Totalna porażka. O dwóch projektach fotograficznych [Epic Fail: About Two Photographic Projects]

Epic Fail: About Two Photographic ProjectsThe paper discusses images of failure in Polish photography created in 1970–2000, drawing on three particular projects: Archeology of Photography by Jerzy Lewczyński and the exhibitions The New Documentalists (2006) and Postdocument: Missing Documents: Documents of the Polish Transformation After 1989 (2012). As such, it concentrates on documentary, or post-documentary, photography which suffers no illusions as to the mimetic power of the medium, but persists in hoping that photos can have social impact.As the analyzed projects aim to create a critical picture of reality, they focus on spaces and people subject to exclusion and on the experience of failure (e.g., Unfinished Houses by Konrad Pustoła and Wojciech Wilczyk’s There’s No Such Thing as an Innocent Eye), as well as on the erosion of interpersonal relations (e.g., Aneta Grzeszykowska’s Album). Disappointments stemming from both the socialist reality and Polish capitalism mix with the desire to find and preserve what is intimate and authentic. The discussed artists devote the majority of their attention to the problem of photography as a medium and its ability to generate social change. However, they remain fully aware of the fact that the very nature of the photographic image, with its media entanglements, makes it difficult to create an unadulterated reflection of reality; it also makes it difficult to accept anything that does not fit the visual poetics of success, anything old, damaged, démodé, or kitschy. Accordingly, the artists raise important questions about the rules for creating images in the photographic universe and about the possibility of transcending them to create a new type of document, one that would elude the rules of “dominant images” (a term first coined by Rafał Drozdowski), and to enable such a use of photography as was postulated by John Berger: rooted in personal experience and memory. Totalna porażka. O dwóch projektach fotograficznychArtykuł ukazuje obrazy porażki w fotografii polskiej powstałej w okresie 1970–2000. Odwołuje się do trzech projektów: Archeologii fotografii Jerzego Lewczyńskiego oraz wystaw Nowi dokumentaliści (2006) i Postdokument. Świat nie przedstawiony. Dokumenty polskiej transformacji po 1989 roku (2012). Skupia się więc na fotografii nurtu dokumentalnego czy postdokumentalnego – nieżywiącej złudzeń co do mimetycznej mocy medium, ale nieporzucającej nadziei na społeczne oddziaływanie zdjęć.Przywoływane projekty stawiają sobie za cel stworzenie krytycznego obrazu rzeczywistości, a więc koncentrują się na przestrzeniach i ludziach podlegających wykluczeniu, przegranych (np. Niedokończone domy Konrada Pustoły, Niewinne oko nie istnieje Wojciecha Wilczyka), a także na erozji stosunków międzyludzkich (np. Album Anety Grzeszykowskiej). Rozczarowania związane zarówno z rzeczywistością socjalistyczną, jak i polskim kapitalizmem, mieszają się z pragnieniem odnalezienia i ocalenia tego, co żywe, bliskie, autentyczne.Artyści najwięcej uwagi poświęcają problemowi fotografii jako medium i jej zdolności generowania społecznej zmiany. Zdają sobie sprawę, że specyfika obrazu fotograficznego z jego medialnymi uwikłaniami utrudnia przekazanie niezafałszowanego obrazu rzeczywistości oraz akceptację tego, co nie mieści się w obrębie wizualnej poetyki sukcesu, tego, co stare, zniszczone, niemodne, kiczowate. Zadają w ten sposób pytanie o reguły tworzenia obrazów w fotograficznym uniwersum i o możliwość ich przekroczenia – stworzenia nowego dokumentu. Miałby on wymykać się regułom „obrazów dominujących” (określenie Rafała Drozdowskiego), umożliwić takie użycie fotografii, jakie postulował John Berger: zakorzenione w osobistym doświadczeniu i pamięci.

CLARICE VAI AO ZOOLÓGICO: NOTAS SOBRE OLHAR E DIFERENÇA ANIMAL

A escritora Clarice Lispector reservou, ao longo da sua obra, um espaço privilegiado para o encontro entre humanos e animais, através de trocas de olhares que desestabilizam a hierarquia ontológica entre os seres. Em uma argumentação interessada no papel do olhar durante o encontro com a diferença animal, analisaremos os contos “O búfalo”, de Laços de Família (1960), e “Tentação”, de A legião estrangeira (1964), em diálogo com os trabalhos de Giorgio Agamben e John Berger sobre o lugar social do zoológico como dispositivo de separação, controle e catalogação do que é dado como natureza e cultura.

Music for Unknown Journeys by Cristian Aliaga

What is the purpose of travel in an age when millions are displaced against their will or have no home to speak of in the first place? How can we travel without being tourists, without erasing the stories of those who live where we visit? These are some of the questions addressed in Cristian Aliaga’s compelling collection of prose poems, Music for Unknown Journeys. This collection contains Aliaga’s “travelling sketches,” in the tradition of Matsuo Bashō, John Berger, or W.G. Sebald. Each prose poem is geographically situated in his travels across Patagonia or his more recent journeys around the edge-lands of Europe. His work is politically acute, exploring struggles over territory, resources, and culture, in the places he visits. There is an intense emotional charge as he records the stories of those who globalization and contemporary capitalism have used and left behind. This volume brings together a generous selection of Aliaga’s prose poems, the majority previously unseen in English, as well as a substantial introduction to the author’s work and its context, both literary and political, by the editor and translator. Cristian Aliaga (b. 1962, Tres Cuervos, Province of Buenos Aires) is one of Argentina’s foremost contemporary poets. His work has been highly praised in the TLS and elsewhere. “No poet has been as intrepid as Aliaga in exploring that outer edge of modern consciousness at which the individual mind and the macroeconomic order meet,” Michael Kerrigan, TLS.

