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Organizers: Institute of History, Charles University, Jagiellonian UniversityThe University of Krakow and the Foundation Brandenburgische Gedenkstätten Place and date: New museum, campus of the former concentration camp Sachsenhausen, 22 November 2009 - 31 May 2010
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According to Chantal Mouffe’s conception of agonistic pluralism I will analyse the role which one of Jenny Holzer artwork plays in hegemonic struggle. Lustmord. is the work produced in 1993 as an example of undermining the memory discourse about military action during Bosnian War. The artist places violence against women into the centre of war strategy thereby giving voice to the victims rather than to the winner. I hope to find out if Lustmord creates an agonistic dimension of public space.
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The aim of the article is to present a few criticisms of the foundations of Leon Chwistek’s philosophy. Completeness postulate, imposed on all correct philosophical systems by Chwistek, and which is supposed to be in conflict with conventionalism, is criticised. Correctness of some Chwistek’s axioms is called into question. Axioms for six intermediate realities are given. I argue in favour of model theory interpretation of manifold reality.
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A film about the love affair between the canonized last czar and a ballerina is finally bound for cinemas after months of debate.
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Kirill Serebrennikov has seen his funding cut and a controversial ballet axed, and could soon be charged with swindling the state out of millions.
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In this paper, the author presents a philosophical analysis of the famous manga series, Barefoot Gen (Hadashi no Gen) by Keiji Nakazawa, which is the author’s quasi‑fictional memoir of his childhood as an atom bomb survivor in Hiroshima, Japan. Against the backdrop of larger issues of war and peace, Gen’s family struggles with his father’s ideological rebellion against the nation’s militaristic rule, leading to the family’s persecution. The story then chronicles the cataclysmic effects of the bomb, and the fates of Gen and other survivors as they live through the aftermath of the detonation and the hardships of the American occupation. The author's framework for critique follows Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutical phenomenology, which applies the descriptive method of phenomenology to cultural texts.
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In this article the author takes an historical overview of conspiracy theories and how they have been paraded in the work of Witkacy. They have been with us at least since the time of Ancient Rome, connected both with the Christians and Jews. The author argues that they have been used to explain historical events, especially at times of crisis, social change and upheaval, when nations, social groups, and individuals have felt threatened by inexplicable disasters and perils. Conspiratorial thinking detects labyrinthine plots and finds individuals or groups that can be held responsible for menacing social changes. They have clearly influenced Witkacy’s work. It is argued that the lonely protagonist is confronted by encroaching realms of otherness, ‘concentric circles of constraint and encroachment’ in the form of the cosmos, political and social order, family, and even the self.
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In this article the author applies Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński’s claim that Witkacy’s paintings are “theatre frozen on canvas” by examining the many characters who coexist in both his paintings and dramas. This is evident not only in the content of his later drawings and paintings when he was most productive with his dramatic literary output, but also in the subject matter of earlier art pieces before he even began the fruitful period of his dramatic works. Moreover, some of the images in his artwork reflect his own real life experiences. The author borrowing a phrase from Daniel Gerould claims that Witkacy creates a “unified world of imagination” in which various characters appear in multiple literary and art works.
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In this essay the author discusses Cinema in the work of Witkacy, particularly its absence. He refers to many of Witkacy’s Western contemporaries as being fascinated by this increasingly dominant 20th Century medium, which Witkacy seems to have ignored despite his interest and participation in a wide range of modern aesthetic practices including painting, photography, mass produced portraits, and theatre. Part of the explanation for this, it is suggested, may lay in the relative underdevelopment of cinema in Poland prior to World War II; most of the local cinema produced was in the form of highly conventional romances, with an avant-garde cinema only developing towards the end of Witkacy’s life. The author continues to present a very succinct account of how Witkacy’s work has been transmuted into the medium of Film and Television.
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In this paper I discuss how “pure form” applies to the music of composer Morton Feldman. Starting from Witkiewicz’s idea that music is the purest form of art, I discuss his speculations on the “heightened metaphysical feeling” that results from aesthetic experience. I also look at Witkiewicz’s rejection of sentimental music. I then take up the conditions of music in our time, where music is used as light entertainment. This exemplifies Witkiewicz’s fears about the use of art as a distraction to keep people happy. I then examine the music of Feldman as an antidote to these trends. His music conveys a sense of a flat surface upon which the attention of listeners drifts contemplatively with the music, experiencing it as an end in itself. I try to show how his music affects listeners at the core of their being and gives them a sense of unity in the midst of the multiplicity of everyday life.
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This article will consider Witkacy’s theatre plays alongside his contribution to dramatic theory with the Theory of Pure Form. In particular, it will examine the interplay between a sense of unity and a sense of the alogical, a term first used by the Italian Futurists. Focusing on The Water Hen but with reference to other plays as well as Futurist theoretical and dramatic counterparts, the article investigates on the one hand the interruption of narrative and linear progression, and uncertainty as to existence, identity and relationship; and on the other hand the persistent continuous underlying anxiety within the characters themselves and their sense of journey and destination. I suggest that his use of a series of arresting visual images and theatrical transformations unifies the scenes within a single dream-like world, bringing an order, however opaque, to the chaos.
