The analysis of changes in Poland after 2015 based on the paradigm of the revolution has not proved unambiguously that these changes are a revolution, according to commonly accepted schemes. It showed that these changes have many features of the revolution. It is a self-limiting revolution. All changes that have taken place since 2015 destroys the system of liberal democracy, but retains its source, the system of corporate capitalism. Against the expectations of the masses, increases the oppressiveness of the state apparatus. Perhaps it is a new type of revolution, because historically speaking, the revolution always redefined itself. If we assume that Solidarity transformations was itself a new type of the revolution, then the changes after 2015, which are their generative continuation, are such kind of revolution.
The article presents the making of the first documentary film depicting the traumatic events of the anticommunist uprising in Poznań in June 1956 as well as the difficult fate of the documentary after it had been completed. Its authors, Tadeusz Litowczenko and Mirosław Kwieciński, composed their Poznań 1956 (1981) of two interwoven narrative lines. Archive photographs with off screen commentary make the first narrative line while cinema-verite-like interviews with the participants of historical events make the other. The film analysis is aimed to underline the formal means employed in the film to present the opposing sites of the conflict. It also focuses on the historical context from the times when film was being made in the so called ‘festival of Solidarity movement’ in the early 1980s.
Late, unlike heavy, modernity until now has been devoid of any radical project for the future. It rather makes people use a rose‑tinted past to cope with future‑oriented anxieties. Solidarity’s desire for heavy modernity demonstrates that this sickness has been around for a long time. In what ways were the people of Solidarity nostalgic, and how did modernity’s global crisis reinvigorate the “desirable heaviness of being”? “The desirable heaviness of being” depicts the phenomenon of nostalgia for postwar heavy modernity within the early Solidarity movement. The theory of post‑socialist nostalgia highlights the importance of nostalgia for the future‑oriented past of heavy modernity in appraising the system during the Solidarity period. The interplay between Solidarity, late state socialism, and the crisis of heavy modernity exemplifies Eastern Europe’s interactions with globalising economies before and after 1989. The recollections of the August Strike as well as the Solidarity trade union’s programme provide examples for the longing. The links between state socialism and the global crisis of modernity shed light on current reasons for nostalgia, which may be of interest to “rescue history”.
This article discusses The Self-governing Republic, a programmatic-ideological conception which was part of the “Solidarity” Program accepted at the union’s First Convention in 1981. This conception was rooted in the ideas of the democratic opposition of the nineteen-seventies but it also reflected the pivotal changes in social consciousness which took place in 1980–81. Its main focus were postulates for the development of democratic institutions in all walks of social, political and economic life, postulates concerning the development of participant institutions, and the postulate to lay the moral foundations for democracy (e.g., responsibility of those guilty of communist crimes). This text confronts the programmatic legacy of The Self-governing Republic with its only partial implementation after 1989. The foundations of procedural democracy had been lain by this time but development of themoral foundations for democratic transformation were conspicuously lacking. The institutions of social self-government were only partly developed in the formof territorial self-government and, not without considerable resistance, development of the NGO sector which became the main programmatic successor of “Solidarity’s” legacy. In the nineties those changes which did take place in this sector were mainly the result of grassroots pressure and foreign aid. Since 2001/2002, however, positive institutional improvements have been observed in the vicinity of this sector. These improvements correspond with the sector’s new conditions of functioning following Poland’s accession to the European Union.
Plenery w Osiekach były organizowane w latach 1963-1981. Na ich podstawie można prześledzić, w formie niejako laboratoryjnej, zmienne trajektorie wpływów sztuki światowej na sztukę Polską. Zarówno ich artystyczny charakter jak i dynamikę zmian. Badanie sztuki zrealizowanej w Osiekach pozwala wskazać wiodące procesy zachodzące w sztuce polskiej. Lata sześćdziesiąte poddane wpływom sztuki postawangardowej i lata siedemdziesiąte, poddane dominacji sztuki konceptualnej, oraz zmierzch tych tendencji. Linia - jako wiodące hasło pleneru w przełomowym roku 1980, stanowi użyteczny punkt odniesienia. Szeroką interpretację linii wywodzę z książki Wasyla Kandinskiego Punkt i linia a płaszczyzna. Innym, lokalnym punktem odniesienia są rysunki linearne Wacława Szpakowskiego, odkrywane w tym czasie przez Janusza Zagrodzkiego. W historii sztuki polskiej konceptualizm ma źródła zarówno w abstrakcji geometrycznej, jak i w sztuce mediów foto-filmowych. Sztuka o proweniencji geometrycznej zawsze była obecna w Osiekach. Ale dopiero w 1980 i 1981 roku sztuka konceptualna i sztuka nowych mediów zajęły dominującą pozycję podczas plenerów. Plenery ’80 i ‘81 stanowiły rodzaj podsumowania debat artystycznych lat siedemdziesiątych nad sztuką konceptualną (a zarazem stały się podsumowaniem cyklu plenerów osieckich). Ich znaczenie polegało także na tym, że odbywały się w kontekście ostrego konfliktu miedzy władzą a społeczeństwem, strajków w Stoczni Gdańskiej i wpływów ruchu Solidarność. Artykuł jest próbą rekonstrukcji znaczenia artystycznego i politycznego dwóch ostatnich plenerów osieckich. W części podsumowania proponuję zastosowanie metodologii performatyki do analizy tego zjawiska. Rozpatrywanie plenerów osieckich w związku z trzema rodzajami performansów: organizacyjnym, kulturowym i technicznym pozwala dokonać ich reaktualizacji we współczesnej refleksji kulturowej.
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