‘My Future Plan? To Die’: Grotowski's Last Visit to Wrocław

2000 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 186-191
Author(s):  
Joanna Ostrowska
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Laboratory Work ◽  
Future Plan ◽  
The Status ◽  
Polish Culture ◽  
Jerzy Grotowski ◽  
Adam Mickiewicz

After fifteen years absence, Jerzy Grotowski returned to Wroclaw on 6 March 1997, for the presentation of an award for his contribution to Polish Culture made by the Cultural Foundation's chairman, Stefan Starczewski. Grotowski was accompanied by his protégé and collaborator, Thomas Richards, and went to great lengths to establish Richards's equal and often major contribution to the laboratory work at Pontedera in Italy, which they had been jointly leading since 1986. This work has eschewed publicity, has never sought an audience, and has only been witnessed by chosen groups of sympathetic experts, who have been felt necessary at times for its validation. Initiated and sustained because of the reputation which had accrued to Grotowski during the various phases of his earlier career, the danger was that it might cease to attract support on the demise of its principal validator – which, as one of Grotowski's replies at the Wroclaw meeting anticipated, sadly occurred last year. By acknowledging the functional and artistic importance of Thomas Richards, Grotowski here establishes the argument for his work – described in detail in Richards's own At Work with Grotowski on Physical Actions (Routledge, 1995) – to be continued, as the status of the old master passes to the new. Joanna Ostrowska, who is currently working at the Institute of Cultural Studies, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, here offers her own impressions of the Wroclaw meeting.

scholarly journals Znaczenie traktatu wersalskiego dla kultury polskiej. Literatura polska po 1918 roku – wybrane aspekty

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 129-138
Author(s):  
Radosław Sławomirski
Keyword(s):  
Significant Influence ◽  
Polish Literature ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
Artistic Activity ◽  
Treaty Of Versailles ◽  
The Status ◽  
New Challenges ◽  
Polish Culture ◽  
Changing World

The Importance of the Treaty of Versailles for Polish Culture. Polish Literature After 1918 As the result of the Treaty of Versailles, Poland regains independence and Poles from the three partitions become full citizens of the Polish state. Such strong political changes had a significant influence on the culture of the reborn state. Polish culture of the 1920’s is not unified and homegeneous, which was demonstrated by literature. Various concepts of artistic activity and literary disputes appeared on its outskirts. A famous Skamander group, Cracow avantgarde, and the catastrophic philosophy represented by Witkacy are all worth mentioning. However, the element that connects these artists is that they wrote in the new political situation. Independent Poland and the changing world in which culture gains the status of a popular one, pose new challenges for the creators of culture. Culture’s task is to unite Poles. Na mocy Traktatu Wersalskiego Polska odzyskuje niepodległość i Polacy z trzech zaborów stają się pełnoprawnymi mieszkańcami państwa polskiego. Tak dalekie zmiany polityczne nie mogły pozostać obojętne dla kultury odrodzonego państwa, rozwijającej się pod zaborami w niesprzyjających dla niej warunkach, w ramach trzech różnych systemów polityczno-prawnych. Odzyskanie niepodległości przez naród polski zdjęło z twórców jego kultury obowiązek walki o wolność, pozwoliło im zrzucić z ramiom „płaszcz Konrada” i podejmować jako wiodącą – nową tematykę. Dzięki temu kultura polska lat dwudziestych ubiegłego wieku nie jest jednowymiarowa ani jednolita, czego najlepszym przykładem jest literatura. To w jej przestrzeni pojawiają się różne koncepcje działalności artystycznej i toczą spory literackie. Warto tutaj przywołać grupę pięciu poetów tworzących Skamander, krakowską awangardę, a także katastrofizm reprezentowany przez Witkacego. Jednak elementem, który łączy artystów pierwszej dekady dwudziestolecia międzywojennego jest tworzenie w nowej sytuacji politycznej. Niepodległa Polska ze zjednoczonym narodem - żyjącym ponad wiek w trzech różnych państwach zaborczych - oraz zmieniający się świat, w którym kultura zyskuje statut popularnej, stawiają nowe wyzwania przed twórcami. Jednym z ważniejszych jest zjednoczenie Polaków, w których zaborcy poprzez swoje działania próbowali wykorzenić pierwiastek polski.

