Zwielokrotnienia [2.]

Warsaw, PKiN, 2010, frame size 6x9 cm, Kodak Brownie No 2 camera, multiple exposure, scan from 120 Kodak 100TMX negative.

Tame or untamed?

Many times in Konwicki's works, the Palace of Culture became an untamed, foreign, alien axis in the topography of the city, a central point around which the protagonist revolved. It was a symbol of political, cultural and spatial violence in a mutilated city, in times when this political, cultural and spatial violence was not symbolic, but real and affecting everyone. And what did he become when this violence receded?

Tadeusz Konwicki:

"(...) I harassed that poor Palace of Culture, I mocked it. Why: it was some kind of symbol of the Soviet Union's supremacy. When the Soviet Union fell, a clock was installed on the tower, and suddenly I looked up - a nice city hall. And I changed my attitude. I will confess to you, if nobody can hear us, that I like the Palace. I have a view from my balcony, you know, I'm constantly watching what's going on with it."

Adam Michnik, polish press redactor, Gazeta Wyborcza:

"(...) Well, for me the Palace of Culture is all the time a symbol of what would be done to us and to our language and to ourselves if they succeeded."

Tadeusz Konwicki, polish famous writer:

"Adasiu, they have already succeeded once. They erected a gigantic cathedral on today's Piłsudski Square, and it seems to me that in terms of its size it was not much smaller than the Palace of Culture. And it is gone. It has disappeared. So we know how to escape somehow. But the Palace of Culture ... Adasiu, it's such a building now, everyone comes, tourists take pictures of it. Should I continue to hate it? "

Adam Michnik's interview with Tadeusz Konwicki, in Contexts. Polish Folk Art, no. 4 (291), 2010, p. 72.

Marek Nowakowski, writer:

"Does the Palace of Culture deserve to be called a monument? It has already become one and should be protected as such. Although I do grieve about the city being demolished just so a hideous building could stand in the heart of the city. I used to want to tear it down, but I'm used to it now. I also look at it more practically and wonder how much it would cost to demolish it, probably millions. Besides, the Palace in its hideousness is not so lonely in the capital. Its blocks of flats from several dozen years ago or the Foster's office building at Piłsudski Square are brave extras. PKiN is a living souvenir of communist Poland and let it stay that way. "

source: http://sztuka-architektury.pl/article/1658/co-z-palacem