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Since the neo-liberal turn of the 1970s and the consequent failure of the state socialist experiment, the functioning of the Eastern European states has increasingly been governed by the rationale of markets. This logic has led to an erosion of the concept of the commons and, by extension, universality. The notion of then alternative but now mainstream culture creates and serves particular class interests under the banner of ‘independence’ and ‘freedom’, which aims not to transcend the status quo but to preserve it and the property relations on which it is based. My thesis is written as a first step to reclaim the idea of the commons, pointing to the capitalist genesis of the forms in our contemporary culture.
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The legibility and coherence of space are informative qualities as they facilitate the understanding and exploration of the environment. They also function as categories in architectural and urban design theory, as well as environmental psychology. The approaches of those disciplines, including their contemporary continuations, evolved from Lynch (1960) and are based solely on the visual qualities of the environment. In this article, I argue that relying only on the visual scope of human-environment relations is insufficient for inferring the user’s perception of the environment as legible and coherent and evaluating design solutions from the users’ perspectives. The proposed revised theoretical framework combines architecture and urban design perspectives with environmental psychology and broadens concepts of legibility and coherence. The revised framework combines the visual scope of the legibility and coherence with other aspects of human-environment relations by referring them to multisensory perspective, social and spatial functioning, levels and characters of stimulation, and affective appraisal of the environment. To show how we can address this broadened approach to legibility and coherence in empirical research, I present two examples of experimental research using bimodal research materials. They present how nonvisual qualities contribute to legibility and coherence and how they can be measured (tested) during the data-driven evidence-based design process. The first experiment investigates the relationship between the qualities of soundscapes and the social functioning of users. The second covers the tactile and haptic dimensions and their connections with blind and visually impaired users’ spatial functioning.
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Reflecting on several crucial issues regarding the protection, planning, and management of archaeological landscapes from the point of view of the Discipline of Landscape Architecture, the article focusses on the roles of the vegetal component and plant biodiversity in the landscaping of archaeological sites. After outlining a background framework of the theoretical, cultural, and ecological relationships between vegetation and ruins adopting a landscape architecture approach, the article proposes a set of conceptual and operational tools to deal with active and inventive1 conservation of archaeological landscapes, striving to adopt the “strong forward-looking” attitude recommended by the European Landscape Convention (Florence 2000). By re-reading the consolidated concept of biodiversity (CBD, 1992) according to a different research dimension, the concept of temporal diversity is explored and proposed as a key issue in the interpretation and planning of layered landscapes. Focusing in particular on design issues in the management of ruin an vegetation integration, an innovative approach is presented in regards to various greenery-related potentialities in the landscaping and management of archaeological sites. The article’s concluding remarks aim to open new trans-disciplinary windows of research on active and inventive conservation of archaeological landscapes to foster further exploration of this potentially broad ambit of investigation.
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The 1960s Environments emerged as artistic practices to question our modern relationship to objects perceived as isolated entities and as products within a market logic; to context, initiative, authority, ethics, and aesthetics. As open, process-based situations, they should allow for a praxis of reappraising demarcations, roles, and concepts in the art, social, and natural world. Environments had an early, but only short influence. To this day, art and architecture continue to be widely shaped by objectifying and reifying processes, even though the limits of the systems they belong to have become obvious in confrontation with a global climate crisis. In this article, the authors re-connect to the earlier artistic and architectural practices with the aim to develop a conceptual approach to adaptive architecture. This architecture is conceived as part of open “Environments,” able to dynamically react with their users to social and environmental challenges, to mediate and reframe the relations between subjects, objects, and the natural world.
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In this article, we point out the need to base the process of designing buildings and architectural and urban spaces on criteria that take into account the gender perspective. As a conceptual framework for developing such standards serves the methodology proposed by Bernard Tschumi,1 referring to “theory” as a “practice” and the concept of care and corresponding values derived from feminist ethics of care. In his text “Event-Cities 3” (Tschumi, 2005), Tschumi claims that “theory is a practice of concepts.” In the present text, this is particularly understood as a need and way to redefine/re-construct the content of the design theory, especially the concept of space, based on real practice and everyday life. The authors argue that “practice with concepts,” when including daily life notions, could help redefine quality standards in architectural design and realise spaces more inclusive and just. As a case studies authors review a selection of projects that the authors have developed from 1998 to 2020. They are examples of how to implement the gender perspective and redefined theory into the design process.