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That ‘crisis of identity’ is one of the central problems addressed by the dramas of Witkacy is primarily linked in the mind of critics to the tradition of modernism. In this contribution I would like to suggest a change of viewpoint, and to present this problem rather from the point of view of contemporary discourse concerning identity. The problems that Witkacy’s characters have with their own existence are in accord, not only with today’s quite common conviction that individuals can experiment with their own sense of identity with relative freedom but also with the concepts of the individual ego, derived from the realms of the Social Sciences.
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Many researchers of Witkacy’s oeuvre alert us to the strong presence of ‘dandyism’ both in his literary work and in his biography. The classification of ‘dandyism’ is significant, however, for his entire work including his art. It should be recalled that ‘dandyism’ is not only seen as an exaggerated concern with appearance but also an attitude expressed in a certain individuality of style, eccentricity, nonchalance and skepticism. This paper analyzes the self-discrediting strategy in Witkacy’s work, first described by Grzegorz Grochowski. It draws attention to the way in which Witkacy assumes various roles that usually have controversial cultural connotations. These include feminine self-stylization, the role of megalomaniac, snob, or amateur. The intention of the contribution is to explore the ways in which this self-discrediting strategy has been articulated in self-portraits.
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The farce, realistic and surrealistic, trivial and yet transfigured, is an essential expression of both Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz’s 'The Beelzebub Sonata' and Michel de Ghelderode’s 'The Tragic Death of Doctor Faustus'. Both plays were written in 1925, and the subtitle of each play informs that we are at a great distance from Goethe’s transcendent drama, for Ghelderode’s play is subtitled “A Tragedy for the Music Hall” and Witkacy’s “What Really Happened in Mordovar.” This paper explores the deformation of any traces of Goethe’s tragic Faust, as each playwright situates his play in a grotesque cabaret. In both plays the Mephistophelian character has been deprived of his powers of negation, and instead as Diamotoruscant in Ghelderode’s version produces cheap tricks akin to those of Goethe’s “Witches Kitchen” in the music hall. Not only do both playwrights ridicule the potential of a twentieth-century Faust figure, but they also mock Naturalism in the theater and in Witkacy’s play even the possibility of a Theatre of Pure Form.
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The author addresses the extent to which Witkacy’s work should be seen in relation to Romantic playwright Juliusz Słowacki who began the Artistic Theater in Poland according to Witkacy’s own words. While subsequent creators of Artistic Theatre, especially Stanisław Wyspiański, the author of symbolic national dramas, attracted much attention among Witkacy scholars, Słowacki has been barely mentioned in the context of Witkacy theatre. The author compares Słowacki’s ‘Kordian’ with Witkacy’s ‘John Mathew Charles the Furious’ and concludes that both the protagonists’ dilemmas and their self-referential statements are profoundly connected. In addition, the author presents an analysis of both Słowacki’s and Witkacy’s treatment of the motifs of ‘Violence’ ‘A Corpse’ ‘A Dream’ and ‘A Ghost.’ It is argued that Witkacy deconstructs national myths and pushes romantic imagination to the limits, developing elements of romantic fantasy bordering on surrealism typical of Słowacki into modern surrealistic theatre.
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Text analyses selected examples of photography, painting and video installations (Bernhard Prinz, Bill Viola, Peter Holl, Adrian Gottlieb, Marcin Liber) stressing classical rules and inspirations, as well as elaborating context of visual turn (parallel to the end of art concept). Not only classical patterns and rules are presented but also weighty philosophical ideas are discovered with the use of transdisciplinary methods. Finally, the fundamental questions concerning aesthetic and metaphysical determinants of art in contemporary works are raised (Plato, Kant, Scheler) in context of human identity discovered in hermeneutic interpretation and experience of beauty.
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„The end of art” means that art is marked by finitude, thrown into finitude and given over to its presentation. Finitude implies a lack of totality, the impossiblity of closing one's being in oneself, and, therefore, the necessity of being in relation, of being outside of oneself. Art that presents finitude is an art of being outside of itself. This means that every time there is art, it exists as something other than itself. This structure of „being-as” seems to be one of the main effects and meanings of “the end of art”. These theses are developed by way of an analysis of Hegel, the Jena Romantics, Danto and Kosuth's text 'Art after Philosophy'.
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In the article I propose an analysis of both the opinions about “the end of art,” that have been appearing for a long time and the changes in understanding the meaning of symbols in culture. In connection with the problem of symbols, I refer to the philosophy of Hans Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur, as well as to the personalistic hermeneutics of Luigi Pareyson. Asking if there exist such concepts of culture that would make the use of the term “end of art” irrelevant, I answer yes and I give the example of the concept of form by Pareyson. Additionally, I make the point that Pareyson’s form is a symbolic one. Finally, I try to outline a hermeneutic interpretation of one of the art works shown at the 54 Venice Biennale
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