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An essay attempting to trace an early history of fan fiction, taking it not only as a production of fandom’s artefacts but also as a pop cultural strategy of creation, a very part of reception and function of popular literature. Studying examples of the early fandoms, such as Jane Austen’s and Arthur Conan Doyle’s novels, their fan-made sequels and other works based on their output and their position as a part of official publishing market, the text tries to undermine narrow understanding fan fiction as very young and subversive part of modern culture. It focuses also on specific situation of collective writing and grassroots distribution of so called “weird fiction” at the beginning of 20th century upon studying the case of H. P. Lovecraft’s novels. By comparison of status of fan‐written stories at the beginning of the century and in the late 60s, it queries about changes not only on the publishing market but also in our understanding of authorship and literary work, the function of intertextuality in popular culture and stigmatisation of fan‐written works.
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The main aim of this article is to present interpretations of Marshall McLuhan’s views made by Polish scholars and commentators. In Poland, long‐term discussion concerning McLuhan’s hypotheses has been reduced mainly to the question of their “artistic” or “scientific” character. Among Polish polemicists, the controversial Canadian has found scrupulous critics as well as ardent followers. Both were astonished by his extraordinary erudition and practically boundless areas of interests. However, there is still no certainty as regards whether we should see McLuhan’s texts as strict scientific publications or rather as a kind of attractive artistic commentary.
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Review of „Masslose Unterhaltung. Zur Etablierung des Films in Deutschland 1896–1914” by Joseph Garncarz
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Artificial people are present in every culture and in every period. Even without further analysis it can be seen that not only in fairy tales, mythology and science fiction movies, we find in their presence. This theme is as old as literature. It is at the same time very complex and complicated. It contains the hidden essence of humanity – how artificial people are portrayed, is really a measure of empathy, compassion, respect for the other person or tolerance. Whether artificial people are monsters or victims, always ends the same way – burned alive by angry mob, left to oblivion at the bottom of the sea or shot in the street, artificial people are tragic figures. This work tries to answer the question, what is the essence of the phenomenon, what are the roots and what is related to the fact that artificial people are brought to life, regardless of the historical period or geographical area in which the author lives. It helps to understand the phenomenon, which is the need for people to create their artificial duplicates, and to answer the question, what are the associated fears and concerns and fascinations.
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YouTube can be perceived as a platform for change in many areas of culture, mainly as “an open document” which reveals performative potential for amateur activities. Receivers become senders, involved in different kinds of activities with video: creation of new content, publishing, digitization, comment and criticism. “Viral meme of performativity”, through You Tube, is changing documentary cinema, art, journalism. The aesthetics of post‐production predominates in online creation. On YouTube, we can find videos of various sources and aims. The most performative are streamed and “remixed/alternative version” footages. The performative video is one in which members of the audience take over the role of the author, co‐creating the original interpretative context, temporarily transforming themselves and the visual surroundings in the video act by changing the environment and contributing to other more permanent transformation, often undermining current norms and releasing energy in a creative activity. In this way, by presenting their activities in the network, amateurs shape the new culture; You Tube becomes an interactive video art gallery, a cinema that we all co‐create.
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The article discuss a proposition of visual, engaged fieldwork, which the authoress conducts among amateur Wrocław’s film group “Cinema Albert Production”, as an answer to the action research paradigm. The aim of this research is to present the possible role of the anthropologist as a manager and promoter who support the emancipative needs of definite people in dialectical perspective, by using documentary as an tool of possible cooperation and means to ex‐ceed the hermetic, academic discourse.
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The issue of food in film has been analyzed in at least a dozen interesting publications. However, a majority of them pertains to feature movies. Although there is a large group of documentaries in which food plots are dominant and there is a popular term food documentary, often using in descriptions and reviews, this type of documentary is still waiting for detail, academic analysis. In the first part of my thesis I shortly describe characteristics of food documentary. Then I concentrate on the analysis of two of them: Super Size Me (2004) by Morgan Spurlock and Food, Inc. (2008) by Robert Kenner. They have some strong similarities, as they both represent socalled food activist documentary. But on the other hand, there are also few important differences.
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Street art is a relatively new art form, which its aesthetic categorization still raise some controversy. In this perspective, the author attempts to outline a framework which can be a basis according to which particular works can be interpreted as a “pure” street art. Her reasoning is based on Greenberg’s artistic formalism thesis. This article is an attempt to answer the question on what are the characteristic traits of such art form, and what formal conditions must a work meet to be considered as a “pure” work of street art.
