Nowe media czułości
New Media of Tenderness

Summary/Abstract: An analysis of the significance of the category of tenderness (introduced into the humanities discourse by Olga Tokarczuk) for the phenomenon of testimony, whose modus is both literature and art. In her opinion tenderness is responsible for the semantic and ontological “condensation” and “expansion” that occur in masterpieces as well as testimonies which can be described as great. In this manner they transgress the opposition of truth and fabrication. By referring to selected examples M. Barbaruk demonstrates that tenderness renders possible an affective connection with the unknown or else the extremely distant (such as the past, a foreign land). By following clues of the media, described by Tokarczyk in The Tender Narrator (in particular the radio set “with the green eye”), she proposed to perceive the expansion of the world by means of tenderness in the art of new media, e.g. in the video-installation Visitation by Bill Viola. The extremely realistic style of a work realised in the high definition technique evokes transformations taking place in the act of christening, which could be a symbol of the link between the existential and technological transformation of human reality. The author of the text characterises tenderness by erecting her narration around such conceits as “immersion”, “penetration”, “transmission”, and “synchronisation” (borrowing examples from Blade Runner 2049 by Denis Villeneuve and 2001: A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick, but also the Maltese diary by Wiesław Juszczak). M. Barbaruk considers the frame of “tender” testimony (art) to be the postulate of “eccentric knowledge” proposed by Tokarczuk. In doing so, she indicates the kairotic element of eccentricity, which can cause unexpected, violent changes in social-cultural reality (”tenderness” as the slogan of the Women’s Strike protest, utopian examples of university reforms, the impact of the opinions of Pedro Lemebel upon the awakening of Chilean society).

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