‘The Cruelty Towards Others Like Ourselves… is Difficult to Imagine Here as You Turn to Swim Your Twentieth Length.’ Swimming and Dreaming of Elsewhere with John Berger

Swimming, like reading, is an immersive activity: words wash away, and words arise. Engaging with writings by critics who are also swimmers, principally John Berger and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, this article explores their writings about swimming in relation to how being in water can ‘conjure stories from the water’, and open up particular kinds of reflection and reverie. The fluidity of water spaces creates an imaginary that enables intellectually sensuous dreaming, while the ebb and flow of movements and identifications establish a poetics of swimming as a form of life writing.

Usos de lo literario en las humanidades médicas: leer a William Carlos Williams y A Fortunate Man de John Berger y Jean Mohr

Esta nota propone investigar los usos de materiales literarios llevados a cabo por las humanidades médicas, a partir de la indagación de las lecturas concitadas por William Carlos Williams y el libro A Fortunate Man de John Berger y Jean Mohr. Por medio del análisis de artículos del área de las humanidades médicas que toman por objeto estos textos, se busca observar qué modos de hacer con lo literario —y, por ende, de comprenderlo— proponen con respecto a aquellos instituidos por los estudios literarios académicos. Se señalan como condiciones generales de estas lecturas un deslizamiento imaginario entre el autor, el narrador o el yo poético, los personajes, y los lectores y lectoras, y el desmonteje de lasfronteras disciplinares. Asimismo, se sugieren tres formas específicas de hacer con los textos literarios: una educación de los sentidos, la narración como espacio de especulación ética y la reescritura de discursos como el de la medicina.

O mito ressignificado em Neil Gaiman: diálogos entre direito animal e literatura

O presente trabalho tem o objetivo específico analisar de que maneira as representações dos personagens não-humanos na obra de Neil Gaiman questionam o direito animal, não apenas no que concerne às leis, mas também no que diz respeito às justificativas formuladas pelo homem ao longo da história para garantir a si mesmo um lugar acima dos animais e da própria natureza. As mudanças tecnológicas e culturais desgastaram a relação entre o homem e o mundo natural, levando-nos a associar a identidade do homem moderno à domesticação e ao rebaixamento daquilo que remete à animalidade. Destacamos a importância da relação entre infância e animalidade pela aproximação entre personagens crianças e animais desde as narrativas mitológicas, até as obras literárias contemporâneas estética e tematicamente elaboradas para o público infantojuvenil. Portanto, fazer um apanhado das narrativas escritas por Neil Gaiman, voltadas teoricamente para o leitor adulto ou para o público infantojuvenil, que trazem em seus enredos personagens não-humanos e crianças, revela-se pertinente para que se possa compreender as tentativas de sondagem da outridade animal que nunca deixaram de instigar a imaginação humana ao longo da história. Partimos da hipótese de que o contato do jovem leitor com os animais de Gaiman contribuiria para uma tomada de consciência dos direitos dos animais, levando o leitor a respeitar a natureza e valorizá-la não apenas em termos de sua utilidade para nós, mas pelos valores e saberes intrínsecos ou inerentes da própria natureza. Para tanto, nos fundamenta-remos nos ensaios de Michel de Montaigne (1987), John Berger (1980), Jacques Derridas (1997), e J. M. Coetzee (1999), nos estudos de Greg Garrard (2006) acerca da Ecocrítica, nas obras de Maria Esther Maciel sobre Literatura e animalidade (2011; 2016) e no estudo de Rutineia Rossi sobre Direitos dos Animais e Ecologia Profunda (2016).

Ethics before Comparison

Palumbo-Liu explores the relation of literature and ethics, noting that literature is always about “something else.” Drawing from a number of specific cases, including the Rohingya refugee crisis, he connects material histories with cultural practices that defy simple thematization. With reference to Anton Shammas, Bessie Head, and John Berger, he reflects critically on the practice of comparison as embedded in the ethics of knowledge production.

Lost in Transmission? John Berger and the Origins of Ways of Seeing (1972)

The documentary series Ways of Seeing was broadcast on BBC television in January 1972. Directed by Mike Dibb and presented by the marxist critic John Berger, the series addressed the canon of western art history as well as contemporary consumer culture. The conspicuous use of cross-cutting and music along with Berger’s emphatic ‘talking-head’ delivery were employed to dispel the aura enveloping ‘original’ artworks, and reveal the technologies by which art historians, curators and advertising agencies shored up a capitalist, western, male social order. The series and its associated book were canonical for the nascent disciplines of media and culture studies. Drawing on scripts and other materials from the BBC, Berger and Dibb archives, this essay explains how the four episodes were conceived and executed. It places the series in the context of Berger’s prior activity as artist, art critic, presenter and author, noting the influence of Frederick Antal, Walter Benjamin and others. It concludes that Berger’s charisma and the mastery of the relatively new technology of colour television displayed by the series undermined its intent: rather than encouraging viewers to use images in framing their own personal narratives, its message was consumed as an invitation to view all images in political terms.