roku został powołany przez Oskara Molla na stanowisko profesora Państwowej Akademii Sztuki i Rzemiosła Artystycznego we Wrocławiu, w której rozpoczął pracę dydaktyczną lekcją „Człowiek i przestrzeń” i z którą współpracował do momentu jej zamknięcia w 1932 roku. Estetyczna analiza obrazów powstałych w tym okresie pozwala wyjaśnić niejednoznaczność, ambiwalencję sytuacji, w jakiej Schlemmer znalazł się we Wrocławiu. Lata spędzone w stolicy śląskiej prowincji nie były jedynie pogodnym rozdziałem w jego biografii, określonym w jednym z listów jako „wspaniałe odprężenie po kotle w Dessau”. Były cezurą, progiem, „przejściem” prowadzącym pod brzemieniem nadciągającej katastrofy w „niedorzeczną epokę”, w której napiętnowano go jako „bolszewika sztuki”, jego twórczość zaś poddano – jako „destruktywny, marksistowsko-żydowski element” – w bezmyślnej ignorancji oraz z premedytacją skalkulowaną interesem politycznym daleko idącej rewizji. Swój wrocławski okres artysta rozpoczął barokowym rozluźnieniem, przez krytyków nazwanym „śląskim”, najwyraźniej manifestującym się w Grupie z niebieskim ekstatykiem (1931), dającym o sobie znać również w wielopostaciowych kompozycjach z 1930 roku, takich jak Grupa czternastu w wyimaginowanej architekturze czy Grupa piętnastu albo wejście na stadion. Cechowała je większa żywiołowość, dźwięczne, zmysłowe akordy barw, migoczące światło podkreślające zaokrąglenia. W swych „barokowych” obrazach „klasyczny” i „klasycystyczny” Schlemmer sam dostrzegał „niebezpieczeństwo maniery”. Dlatego powrócił do wcześniejszych geometrycznych motywów architektonicznych. Tym razem były to schody i poręcze. W ciągu dwóch lat powstał cykl z Grupą przy poręczy, Sceną przy poręczy, Sceną na schodach i najbardziej chyba znanym z jego dzieł – Schodami Bauhausu. Cykl ów jest kluczem do zrozumienia przełomowego charakteru wrocławskich lat Schlemmera. Poręcz pozwala ujawnić to, co istotne. Nie jest dodatkiem niespodziewanie wdzierającym się w tło, lecz rezultatem wyboru – w części zamierzonego, w części wynikającego z podświadomej gry intymnej sfery malarza, rozpaczliwie szukającego oparcia, z otwartą (także na różne możliwości życiowe) przestrzenią publiczną, jaką są schody. Poręcz nie jest detalem nieuchwytnym. Zgodnie ze swoim przeznaczeniem i funkcją służy do chwytania. Przykuwa wzrok widza, podporządkowuje sobie wędrówkę oka, które podąża za jej linią, jest niemym, acz wyeksponowanym świadkiem jego obecności w tym samym stopniu, w jakim towarzyszy przedstawionym na obrazach postaciom. Jest punctum, w znaczeniu, jakie w odniesieniu do fotografii nadał temu pojęciu Roland Barthes. Wybiega z obrazu i z ukosa przeszywa widza albo horyzontalnie ucieka na boki demonstrując swoją ekspansywną siłę i trwanie.
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The article focuses on the representations of animals in video games. Andrzej Pitrus remarks that while there are many examples of animal characters in games, most of them are only acting subjects “disguised” as animals. Few projects try to reconstruct true identity of animals. Yet, the author of the article critically researches interesting attempts made by studios and game designers. Many of them are in fact art projects, but there are also a few realistic animal characters in mainstream games. Recently they have been becoming more and more sophisticated, thanks to the use of new technologies, e.g. motion capture, which provide tools necessary to adequately represent animal behaviours.
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Mihai Măniuțiu has been an influential directorial presence at the Hungarian Theatre in Cluj, returning regularily to work there. Tünde Kocsis reviews his latest work which starts from Johannes von Tepl’s Death and the Ploughman (A földműves és a halál) and places the encounter with death in a present-day context.