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The article is aimed to discuss the place of architecture in the space of ideas. The present work discusses a specific place, the Zaspa housing estate in Gdańsk, and refers to a specific person, namely, the author of artistic installations temporarily exhibited in the Zaspa housing estate. Also, the wider context of the specific situations in which the exhibitions were displayed is presented. The article attempts to answer the question of the importance of the quality of dwelling in the context of the quality of life of city dwellers. The work focuses on the subjective quality of life, identified most often with the feeling of satisfaction with life in its various aspects and with mental well-being. The quality of living, in turn, may be defined as satisfaction with the structure and functioning of the house and its commonly shared surroundings that constitutes the context of such living. The installations exhibited in the Zaspa estate discussed in the following article represent a potential area for activities with which to change the landscape and/or architectural elements of housing estates that refer to the living space. The essence of the research lies in the analysis of the place architecture occupies in a wider context of the intangible spaces. Homes can be perceived in a phenomenological way. It this case, the spaces of the house are inside us, just as we are inside them (Bachelard, 1994).
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The study focuses on the question if and how it is possible to balance the freedom of developing artist’s individual creative idea and the societal demand for art defined in a concrete political context. The theoretical basis for the article is formed by research approaches grounded on sociology of creativity and social psychology. The object of the case study is film directors who had obtained funding for the production and dissemination of their films within the funding program ‘Latvian Films for Latvia’s Centenary’ (2016–2018). The experience of film directors (N 16) was examined by using in-depth interviews and transcriptions analysed in accordance with qualitative methodology. The study identified two contingent levels of creativity inspiration – the individual and the societal or collective level. The authors identify several development models of the film directors’ creative ideas, three of which are dominant: the independent outsider who stresses individual, seed-incident based creativity factors independent of the Latvian Centenary program; the independent idealist who stresses both individual and collective factors, independent of the Latvian Centenary program; the conforming patriot who stresses collective creativity factors that stem from the Latvian Centenary program. The view represented in the film directors’ interviews has in common the assumption that the Latvian Centenary call had a positive influence on the film ideas, allowing the development of the artistic vision and conceptualising the framework for the expression of their ideas. The directors emphasise that there was no intentional configuration of the film creative ideas by formally adjusting them to the demand, thus circumventing the barriers of social field’s gatekeepers. In many cases the idea had been developed long before the film idea call. Most directors admitted that the goal of the Centenary call appeared important to them both in terms of the state, and on the social and personal level.
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The article aims to trace the reception of French positivist Hippolyte Taine’s (1828–1893) ideas in Latvian culture, bringing together opinions voiced in Latvian periodicals since the late 19th century up to the 1980s. Aside from direct mentions and assessments, also included are rather similar but sometimes already clearly modified views discovered during the study of Latvian art theory. The core of Taine’s conception is not uniform and comprises quite incongruent elements, allowing the use of his legacy for different aims in various contexts. In addition to an emphasis on the people’s living conditions (milieu, race and moment) as the main factors shaping culture and art, there is also the component of traditional aesthetics, claiming that art is the imitation of nature but focused on the essential character of the object. Taine’s lectures on art were published in Latvian in 1897 and 1918. Most authors who directly referenced Taine’s work, appreciated it as scientifically grounded, while Marxists criticised it as incomplete regarding the class struggle aspect. Unattributed statements similar to Taine’s are found in traditionally oriented articles on art in the early 20th century, but by the 1920s, modernists from the Riga Artists’ Group used Taine’s typical distinction between “Latin” and “Germanic” cultures to extol the former as an example for Latvian art to follow. On the contrary, Taine’s reliance on the national temperament to determine all artistic and cultural manifestations could be used for the propagation of national and realistic art in the 1930s. National specificity as derived from the life conditions and climate proved useful also during the Soviet period to legitimise a limited degree of independence of Latvian art from the Socialist Realist examples imposed by the regime. Taine can certainly be regarded among the best-known and influential French authors in Latvia.
