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Book review: Zygmunt Wielowiejski, Hermann Krone i Inni. Wrocław na Fotografii 1840-1900, (Wrocław), Via Nova (2014), pp. 119 + 1.
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The purpose of this article is to commemorate the little known and almost forgotten after the Second World War, yet an outstanding Polish photographer, Antoni Anatol Węcławski (1891-1985), and to reflect on his abundant output motif – the nocturnes. Węcławski was born into an outclassed gentry from Kresy. His first photography course took place in 1925 at Warsaw Photography Lovers Centre and it comprised beginner and principled photography techniques. In order to become a professional photographer he ran, for several months in 1926, his own seasonal photo workshop in Druskieniki. During the following years he performed artistic photography and he eagerly joined both Polish and foreign exhibitions. Between the years 1929-1933 and 1935-1937 Węcławski took part in several collective exhibitions. In the international and domestic competitions he became a laureate of numerous awards and nominations. With a portfolio full of successes that promoted Polish photography he was recognized and invited to join Polish Photo Club, an association of the most prominent artists. Irrespective of his artistic activities he regularly wrote reviews for photography magazines, that also published his awarded photographs. What’s more Węcławski conducted lectures and readings on photography. In the years 1946-1961 Węcławski taught photography techniques and theory. He died at the age of 94 in Warsaw. An abundant and diversified collection of the photographer has been preserved and kept by his daughter, Hanna Węcławska, in their family house in Gołąbki: vintage prints, negatives, cameras and other utensils, there is also evidence for Węcławski’s other artistic, didactic or social activities. This indicates not only his flamboyant life, output, interests, and aspirations, but also the society which he cofounded. Yet another profile of Węcławski is revealed thanks to those preservations. He was an outstanding pictorialist, an aesthete, a bromine technique virtuoso, an enthusiast of principled photo techniques, a collector of sublime photographic equipment, a charismatic educationist, a megalomaniac, and an individual. In addition, he was an artist who had a wide repertoire of swiftly commanded motifs like: portraits, acts, still life, genre art - folk, ethnographic, marine, and urban landscapes with predominant views of the Warsaw Old Town. Węcławski is yet mostly recognized as a specialist in poetic, melancholic, and understated nocturnes which he created during his most fruitful period of life 1926-1935. The most recognizable themes include architecture, urban landscapes with staffage, genre scenes from night walks and games, picturesque shots of Vistula river and lit bridges, weather conditions, and interior scenes kept in a stimmung mood. Undoubtedly, those lyrical, graceful, and tasteful compositions, sometimes close to abstracts, prove that the author was truly a virtuoso of that genre.
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This essay presents an argument for a Collingwoodean social philosophy of art that centres on the opposition between art and magic as developed by R. G. Collingwood in Principles of Art and his folklore manuscript. The author agrees with Collingwood’s critics that one of the most problematic aspects of his aesthetics is its identification of art with the expression of emotion. Nevertheless, he aims to show that a Collingwoodean philosophy of art can dispense entirely with the notion of emotion. Other writers have demonstrated that Collingwood’s understanding of emotion is so broad as to loose firm contours. The author argues that a similar point holds for Collingwood’s treatment of magic. In the light of Collingwood’s interpretative liberty, the distinction between an expression of emotion and its mere release proves hard to sustain. It is argued here that by removing the controversial concept of emotion from the equation, Collingwood’s philosophy of art can be transformed into a more plausible Collingwoodean social philosophy of art where artistic expression reveals not the inner emotional states of the artist, but the contours of the shared habituated codes of communication and comportment, making the audience aware of their second nature as creatures of habit.
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The results of qualitative research, the aim of which was to reveal the current view on the guitar and its changes , are presented in this paper. Most of the research participants do not think that the guitar is underrated or thought of as a lesser instrument than the other ones. Classical guitar , that is usually associated with academic music, is not very well known and is usually associated with vocal , rock and hard music genres. The image of the guitar is cause by contemporary popular music culture and the guitar's role in it as well as the availability of the instrument and a wide variety of amateur teachers.The other factors include the opinion of contemporary guitar representatives and the press that state that almost anyone can learn to play the guitar also poor career options, the form and the quality of classical guitar concerts and its public representations.