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Jegyzetek Ariane Mnouchkine munkamódszeréhez
What is the use of the sun-yellow curtain? Ádám Burák’s essay reports about the London based Ecole Nomade programme of the world-famous director Ariane Mnouchkine. While presenting the exercises of the workshop and Mnouchkine’s commentaries about them, the author intends to place this project within Mnouchkine’s body of work.
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This article is an attempt to analyse the reconstruction process of the eighteenth-century Norbertine monastery in Imbramowice destroyed by a conflagration in 1710 and being rebuilt for almost thirty years. The researchers considered the monastery and its church as an example of the bel composto which was projected by a Polish architect Kacper Bażanka who was educated in Rome and founded by bishop Kazimierz Łubieński. The sources record that the bishop’s visits’ documentation, an eighteenth-century chronicle wrote by the Norbertine abbess Zofia Gorthówna and the nineteen letters by monastery commissioner Dominik Lochman, provide new facts about the monastery in Imbramowice. The information included in the chronicle and the letters allowed for the recostruction of an organisational issues as well as the circumstances connected with building a new monastery, the direction and organisation of the „factory” and queries related to the monastery’s financing and individuals involved in the erection. As a result, the research allowed to consider the rebuilding of the monastery in Imbramowice as a complex and multi-faceted process, created through support from many founders and closely associated with the Cracovian bishop’s power.
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The goal of the article is to answer the question: what do radio broadcasters in the west understand to be a ‘feature’? A lack of clarity in terminology in this respect was especially visible during the Prix Europa 2012 and 2013 festivals. The article begins with an outline of the term ‘feature’, followed by discussion of relevant festival categories, and ending with a presentation of several selected audio examples that indicate both the characteristics of the genre and cases where in spite of divergences from these qualities, the term ‘feature’ continues to function.
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The essay’s aim is to familiarize János Kmetty´s personality with the reader primarily by analyzing his self-portraits in old age from the 60´s and the 70´s. However, it also gives an introduction to Kmetty´s entire artistic oeuvre. Quotations from the painter’s autobiographic writings “Önéletírások” provide further help to comprehend the story of a socially sensitive Central-European painter´s struggles to maintain his inner balance and moral stature amidst the turmoil of the 20th century. The esssy also encapsulates Kmetty´s quest for answers to artistic questions of the time.
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The text is an analysis and interpretation of found footage documentaries: “A Song of Air” by Merilee Bennett (1988) and “Sea In The Blood” by Richard Fung (2000), which were constructed from family footage from the archives of their creators. The text is an attempt to show the potential of found footage as a creative technique based on editing in the construction of the narrative of the past identity. The authors of the text refer to, among others, points made by William C. Wees in the work “Recycled Images: The Art and Politics of Found Footage Films” and Jaimie Baron in “The Archive Effect: Found Footage” and the Audiovisual Experience of History. They refer to the category of constructed identity, presented in Katarzyna Rosner’s work “Narracja, tożsamość i czas” [“Narrative, identity and time”], and David Carr’s concept to emphasize how the use of home movies allows individual film-makers, being the subject of the work, to tell individual experiences and incorporate family relationships in a narrative story dealing with identity.
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The subject of the article is the film by Jill Godmilow “Far From Poland” analyzed in the context of the hybrid “essay film” form. Godmilow’s film has been used here as a case study for the reflection on the function of found footage method and its relation to the historical discourse. Michael Zryd, in his inspirational article Found Footage Film as Discursive Metahistory, writes: “The found footage artist critically investigates the history behind the image, discursively embedded within its history of production, circulation, and consumption”. Godmilow’s essay can serve as a paradigmatic example of Zryd’s thesis. Although “Far From Poland” appeals to concrete “historical facts”, it is not a commentary on Solidarity movement in the early 1980s, but a subjective notebook and a self-portrait of the film-maker.