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The phenomenon of transgression is an inherent feature of art as one of its most important factors, and it concerns both formal issues, as well as poetics. Presenting my reflections I would like to trace the process of social changes related to the rebuilding of the places in which we, as an institution, work. For, transgression does not have to be a shock therapy for the viewer. Does transgression mean provocation? In 2005 we have begun to realize the project called Outside Gallery of the City of Gdansk which addresses both artistic and social problems. Announcing the first edition of the international competition for the permanent art work in public space, we also initiated educational activities. In 2008, as the first project, there was made “LKW Gallery” (by Lex Ricker and Daniel Milohnica), becoming an important element of social change, and the last work, “Amber Drops”, (by a Swiss duo of Fred Hatt and Daniel Schlapfer) has also become an experimental plot for the use of LED technology. As an institution dealing with presenting contemporary art that changes our physical environment, enters the streets and backyards, and merges with the global changes induced by scientific development, in 2011 we have initiated a project called “Art & Science meeting”. To sum up: the issue of breaking the taboo in contemporary art is addressed often, yet the attempts to enter the “forbidden” zones are rarely of a full and in‐depth fashion. It should not be taken as criticism, it is just a statement of the fact that taking up issues which somehow concern ethical spheres treated dogmatically is very di cult, and it requires not only knowledge but most of all awareness and artistic maturity. For, artistic transgression does not have to mean that which is commonly understood as shocking or spectacular.
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Public space is defined by users/audience. But what happens when the behavior of users is contrary to the intentions of the creators of public space? And who has, and who has no power in public space? Certainly, the poor do not have this power. It is worth to look at poverty as a taboo in space. As a taboo in architecture. That is why it is worth examining the degree of democratization of public spaces in Poland on selected examples from Cracow.
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The article deals with the social conflict, which developed around the infamous cross in front of the Presidential Palace in Warsaw. On April 15th 2010, eleven days after the Polish Presidential plane crashed in Smoleńsk, members of the Polish Scout Association placed an approx. ten feet tall wooden cross in front of the Presidential Palace. Initially a place of mourning, soon enough the site became became a space of a political and cultural conflict revolving around the issues of religion and its visibility in public spaces. The dispute about whether the cross should remain outside the Presidential Palace or whether it should be removed, engaged many different types of “publics” and undermined the popular belief in the possibility of a consensus. Drawing on Chantal Mouffe’s and Ernesto Laclau’s theory of radical democracy, the author analyzes the multiple interventions in the “representative” public space in front of the Presidential Palace – of the scouts, who installed the cross; of the so called “defenders of the cross,” who occupied the area around it, once the Presidential Office decided to remove it; of the counter‐demonstrators, who supported the decision to move the cross to a nearby church. Seen as examples of democracy in practice, these interventions also help us to deconstruct such seemingly neutral concepts as the “public sphere,” “public space,” and “common good.”
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Throughout this century, the role of women and men in society has changed, and majority of people feel this change is for the better. Is this true? Traditional views of the position of women and men within society are so deeply ingrained. This deep-rooted opinions use media‐ television and they makes and still perpetuates stereotypes. The article present the analysis the role of woman and men in advertising. The quantitative and qualitative analysis is based on TV advertisements taken from 4 TV programmes: TVP1, TVP2, Polsat, TVN. Deep analysis concerns the influence of the presentation gender in the life.
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In this text I reflect on tabooisaiton of bodies in the public space. There is interesting point that we deal with over‐representation of bodies which are young, attractive, slim, ideal, and even naked, especially in advertisements. These bodies are anonymous and not‐individualised, they are objects of aesthetic pleasure first of all. The issue of representation is important for discussions of identity. Thus the important question is: what bodies are excluded from this sphere, and at the same time, what identities are excluded? Unappropriated bodies are stereotyped or condemned to invisibility. I discuss ways of the stereotypisation that took place in advertisements (included social ones). The examples of this process are representations of older women, handicapped persons, homosexuals and breast‐feeding mothers. These pictures are often received as disgusting, scandalous, and inappropriate to be shown in the public space. I try to trace the advertisements as well as examples of art in the public space. It reveals that not appropriate bodies and some aspects of physiology are treated as taboo. I connect the taboo with Julia Kristeva’s notion of an abject. According to Kristeva, the abject means pre‐verbal state of human being and it denies division between inside and outside. What is the most important in constituting the subject plays in connection with uncertain borders between subject and object. The abject is something in‐between, the ambiguous, it does not respect borders, positions and rules and it disturbs identity, system and order. Describing the abject, Kristeva makes us realize that our world is temporary, it is constantly threatened, at every moment it can be ruined and transformed into a world we do not want to think about and we are afraid to imagine. In reflection to this theory one might ask about construction of subjectivity. On the other hand this theory may be important to define order of society – is it opened for others or rather traditional and closed?