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Reverberation is a chief phenomenon determining the quality of our acoustic sensations. Concert halls designers have the goal of enabling musicians to employ this effect. Nevertheless, even such dedicated spaces include acoustic phenomena distorting the fi nal shape of sound. Various types of sound wave refl ection depend on concert hall size, the hardness and texture of building materials, the arrangement of furnishings, and audience presence: factors de- termining the quality of sound. Such interaction increases in enclosed, atypi- cally constructed spaces that generate effects available for use in musical per- formance, e.g. the recording of jazz trumpeter Tomasz Stańko’s Music from Taj Mahal and Karla Cavas . Intensive reverberation allows new sound qua- lities to emerge in the acoustic space, which suggests that infl uenced by the discussed acoustic phenomena, sound may become to an extent independent.
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David Lynch plans to launch film festival and cinematography institute in Georgia.
More...IDENTITY METAPHORS OF KUMPANIA ALGAZARRA IN LISBON
This article addresses the relationship between music and identity in a collective of bands that perform Balkan music in Lisbon. Supported by a theoretical and methodological framework based on Ethnomusicology studies on music and identity, I proceed to analyse the emergence of the founding group of this collective – Kumpania Algazarra. I particularly aim to understand why Balkan music is chosen; what are the sound elements used in its representation; which are the processes of musical signification; and how the Balkan phenomenon is reflected in the lifestyle of the performers under study. The results of my participant observation and fieldwork analysis confirm the existence of an identity construction based on the Balkan’s imaginary that the musicians aim to reproduce. I trace hypotheses that lead me to consider this collective as a musically imagined community, based on the sharing of autonomous symbols, verifying that music’s evocation of imagined identities can lead to the transformation of both individual and collective identities. I conclude by proposing the studied music as a metaphor of a specific social identity, sustained by a musically imagined collective.
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Specific culture of the inhabitants of the Dinaric mountains region in the Western Balkans has already been observed primarily by ethnographers, antropogeographers and historians, and in recent times also by ethnomusicologists. This paper is dedicated to intriguing subject of the elements of Dinaric traditional rural musical idiom in the regions where these people settled in central Serbia mainly through their intensive and large migrations during the 19th century. The prominent elements of their rural musical traditions – interrelations of the folklore genres and melodic models, different structure and stylistic elements – have been kept as recognizable and compact in hilly and mountain regions on the West, but were changed and evolved in new musical forms (mixtures with the elements of other musical traditions/sensibilities) in the East, lowlands of the central Serbia.
More...JAZZ, MOBILITY, AND IDENTITY IN EUROPE
Jazz in Europe is largely shaped by the mobility of its actors, and informed by both the experiences of actors on the ground and their projection of what European identity is or should be. The mobility provided for European Union Member States by the Schengen Area has exploded the ways in which Europeans perceive and collaborate with each other. Jazz musicians and promoters identify mobility as part of their practices. Contextual factors – such as easier accessibility to communication and mobility –contribute to reshaping the European jazz scene, by creating a new generation of jazz actors who seem more integrated within Europe and who more naturally develop collaborations with their counterparts from different countries. The official discourse of the EU often stresses the notion of ‘Europeanness’ as a set of fundamental abilities. Promoting mobility of its citizens is a key aspect to ultimately inform the notion of a Pan-European ideal. However, contrasts between European counties, such as geographical and economic peripherality and centrality, and differentiated cultural and education policies, still stand as significant challenges to those who operate in the field. The fact that mobility opportunities for artists across Europe are still irregular raises a number of questions around music practices, identity, aesthetics, and the role of the different actors within the ecology of jazz in Europe.
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The jazz field in Portugal was marked by an event with wide implications during the turn to the 1980’s: the creation of the Hot Clube de Portugal’s School of Jazz. Through the activity of this school, it was established an autonomous form of jazz teaching, provided with its own curricular programs, teachers and with learning methods based on concepts and values which the agents held as being representative of this musical expression. The intent of this paper is to analyse the ways in which the mobility of musicians (and other agents) and their interactions in a variety of situations contributed the development of jazz education models in Portugal, specifically in the case of Hot Clube de Portugal’s School of Jazz. It will be considered the interactions between agents with different geographical backgrounds, the contact among institutions and the circulation of products related to jazz.