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Researching the phenomenon of space contributes to knowing the Romanian mentality. Using the psycholinguistic method of the associative experiment, we submit to investigation the way Romanian people conceive space. The result of the research has shown that within the Romanian mentality space is an aspect of the world's existence, but not a frame or its primordial condition. Thus, space is not a phenomenon of its own or something detached, but an essential dimension of the world, an intrinsic fact of the nature of things. For that reason it is conceived as something real and alive. Romanian people see space through various ways of their spiritual aspirations. In the dominant mentality of Romanian people, space participates and is a prerequisite for what is going on inside it, representing one of the fundamental aspects of existence.
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The present paper provides a study of dramatic music of Wilhelm Richard Wagner (1813-1883) and his ideas about art and the interpretation,that have inspired generations of musicians and thinkers. He is considered one of the most important figures of the 19th century for his innovative works, as well as for his vigorous style and full of color, which marked a new period in the romantic music
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The article discusses Golgotha – an enormous painting by Jan Styka (1858-1925), considered to be the largest such composition in the world (ca 60 x 15 m). The canvas was executed in 1896 and despite its huge size, is an outstanding work. From 1904 it was featured in the United States, and for over sixty years has been the focal point of the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, in the suburbs of Los Angeles. Its characteristic features include an interesting iconography and a history as fascinating as it is dramatic. The first part of the article considers the artist and his life: studies in Vienna and Rome, the majority of important works executed in the last decade of the nineteenth century, collaboration on once famous panoramas (such as The Raclawice Panorama) and, finally, the Parisian period in his oeuvre. Styka won international acclaim, which allowed him to own a villa and a studio in Paris and a residence on Capri (Villa Quo Vadis). The author goes on to present the dramatic story of Golgotha, which after being exhibited in Warsaw, Kiev and Moscow, was to be featured in 1904 at the world’s fair in St. Louis but never reached its destination. Attempts at transporting the canvas from New York to Paris soon encountered obstacles. Discouraged by clashes with customs officers Styka decided to leave the painting in America and never saw it again. In 1911 Golgotha was shown at the Chicago Opera House, and soon found itself in the storerooms of the Civic Opera Company in Chicago. Here, in 1943, rolled around a telegraph pole, it was discovered by Fred Hanson, an envoy of Hubert Eaton, the creator of Forest Lawn. After lengthy conservation carried out by the artist’s son, Adam Styka, and his wife Wanda, and the construction of a suitable auditorium, the painting was unveiled on Good Friday 1951, to become the greatest highlight of the Forest Lawn Memorial Park. The canvass shows a scene sometimes described as the Crucifixion but de facto depicts a moment preceding that event. A longhaired and bearded Christ with an irregular nimbus around His head, and wearing a long white robe, stands upright, gazing steadfastly at the sky and the descending wide beams of light. A ray striking Him enhances the white colour of the robe, which is almost as bright as in the scene of the Transfiguration. A centurion near-by reads the verdict from a large tablet and with his right hand points at the Christ. Almost all the witnesses of the event, including the two semi-nude thieves, the Apostles, and the Madonna are motionless, the overall impression being that some of the gathered persons and the heavens were paying homage to the Condemned in white. This scene, so very different from many other versions of the Crucifixion, takes place against the background of a sprawling panorama of Jerusalem and environs.
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Wizerunek klęczącego górala, modlącego się ze złożonymi dłońmi w letni wieczór na połoninie, trafi ł do pewnego skromnego, mieszczącego się w suterenie mieszkania w latach powojennych. Landszaft, dzieło artysty anonimowego, zawisł na ścianie jedynego (obok kuchni) pomieszczenia, pełniącego funkcję jadalni, sypialni i salonu, w dobrze widocznym – można by powiedzieć honorowym – miejscu nad kredensem, tuż obok fotografi i ślubnej gospodarzy.