scholarly journals O Homem Interior e sua Ação: Jerzy Grotowski e a herança de Adam Mickiewicz e do romantismo polonês

2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-70
Author(s):  
Kris Salata
Keyword(s):  
Jerzy Grotowski ◽  
Adam Mickiewicz

RESUMO Este artigo coloca Grotowski no contexto cultural concreto do romantismo polonês e na obra do poeta romântico Adam Mickiewicz. O foco principal de análise é a noção de ação e o ato de fazer que desmaterializa a obra de arte, transformando-a em um processo interior - características encontradas nos projetos de Mickiewicz e Grotowski.

scholarly journals Transhumanistic Aspects of the Artificial Life Mythologeme in the Folktales of Premodern

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 5-10
Author(s):  
Lyudmila Gots
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Research Methodology ◽  
Artificial Life ◽  
Binary Opposition ◽  
Natural Materials ◽  
Folk Tales ◽  
Genetic Method ◽  
Frequent Use ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Creation

The purpose of the article is to study mythological transhumanism in the context of the problem of artificial life in the folktales of premodern. The research methodology in the field of cultural studies is based on the comparative mythology, genetic method, as well as structural, semiotic, hermeneutic, and axiological analysis. The criterion for selecting plots for analysis in this article is the category of artificial life created with the help of technology (everyday household practices, craft, magic, etc.), as opposed to birth or revival solely by the order of the demiurge. This paper argues that transhumanistic intentions of humanity are already represented in mythological and traditional thinking. The study showed a frequent use of the motive of the creation of artificial life by a person in folktales. This suggests that transhumanistic thinking may be universal in culture. The peculiarities of the representation of the problems of artificial life in the traditional consciousness are revealed. It was found that folktales about the creation of artificial life from natural materials are related with animism, totemism, and magical ideas. It was found that the mythological creation of artificial life by a demiurge has an invariant in the folk tales. It is the implementation of the transhumanistic act of human creation of artificial life with the help of technologies (everyday household practices, craft, magic). The image of an ordinary head of the household, artisan, master reflects the archetype of the demiurge-creator, the Magician, while the image of an artificial creation reflects the archetype of the Doll who Came to Life. The “man–god” and “alive–dead” binary opposition is blurred in traditional thinking. Quasi-parents treat their artificial creations resemble ordinary children. At the same time, the status of a quasi-child is interpreted ambiguously: as a blessing for quasi-parents, as a curse, or in a neutral way. We found out the reasons why folktales about the creation of artificial life often have a negative ending.

scholarly journals Encyclopaedic Fiction, Cultural Value, and the Discourse of the Great Divide

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Simon Cooke
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Mass Culture ◽  
Cultural Theory ◽  
Cultural Value ◽  
Cultural Elements ◽  
Objective Quality ◽  
Great Divide ◽  
The Status ◽  
Low Culture

<p>Recent postmodern work on cultural evaluation, such as Barbara Smith's Contingencies of Value (1989), argues that cultural value cannot be treated as an inherent or objective quality of cultural products. Instead, cultural value must be understood as "value for": relative, that is, to the identities and interests of particular cultural consumers and producers. Theorists (for instance, John Frow in his 1995 study Cultural Studies and Cultural Value) have employed similar relativist logic in their analyses of the putative "structures" or institutions that supposedly give shape to Western culture-as-a-whole: "high" culture, "popular" culture, "mass" culture and so on. This "postaxiological" strain of cultural theory undermines the real-world integrity of those categories by suggesting that they (the categories) are merely contingent effects of critical / evaluative discourse. Other archetypically "postmodern" arguments in literary and cultural studies have focused on charting or advocating both the demise of the modernist "great divide" between "high" and "low" culture, and its replacement, in cultural production and criticism, with more permissive and socially egalitarian modes of interplay between "high" and "low" culture. Some critics and critically aware cultural producers have treated these two projects as though they are complementary facets of a general "postmodern" turn. Yet contesting or reversing obsolete hierarchies of cultural value does not necessarily lead critics to contemplate the status of "high"/"low" categories themselves. A meaningful refusal of the logic of the modernist "great divide" would obligate critics and producers to reflect on the contingency of those categories and their own interests with respect to those categories. Juxtaposing an "encyclopaedic" modernist text renowned for its interspersion of "high" and "low" cultural elements (James Joyce's Ulysses) with a postmodern text that seems knowingly to do the same (David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest), two case studies illustrate the inseparability of readings or narratives that are couched in "high"/"low" terms from the particular interests of cultural producers and consumers.</p>

scholarly journals Proceduralism, Predisposing, Poesis: Forms of Institutionality, In the Making