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From 1975, as a result of the decolonization process, more than half a million people left Angola, where they resided, to head to Portugal. It was forced migration due to the political, economic and social instability, during the period of decolonization of Angola. Migrants, mostly Portuguese or of Portuguese origin, once they arrived at their destination, were called “retornados” (returnees). This paper discusses the role of music in the phenomenon of forced migration in which “naturais e ex-residentes de Angola” (natural-born and former residents of Angola) were the protagonists, as well as the ways this displacement is now experienced by them. This article presents two case studies, results of fieldwork conducted in Portugal. The first concerns gatherings that are held annually in the city of Caldas da Rainha by former residents of Angolan city of Huambo, where music and dance are of great importance. The second is focused on the expressive practices of Pedro Coquenão, who was born in the city of Huambo, radio announcer, musician, DJ and mentor of the performance project “Batida”. In both cases I analyze the role of music and performance in the integration, affirmation and re-invention of identity. I emphasize the importance of memory and its uses, and the sensorial expressive practices of the participants, since they promote the continuity and the reconstruction of their “angolanidade” (Angolanity) in Portugal.
More...TOWARDS REPRESENTATIONS OF NATIONAL IDENTITY
In every country to which Portuguese people migrate, there are several cultural associations, musical or others, created by and for these migrants, with different goals. From a preliminary research, the associations that include a musical group tend to represent itself by a folkloric group similar to those in Portugal. For my PhD, I will explore the Philarmonique Portugaise de Paris, an exceptional case of the Portuguese associative movement in France; a wind band instead of a folklore group, the only of its kind known in a European country. The main questions involve the way in which Portuguese migrants individuals with musical habits from the past in situations of the intercultural present. How do musical habits and practices relate with processes of adaptation / insertion / cultural acquaintanceship in several environments – seen as cultural interfaces in Paris? Which cultural associations and groups do these migrant musicians integrate? In which events, festive or others, involving music, do they participate? How is the Philarmonique Portugaise de Paris characterized? In what musical activities engages? And in what social contexts participate? Why and how was it created? The notions of representation of identity, national consciousness, and emotional adaptation in new environments will be core targets in my work, observing motivations, exercises and related results. My study of relationships between music and human mobility, in an age in which migrant processes emerge as a social and humanitarian scourge, intends to contribute to the link between academic work and current social life.
More...MEDIATING PORTUGUESE IDENTITIES IN PARIS
The role of media in diasporic experiences is central to understand the identity construction of migrant communities in relation to the uses of their expressive culture, shaped by a connection to the motherland. This article addresses the case of Radio ALFA, a radio station targeted at the Portuguese community in the Paris region, and focuses on the ways in which Radio ALFA imagines this community through both its programming grid and the discourses of its main interlocutors. The heterogeneous and dynamic community conception of this medium is central in understanding the role of expressive mediated cultural practices such as Fado or Folklore in the construction of a more fluid identity. The use of such expressive practices in the broadcastings are central to Radio ALFA’s survival strategies, constantly (re)defining the very notion of “Portuguese community” in trying to reach different audiences that include both first-generation migrants and luso-descendants. In this linkage between community, motherland and host country through radio, a rather dynamic process emerges which nurtures a better understanding of the relation between media, music and migration in this specific context.