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A report on the seventh edition of the Bitter Lamentations Festival (Center for the Thought of John Paul II in Warsaw; 10.02 – 20.03.2016; festival directors: Redbad Klijnstra and Paweł Dobrowolski), titled “New Epiphanies.” Liliana Hermetz briefly outlines the structure and premises of the festival and how it operates in the space of Warsaw. Then she analyzes a few theater and performance events: 'The Sign of Jonah' by Paweł Passini, 'sad to sit in your chair while they’re dreaming up wars' by Jarosław Tumidajski, 'The Last Supper' by Jakub Kamieński and the Supermarket Group, 'Red Carpet' by Mirek Kaczmarek, and 'Mystery Play' by Igor Gorzkowski. Summing up, she concludes that: “Using a variety of aesthetics and with varying degrees of success, the artists inquired into the human condition and into the challenges man has to face.”
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The article deals with the first Lithuanian production of “Hamlet”, directed by a Russian actor and theatre director Mikhael Chekhov in the State Theatre in 1932. Hamlet was performed by Andrius Oleka-Žilinkskas, he general manager of the State Theatre, as well as theatre director and actor. The production did not become an artistic event for he contemporaries – the cultural and ideological atmosphere of the interwar Lithuania distorted the ideas of scenic solutions, deformed the criteria of evaluation, and deconstructed the meanings of the tragedy. A disinterested reflection of the performance was strongly influenced by the idea of unified national culture which was forged by a new generation of intellectuals (magazine “Naujoji Romuva”). The realisation of such idea was understood as the resistance to any expansion of foreign artists (first of all, from Russia). The polemics that arose in 1932–1933 between the supporters of the idea and the leaders of the State Theatre (many Russian artists worked there in that period) and its sympathizers (a theatre critic Balys Sruoga was among them) encouraged antagonistic interpretations of “Hamlet” in the local press and society and urged the departure of Oleka-Žilinskas and Chekhov from Lithuania. The period of 1929–1935, which was connected with the artistic development of the State Theatre, determined by those artists and considered a reformist, came to an end.
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Political crises provoke questions about the past and the identity founded on it. The uncertain tomorrow directs us towards a history in which we try to find confirmation of our stable (national) “we”. Who we are is growing out of nostalgia for the past – provided, however, that this past returns in the form of compensation narratives. Pierre Sorlin’s thesis that historical films provide knowledge only about the period in which they were made is confirmed by films made on the British isles following 2016. They are manifested in the interest of these moments of history, which proved to be significant for the fate of not only Britain, but also all of Europe. Strategies implemented by the cinema “after Brexit” remind us of ideological discussion from Margaret Thatcher era focused around “heritage cinema”. But do the international successes of the British “films about the past” („Dunkirk”, „Darkest Hour”, „Favorite”) allow us to look at Brexit as a “useful catastrophe” and recall the slogan of the Thatcher era „The British Are Coming” (or „Up your bum”)?
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In the article devoted to Łukasz Barczyk’s film, Loska draws attention to the post-modernist strategies used by the director and his use of the convention of alternative history. Beginning with delineating contexts related to the Greater Poland Uprising, the author moves on to spiritism and mediumism as phenomena in a special way imprinting on the film plot, because the alternative history of the uprising was shown through the prism of a war of telepaths. Loska, following Wolfgang Welsch, considers the revival of the esoteric traditions as one of the features of post-modernism (due to the turn towards alternative forms of cognition). The author tries to show that the process of fictionalization of facts, that is the use of historical materials to build imaginary fiction, plays a key role in “Influenza”.
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Every finding in the cybernetic, futuristic space of today's world is today a serious human task. The human is struggling with problems that definitely change the perspective of life, feeling,purpose and even the meaning of existence. Contemporary man has trouble with hyperactive thinking, technical vision of his psyche, digitization of his own behavior and emotions. His reactions are „scaled”, „scanned”, „framed” and „broken” so that himself does not understand. In the philosophical and artistic field called White Emotions Theory, which was a concept in art, during the three years, education and pedagogy have emerged spontaneously. It shows the tendency that people are trying to find answers to questions about sense in art and a simple understanding of things and their present life.
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