Somewhere in Warsaw ..... transition under the Poniatowski bridge.

 

STOP WAR IN UCRAINE.

 

Rytm miasta [65]

 

Warszawa, przejście pod wiaduktem Mostu Poniatowskiego, wrzesień 2019r., aparat: Canon EOS M6.

Rytm miasta [64]

 

Warszawa, schody pod wiaduktem Mostu Poniatowskiego, wrzesień 2019r., aparat: Canon EOS M6.

Rytm miasta [63]

 

Warszawa, schody pod wiaduktem Mostu Poniatowskiego, wrzesień 2019r., aparat: Canon EOS M6.

Rytm miasta [62]

 

Warszawa, schody pod wiaduktem Mostu Poniatowskiego, wrzesień 2019r., aparat: Canon EOS M6.

Zaplecze [1.]

Poznań, department store Alfa, Święty Marcin Street, view from the back, north side; ca 2000; scan from a black and white negative.

The hinterland, or 'scratch' of modernism.

Alfa Department Store was built between 1965 and 1972, designed by Jerzy Liśniewicz, on what was then Armii Czerwona Street, on the site of several tenement houses from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which were demolished for this purpose. It is a complex of five 12-storey high-rises, connected by a long common plinth in the form of a horizontal two-storey pavilion, with elevations divided by windows framed by vertical ribs. It was built along the northern frontage of the street, hiding behind it the blind walls of two quarters of buildings covering Gwarna, Kantaka and Ratajczaka Streets, which became exposed after the necessary demolitions. This resulted in a specific space separating the old from the new, as the "pavilion" form of the ground floor - in accordance with the modernist doctrine, which genetically most often did not fit into the traditional and historical structure of the city based on the building plot - required open space.

This specific, narrow and elongated space, stretching from the west to the east, like a Heideggerian 'interstice in being' or a 'break in the beingness' of the city, functions at the same time as a symbolic border between two worlds, the horizontal and the vertical, the historical and the contemporary, the pushing in and the pushing out, bearing in itself the traces of the indefiniteness resulting from its character, becoming a specific game of "Aussehen" and "Enseehen" (Ich erinnere hier an Heideggers Spiel von Emergenz und De-Emergenz). "The horizontal is something whose essence includes the open field or fissure (fugue) of vision that surrounds it from all sides," Heidegger wrote in his Conversations on a country road.

Poznań, department store Alfa, Święty Marcin Street, view from the back, north side; ca 2000; scan from a black and white negative.

notatki prowincjonalne [1.]

Minsk Mazowiecki, winter 2010, scan from part b. roll negative 120, frame size 6 x 6 cm, camera: Zeiss Ikon Ikonta 512/16.

A space for milling?

Peripheral cities, far from the centre, frozen by the lack of development prospects, out of time, out of circulation. Without a modernising vision, because globalisation has bypassed them. Deserted and frozen in their time of being-beyond-time, between past and future. Cities whose aim is no longer to act and develop, but only to survive and wait for the slowly approaching disintegration. At the same time such places are attacked by elements that are derivatives of globalisation, but in its "junk" form. New forms, new materials, plasticity and shoddiness, visual chaos. All resulting from a lack of rules.

The modernisation processes taking place on a mass scale are connected - as Zygmunt Bauman put it - with the production of the category of "people - waste", and the factors generating this are: demand, competition, requirements of efficiency and productivity. A category of "redundant people" is being created - unemployed, prisoners, immigrants, refugees, displaced persons, asylum seekers, old and lonely people - for the society of the modern period, who are perceived as social intruders.

Does a person in such a peripheral city have an overwhelming sense of the senselessness of their own existence, of being a part of Bauman's "life on the run"? The more active, younger ones seek their place somewhere far away in the Centre, which is a city on the run, a city of the multiplication of material prosperity and consumption, of the illusion of participation in the mainstream. And the man of the peripheral city can choose - or this choice is made for him - passivity.

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

Koneser [1.]

Triptych, Warsaw - Praga, area of former vodka factory Koneser, summer 2009, Czajka II camera, 1/2 frame format 24×36 mm, scan from negative.

The summer of 2009 was a time when the death of the plant had already occurred. The production had finished, the halls were lifeless, empty, with no workers moving around amidst the noise. The machines inside the buildings stood silent, abandoned, entwined in cobwebs and a thick layer of dust, being a kind of enigma as to their original function, when the steam and temperature which had given them movement had gone. A state of suspension in nothingness and emptiness resulting from the lack of action. There is a slow sedimentation, a slow settling of time, before the great change. It came soon and brought a new quality. But it is something else now.

Rytm miasta [1.]

Triptych: Warsaw, Aleje Jerozolimskie, near Rondo de Gaulle, August 2009, Chajka II camera, 1/2 frame format 24×36 mm, scan from Ilford Pan 100 negative.

A triptych is a three-part composition in painting, sculpture or another technique. Three paintings, three takes. Each has its own composition and seems to be autonomous. However, in a triptych each of the paintings enters into a relationship with the other two representations. Relationships are formed, mutual connections, a dialogue is created. One place, one moment, presented in three shots.

Movement, dynamics. Just a city, a mass, a machine .... futurismo?

Wapno - plener [2.]

Wapno, Wągrowiec district, VIVA Club.

Photo: own technique - scanning the imprint on paper of the light sensitive layer from Fujifilm FP-3000B Professional Polaroid print (8.5x10.8 cm), Hasselblad 503CW camera, photo format 6x6 cm.

The town, for which the salt mine was a guarantee of development and better future, suddenly stood on the edge of its existence. From that moment, in October 1977, it stopped developing, a significant part of the population was resettled to other regions of Piła Province, those who remained faced the fact that there will be no more development, no better life associated with the mine. Fear has arisen that what is happening underground, somewhere very deep, as a result of reckless human actions, full of ambition and pride in the laws of nature, focused on profit and efficiency, poses a constant threat. Fatality has hung over the area for many decades, and the abandoned mine buildings towering over the surroundings are a grim threat that the dormant forces of nature may at any time unleash their destructive power. Nemesis may demand its revenge.

And so you have to live in that fear for several decades now.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

Wapno - plener [1.]

Wapno, area Wągrowiec, a closed, former rock salt mine.

Photo: own technique - scanning the imprint on paper of the light sensitive layer from Fujifilm FP-3000B Professional Polaroid print (8.5x10.8 cm), Hasselblad 503CW camera, photo format 6x6 cm.

In the village of Wapno, located near W±growiec, mining began in 1828 and in the beginning gypsum was the raw material. After finding salt deposits in the village since the third quarter of the 19th century mining began to develop, which undoubtedly influenced the fate of the village in the 20th century. It was connected with a huge extraction of salt deposits in Wapno, which between 1950 and 1965 constituted almost half of the rock salt extraction in Poland. Risky exploitation led to a violent disaster, which took place on August 5, 1977 and caused flooding of one of the levels of the mine. This caused the creation of a sinkhole, which on October 28 began to gradually engulf the center of the village, residential buildings, part of the railroad station. 1,400 residents were evacuated. The mine, which had contributed so much to the development of the village, became its nemesis.