More...ENTREPRENEURIAL EFFORTS TOWARDS INTERCULTURALISM
Recent research in the fields of Ethnomusicology, Anthropology and Sociology frame the concept of lusofonia more as a return movement of the expressive cultures and memories of Portugal’s former colonial territories than as a linguistic field of the spoken sphere. In addition, in Portugal, institutional racism has legitimated both sociological and cultural racism perspectives. This friction has implied, among musicians, addressing lusofonia as a space of struggle, decolonialism and intervention. If the documentary Lusofonia, a (r)evolução continues to be influential, so is the claim that the lack remains, of a sustained institutional interest in lusofonia and its musical fusions. Drawing upon the results of 6 years of field research in Lisbon, I want to shed more light on how efforts of cultural entrepreneurs have addressed issues of politics of memory to negotiate national narratives and cultural policies. By mapping social struggles over the definition of collective memory, Ethnomusicology may reveal how political categories blur and dichtomize posctcolonial cultural expression. Initiatives such as Lisboa que Amanhece, Conexão Lusófona, Lisboa Mistura and Musidanças, mentioned in this paper, project intercultural understandings of lusofonia processes as fundamental for Portugal’s contemporary, national identity.
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“We are at a moment, I believe, when our experience of the world is less that of a long life developing through time than that of a network that connects points and intersects with its own skein”, and the future will belong more to space than to time – claimed Michel Foucault in 1967, penetratingly diagnosing revolutionary – from the current perspective – changes taking place in the culture of the past century. In the humanities, and therefore also in the history of art, they were dominated by several distinct trends, including a “spatial turn”. It brought an opposition of architecture and sculpture as forms developing in space to static images that had captured the previous discourse of art history. Simultaneously, it initiated a search for the transposition of new experiences into the language of the two-dimensional composition and the conventional space of the image field. Finally, it led to assimilation of painting by spatial arts under new rules, manifested even in the activities of street art. At the same time, there followed a gradual expansion of the domain of art history to take in new media, such as photography, computer graphics and the movie image. Contemporary art, striking in its diversity and richness of expression, has also undergone a reevaluation of landscape, expansion of limits of the concept and a departure from its previous perception as a genre of painting with a precisely defined nature. The reluctance to categorize, characteristic of our time, has brought confusion and has even, in the common awareness of the average consumer of culture, led to a reduction of the great tradition of landscape painting to sentimental daubs. Yet landscape, which is not just a simple record of the surrounding world but a medium expressing emotions or symbolic contents, sometimes with metaphysical undertones, abounds in interesting realisations, although functioning in different contexts that hinder the overall characterisation of this phenomenon in the art of recent decades. Today in Poland there are renowned landscape painters who continue the centuries-old tradition (among others, Stanisław Rodziński and Stanisław Baj). At the other extreme one may situate those artists who create landscape compositions using the latest digital techniques (e.g. Ryszard Horowitz). We also cannot disregard images preserved and transposed by means of film, portraits of places used in all kinds of activities in space, or so-called “internal landscape”, discovered in literature and the visual arts again and again. The metaphysics of contemporary landscape art is still awaiting a synthetic study; meanwhile the present volume of “Sacrum et Decorum” offers its readers several articles devoted to the question of landscape metaphysics, situated on the margin of the issues which are the domain of our journal. A specific introduction to that question is provided by Renata Rogozińska’s text, written from a theological perspective. The article by Michał Haake recalls the figure of Caspar David Friedrich, who cannot be disregarded when discussing metaphysical references in landscape painting. Grażyna Ryba attempts to show the personality of the Warsaw painter Marzanna Wróblewska through her paintings, expressing religious reflection in forms inspired by nature. The question of landscape in the current volume is complemented by a topic discussed by Marcin Lachowski who, by analyzing the painting of the Lublin art circles centred around the “Zamek” group, seeks to capture the phenomena occurring on the border between the sacred and the profane, and the presence of religious references in the directions of contemporary art. Another consequence of the spatial turn effected in the humanities in recent decades, and in no small measure contributed to by Foucault, quoted above, is a new look at the phenomenon of regional art. These questions are dealt with in Joanna Wolańska’s article, dedicated to church interior decorations in Switzerland in the interwar period as well as, in a sense, in the extensive text by Anna Siemieniec, published in the “Materials”, and presenting partial results of the Warsaw works of Adam Stalony-Dobrzański.
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Povodom izložbe u Galeriji umjetnina, Split 2017., Muzeju suvremene umjetnosti, Zagreb i Muzeju moderne i suvremene umjetnosti, Rijeka 2018.
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