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In much‐cited essay “The Pornography of Death”, Goeffrey Gorer argued that, since the twentieth century, death had exchanged positions with sex as the taboo subject. Nevertheless, its portrayals had not completely disappeared, but rather re‐appeared in the form of entertainment genre – viewed as pornographic because of its brutality, exploitation, and distance from emotions like grief. This seminal claims are updated with a discussion of the relation between taboo and pornography in the context of contemporary media images of actual death. Examining the photographic coverage of death in one of the leading national Polish newspaper (also, compared to one German and one Australian), the article follows such questions as: How confrontational is that coverage? How actually visible and present is death? Does the news media participate in or challenge modern death taboo? Is there still much to value in Gorer’s argument in this context?
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The article focuses on defining the dead human body in a museum, in a situation, where the process of dying is transformed from a communal event to a private experience, while, on the other hand, the media constantly confront viewers with unnatural and brutal death. Since their very beginnings, museums have collected and exposed posthumous remains. By being put on display, a dead body or its fragments is/are ascribed the status of a museum object. Such exhibitory practices bring about ethical questions: whether, and if so, then where, when, and in what manner, the death of a human being may be displayed to a wide audience. Numerous museums are aware of the ongoing debate on the ethical issues concerning exhibiting human remains. When designing exhibitions, museums are faced with the dilemma how to present a dead body or its fragments. Should it be to a larger extent put within the context of a scientific description or an aesthetic view? At the same time, how to express respect and reflect their forgotten or/and overlooked humanity? The article presents examples of actions undertaken by museum institutions in order to organize the exhibitory space in such a way as to stimulate the visitors’ imagination and stir their emotions, while at the same time preventing the exhibition become a mere entertainment.
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In 1977, appeared a new term, „battered husband syndrome”. Still little is said about wives/partners-oppressors. An additional problem is that ladies often apply the „invisible” psychological violence. Quite significantly failed to sensitize public opinion on the phenomenon of violence against women and children, but also perpetuated the image of man as the only possible offender. Husband/partner is usually the victim of jokes and the object of pity. My analysis is focused on newspaper articles and cabaret work. I wonder also on differences in the situation of victims of both sexes.
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Alongside the rapid development of new media, in particular the Internet, the processes of shaping new paradigm of a folk-type culture and emergence of the phenomena referred to as e-folklore have been increasing. The e-folklore, as a part of the network culture, is radically different from traditional folklore. The content, which was present outside of the network, is naturally transferred to the Internet, mainly by its users. New technologies successfully inspire the users' creativity, thanks to which old content is gradually modified and changed, gaining new forms (e.g. the so called chain letters, false virus warnings, urban legends, conspiracy theories, miraculous events, etc.). The new forms of humour expressions are of particular interest (a new type of the Internet joke, photoshopping, memes), which lead to the emergence of a global humour culture and the phenomenon of visual folklore. The users' activity in the net can be characterised as folkloristic and is an example of the upward convergence (according to Jenkins), which supports the need to participate in a defined, virtual community, in the realm of common emotions and imagination.
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Article is divided into two parts. First one examines the condition under folklore is created on Facebook portal. I’m examining communication and participation rituals and customs. Second focuses on more general mechanisms of functioning of this social medium. The main emphasis is put on the relation between technological infrastructure and users action. I’m introducing the concept of collective disintentionalization, which occurs because Facebook’s regulation that encourage rather short term participation contained within the portal.This mechanism forces users to create folklores as an strategy of resistance to hyperinstrumentalization. In the summary I’m showing how we could speak of evolution in Facebook from creating folklore to the role of existential prostheses. Also cultural importance of this social medium is strongly emphasized.
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The article deals with the problems of the efolklore in the context of the e-humanitarianism. E-humanitarianism is interactive phenomenon, it enriches forms and mechanisms of contemporary folklore. Its success is often determined by the speed of the spread of information and content of spontaneous circulation on the world of tragedy and crisis. Article argues that e-humanity is a sign of unwavering vitality of folklore in contemporary culture.
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