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Méditations sur la genèse de l'acte de création artistique. Comme il devient le tableau un autoportrait de l'artiste, l'expression matérialisée des recherches, des perplexités, des questions, des idées et des rêves qui l'anime sans relâche. Répertoire sémantique et la langue est diversifiée, métamorphosé en signes et symboles plastiques. Regarder, point de vue d’un peintre, se traduit par à réfléchir, à méditer, à synthétiser la réalité par des métaphores, en un mot à créer. De là, l'admiration de l'artiste pour les objets, quels qu'ils soient dans le domaine des objets en terre, façonnés et cuits au four. Ils nous souviennent des racines de la civilisation, sont la preuve de l'existence des êtres humains comme nous, avec leurs préoccupations, leurs espoirs et leurs rêves. Les matériaux et les formes des objets sont le souffle vital déchiffre construit pour l'éternité. Ce n'est rien que l'écho résonnant le nombre infini d'êtres humains dont est né la terre du potier qui façonnent de nouvelles formes répétitives, marquer une autre étape de la vie. Beaucoup d'œuvres d'artistes sont inspirés par les formes archaïques des objets de la terre bouleversé et brûlés, ce qui stimule l'imagination du peintre, de diriger les pensées aux interprétations antropomorfiste et aux associations, en faisant allusion à la fécondité et de la richesse, la grâce et l'érotisme, vitalité et rêves.
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The paper attempts to contribute to the debate on the possibility of using tangible and intangible traces of scientific and cultural activity of universities in the implementation of sustainable development tasks, especially of utilising the cultural capital of museums and academic collections for building an engaged academic community. These objectives become both a need and an obligation, next to sustainability and accountability in the field of research, heritage protection, and popularisation. The aim of the paper is to discuss how the principles of sustainable development in the area of culture can be linked to the cultural heritage of universities, and how to inscribe the implementation of these principles in the university’s activity.
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The aim of the paper is to present how Polish theatres implement the principles of sustainable development in practice in their day-to-day operations. The background for the considerations involves the evolution of the approach to sustainable develop
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The aim of the text is to show the role of culture in sustainable development as a process in which the values, that define work, are transferred and consolidated. The example is the prestige of artistic work in the theatre in Varmia and Masuria region. The cultural function of work is expressed here in the values that determine the prestige of workplaces and professions. Prestige is a concept that specializes and prioritizes the perception of work. It means public respect which is expressed by at least two participants of communication. The theatre is the object of expressing prestige in the performance of work. The subject of the analysis are congratulatory diplomas given to a well known actress of the Olsztyn theatre from the 1940s to 1980. The topics analysed include the reasons for expressing prestige, ways of determining merit, phrases emphasizing prestige and its non-verbal forms. The prestige of the theatre institution and prestige of persons who work there is not directly a result of their professional activities but is determined by other, external factors. The ‘subordinate’, service and non-profit character of cultural institutions and their workers is emphasized. Moreover, the prestige is expressed in a specific cultural context of a region which suffered from significant population changes resulting from the change of Polish borders after 1945.
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One of the key tasks of the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is to strengthen gender equality and the position of women around the world. Unfortunately, the artistic milieu is still far from reaching the goal set by the United Nations. When analysing the history and literature on ballet and looking at the contemporary repertoires of leading ensembles, it is easy to observe that women outnumber men, which, however, does not translate into the leading role of women in the sphere of management and creation in this artistic field (choreography). The paper is aimed at discussing the circumstances of women in the Polish labour market of choreographers in the context of the above-mentioned goal of sustainable development. The analysis is focused on the occupational situation of Polish female choreographers working in leading ballet ensembles and unravels the prevailing inequalities between women and men as well as the potential solutions to overcome them.
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The aim of the article is to set the work of Polish contemporary living female feature film directors in the context of the characteristic features of women’s work, common or not. Based on the own analysis of the found materials, the components of women’s film careers were extracted in order to create an outline of various attitudes and types of creativity, taking into account the discourse justifying the need to create cinematography, the situation of women artists in the artistic and film-making field through their generational affiliation, the creative attitude realised in action, the way in which they make their creativity available (circulation), the degree of innovation in creative activity, the degree of involvement in being an artist, their social position: successes, awards, prestige, moral influence in the artistic environment. Contemporary female filmmakers are characterised by their social involvement (social activist, social voiceover, intellectualist-reformist filmmaker, independent artist). This article is a sketch from the sociology of women artists, not including the whole output of women directors in Poland.