Lateral ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jodi Melamed
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Gender Studies ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Macro Level ◽  
Racial Capitalism ◽  
The Status ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The University

A response to the forum, “Emergent Critical Analytics for Alternative Humanities,” edited by Chris A. Eng and Amy K. King. Jodi Melamed reassesses the analytic of institutionality, which has largely been theorized as a dominant tool of the university in incorporating the emergent and muting the oppositional. In particular, scholars in American and cultural studies have noted how universities responded to the revolutionary calls of radical social movements by institutionalizing ethnic and gender studies into compartmentalized sets of knowledge production. In so doing, the university worked to manage minority difference through flat notions of representation rather than redistribution. The interdisciplines of ethnic and gender studies then became additives to the humanities, upholding the status quo rather than compelling a radical re-envisioning of these academic structures altogether. On an even more macro level, Melamed identifies dominant discussions of institutionality that see global neoliberalism as a new, all-totalizing force. In problematizing how these theorizations elide considerations of the historical conditions of racial capitalism that make possible the ‘global,’ Melamed also excavates a genealogy of radical resistance that might allow us to rethink institutionality toward collective solidarity.

scholarly journals The (Re)making of Flow: Mediator Companies and Knowledge Production

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 199
Author(s):  
Torbjorn Friberg
Keyword(s):  
Learning Process ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Theoretical Approach ◽  
Life Science ◽  
Laboratory Work ◽  
Business World ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Status ◽  
The University

This article concerns the (re)making of the flow of knowledge by structural biologists employed in a mediator company located between the university domain and the business world in Sweden. Drawing on Marilyn Strathern’s theory of ‘cutting the flow’, this article ethnographically studies the flow of knowledge: how it is locally made, stopped, and remade in the laboratory. The first part reflects on the author’s learning process during the fieldwork, while the second part discusses the hybrid position of mediator companies and the practices of associated researchers. The third part investigates the status of these companies among policymakers and life science stakeholders. The fourth and fifth parts ethnographically describe the cut and the (re)making of the flow of knowledge in everyday laboratory work. Taken together, these five parts will result in an attempt to extend Strathern’s theoretical approach. 

Romeo and Juliet in late-communist Poland: Deconstructing the myth of Shakespeare’s play

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacek Fabiszak ◽  
Anna Ratkiewicz
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Romeo And Juliet ◽  
Social Differences ◽  
True Love ◽  
Ideal Love ◽  
The Status ◽  
Domestic Help ◽  
Boiler Room ◽  
Polish Culture

Romeo i Julia z Saskiej Kępy (‘Romeo and Juliet from Saska Kępa’) is a Polish film from 1988, which showcases the idea(l) of true love in late-communist Warsaw. He (Leopold) is an alcohol-wasted, promising painter, she (Sabina) comes to Warsaw from the country and finds employment as a domestic help. They find their love space in a boiler-room in a ruined tenement house in the prestigious and elitist district of Saska Kępa in Warsaw. The film is an adaptation of Shakespeare’s play of sorts; although there are references to Shakespeare’s tragedy and parallels are more or less detectable, the film rather addresses the status of the play in the Polish culture of the late 1980s, in the context of the drab reality of Poland just before the transition in 1989 (not that it anticipates it). Thus, it can be possibly classified as what Sanders (2006) views as appropriation. Our aim is to explore the functioning and role of the Romeo and Juliet myth in the (popular) culture of decadent communist Poland and its treatment in Skórzewski’s film: how certain motifs from the play, especially those associated with the myth of ideal love, were developed in a modernized version of Shakespeare’s tragedy, thus reflecting certain topical problems, which the director addresses appropriating this myth. Rather than showing love between the two figures impossible due to the rivalry between two families/opposing groups, Skórzewski finds obstacles for such love in the drab reality of the late 1980s and social differences between the two lovers. The director makes them mature people, neither are they stunningly beautiful, nor living a comfortable life.

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