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The beginning of the 21st century was a time of great museum revolution. Many museums have been created that focus their activities not so much on collecting artefacts as on presenting impressive exhibitions, largely made of media relays. New museums are increasingly moving away from the concern for durable goods that characterizes traditional museums and transfer knowledge to their recipients through modern products and attractive technologies. In connection with the implementation of new and costly solutions regarding architecture, equipment, organizational structure and functioning, they actually need a lot of capital in the form of public finances and “human resources” from the very beginning of their activity. It seems that at present the need to raise this type of capital in a case of creating new institutions is far ahead of the need to collect works of culture that have constituted the essence and sense of museums created in previous centuries. The quality of planned projects also ceases to be related to the significance and reputation of the material culture heritage, and begins to be measured by the scale of the new museum buildings and the number of visitors. Products instead of cultural goods, or even products understood as cultural goods; visitors as engaged customers; capital understood by finance and “human resources”; large size ‒ which covers many issues ‒ ranging from structure, and architecture; modern technologies; political influence; brand strength and promotion ‒ all these aspects resemble the corporate model of organization. They provoke reflection on the functioning of the museum as a corporation, which is the purpose of the ideally typical structure of the “corpomuseum”.
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The review of: Mitja Velikonja, Post-Socialist Political Graffiti in the Balkans and Central Europe [Southeast European Studies] (London and New York: Routledge, 2019), 226 pp.
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Many voices in policy and practice have emphasized, on many different occasions, the importance of arts and cultural education for the very young. A mélange of arguments are given in this regard, primarily stressing the positive effects and impacts of this type of education. If arts and cultural education is considered important because it leads to specific valuable outcomes, it is important to have a clear overview of what these outcomes are. Often this type of overview is missing. In this paper we analyze different types of effects that arts and cultural education can lead to and we categorize those effects. Subsequently, we focus on the function of these effects within a broader discourse that advocates arts and cultural education for the very young (0–6 years). Our analysis shows that research does not pay equal attention to all types of effects, but also that the over-emphasis on one type of effects (e. g. personal effects, extrinsic effects) can divert attention from other important effects (e. g. social effects, intrinsic effects). We also show that despite the claims that effect research makes, the implementation of that research in an impact narrative can still go in different and even opposite directions.
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This paper discusses the role of artists engaged in live-work property guardian schemes and their potentials to act in a dignifying way at sites of struggle over the regeneration of council housing in London; through the lance of artwashing. To gain this understanding, I will describe how artists are embedded in this context by looking at the interaction between artists and property guardian artistic enterprises working on housing estates in London. I will critically examine the artist role through the lance of artwashing critical method, namely allyship of the art world with the real estate industry in the process of social cleansing of housing estates in the UK. Following this, I will discuss the potential of artists to act in a dignified way, drawing on interviews with artists that have lived as property guardians. I will talk about the frustration of artists that stems from their circumstances, namely torn between the necessity to survive within an unaffordable housing market in London and the wish to make art in an uncompromised way. Studying the instrumentalization of artists employed by real-estate industry property guardian enterprises and the artists' attempts to resist this instrumentalization is vital for any understanding of the recent mutations in the capitalist management of housing and art and vital for the attempt to establish new sites of artistic urban struggle for housing justice.
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This article examines creative co-research with groups experiencing homelessness and the effects of rapid urban development. It draws upon two projects which combine social art practices and a feminist participatory action research (PAR) approach. The paper argues that bridging PAR and social arts practice, whilst underutilised and under theorised together, is an approach that offers some key opportunities as well as challenges. In highlighting these challenges, the paper acknowledges the role of power dynamics and broader issues associated with artists working in urban development contexts where relationships between local authorities, developers, the culture sector and residents are increasingly complex and entangled. In analysing the difficulties and risks within creative, participatory projects, the paper calls for an ‘ethic of care’ and a focus on collectively building knowledge about unequal political, economic and social structures with groups affected by rapid urban development and displacement.
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