Art in Quiry

ART IN QUIRY RECHERCHES SUR LES ARTS Volume XV (XXIV) CROSSING BORDERS: IMAGINING EUROPE, REPRESENTING PERIPHERY Łódź 2013 ART INQUIRY Recherches sur les arts Volume XV (XXIV) Crossing Borders: Imagining Europe, Representing Periphery ŁódZKIE TOWARZYSTWO NAUKOWE Societas Scientiarum Lodziensis 90-505 Łódź, ul. M. Skłodowskiej-Curie 11 tel. (+48 42) 665 54 59 fax (+48 42) 665 54 64 Sales office (+48 42) 665 54 48, http://sklep.ltn.lodz.pl www. ltn.lodz.pl, e-mail: [email protected] Editorial board of ŁTN: Krystyna Czyżewska, Sławomir Gala , Edward Karasiński, Wanda M. Krajewska (Editor-in-Chief), Jan Szymczak Editorial board: Bohdan dziemidok, Ryszard Hunger, Krystyna Juszyńska, Małgorzata Leyko, Robert C. Morgan, Wanda Nowakowska (chair) Ewelina Nurczyńska-Fidelska, Krystyna Wilkoszewska, Anna Zeidler-Janiszewska Editor-in-Chief: Grzegorz Sztabiński Editors: Andrzej Bartczak, Ryszard W. Kluszczyński, Krzysztof Stefański Editors of the volume: Katarzyna Kosmala (University of the West of Scotland) Ryszard W. Kluszczyński (University of Lodz) Language Editors: Alina Kwiatkowska, Andrew Tomlinson Editorial Associate: Paulina Sztabińska Reviewer: Michał Ostrowicki (Sidey Myoo) Cover: Grzegorz Laszuk Typesetting: Elżbieta Paradowska Published with financial assistance of Ministry of Science and High Education School Art INquiry is on the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education list of academic journals and is indexed in Index Copernicus. The electronic version of the printed journal is available in full text on the ePNP and IBUK platforms and in the CEEOL, EBSCOhost and Proquest databases. Copyright by Łódzkie Towarzystwo Naukowe, Łódź 2013 ISSN 1641-9278 Print: CU K s.c., ul. Sienkiewicza 36, 90–002 Łodź, tel. (42) 633–46–73 www.ksero-cuk.com.pl [email protected] The journal is originally a printed publication Wersja drukowana stanowi pierwotną wersję czasopisma Nakład: 200 egz. CONTENTS Preface ................................................................................................................... 7 KONRAD CHMIELECKI – Transcultural Congo as the Periphery of Europe or a Hybrid and Networked Archipelago: Transculturality within the Visual Culture Studies ..................................................................................................... 9 RYSZARD KLUSZCZYŃSKI – Experience – Memory – Identity. Media experiences as the foundations of hybridized identity ........................................ 31 BEN PARRY – An Allegory of Labour: Life and the Self in the Art of Tatzu Nishi. Cultural Hijack in London ........................................................................ 47 KATARZYNA KOSMALA – Constructed Stories of (Non)Belonging to Europe: Performative Videos of Marina Gržinić and Aina Šmid ....................... 65 TEODOR AJDER – On Foreclosure and Fresh Cherries ................................... 89 JOSIP ZANKI – The Stone Flower in Pannonia: Collective Trauma, Memory, and War ................................................................................................................ 107 NICOLE DOŁOWY-RYBIŃSKA – The Europe of Minorities. Cultural Land- scapes and Ethnic Boundaries ............................................................................. 125 ROMAN BROMBOSZCZ – The Catalague of Walls. A Collective Memory of Europeans ........................................................................................................ 139 ELŻBIETA WIĄCEK – “The Orient” in Global Cultural Flow: the Case of the Turkish Riviera .............................................................................................. 153 DAGMARA DRZAZGA – Bobrek – Life through Dance ................................ 183 JULIA SOWIŃSKA-HEIM – Conversions and Redefinitions – Architecture and Identity of a Place .......................................................................................... 191 ROMAN KUBICKI – On the Artistic Perspectives of the European Union ... 205 PRZEMYSŁAW PIOTROWSKI, ZBIGNIEW BAJEK, STEFAN FLOREK – The Artistic Statements of Inmates about Freedom: the “Labyrinth of Free- dom” Project and Its Possible Applications ....................................................... 215 Notes on the Contributors ..................................................................................... 231 PREFACE Crossing borders: imagining Europe, representing periphery Europe is a complex space, a space always morphing and never static; a space of constant change of ethnic, national, cultural and political realities. The newly forming socio-cultural order in Europe is founded on the experience associated with movement, relocation and dislocation, and the personal experience of the physical, cognitive, and symbolic crossing of borders. The complex paradigm of European identity is an object of artistic observation and interpretation. This observation, analysis, and critique leads to the emergence of multiple art discourses questioning the geo-politics of Europe and addressing the issues of identity. However, today the notion of identity, both individual and collective, arouses many doubts, if one considers the processes of globalization, migration and other forms of mobility, diasporas, exclusion, the merging of cultures, hybridization of traditions. The question of what it means to be European seems not to be regarded as important even among the EU citizens. Instead, various alternative forms of identification prevail. People identify themselves most often by their nationality, gender, profession, religion, sub-culture, but not as being European. The processes of mediatization and medialization contribute to the complexity of the issue. In such realities, we can only try to develop a socially attractive concept of ‘Europeaness’, or, following the theory of Giorgio Agamben, to reconsider the concept of ‘community without identity’, whose members do not necessarily share the essential attributes, but play the roles of different instantiations of the category. The United States of Europe exhibition, which visited a number of European cities in 2011-2013, grappled with the issues of representing Europe and aimed to analyse and discuss the problems associated with the construction of Europeaness. The exhibition was produced by Johanna Suo, and curated by Anna Bitkina, Ryszard W. Kluszczyński and Sinziana Ravini. In spite of the declared intention of searching for the possibility of European cultural integra- tion and common identity, the curators invited the artists who cast some doubt upon this very possibility. Luchezar Boyadjiev, for instance, examined the historical components of national identities. Anna Konik drew our attention to the consequences of poverty, homelessness, and marginalization. Gerda Lampalzer addressed the problem of power relations among the European nation-states. Maria Lusitano-Santos analysed the notion of a homeland and asked what makes a place feel like a home. Indeed, the subject of a home and its role in the process of identity formation was at the very heart of the works of both Konik and Lusitano-Santos. Anu Pennanen extended the field, taking up the issues of ethnicity and migration. The artists did not provide us with any immediate solutions or answers. Instead, by asking difficult questions, and pointing out the problems, they simply made us aware of the complexities and the scope of the construction of European space and European identity. The concept of Europe itself is also quite complex. First, we might consider its spatial dimension. From this perspective, Europe is a hybrid space: a socio-political geographical space with strong internal economic ties (or less strong, considering the current Euro-zone crisis) that can be demarcated on the map, and an amalgamate of culturally plural and diverse spaces. Cultural plurality and linguistic polyphony make Europe unique. They are a rich cultural resource. Cultural plurality can be envisaged as the potential for a sustainable future, or as a threat to cohesiveness and autonomy. Secondly, we might consider the temporal dimension, with Europe continually reshaping, assuming a new form. We need to think about the beginnings of Europe, its historical reincarnations, and its recent acquisitions, forming the Europe of today; we should also imagine the Europe of the future. One important dimension of contemporary Europe is its mobility. Yet, mobility across the national borders remains a privilege rather than the norm. It is being on the ‘right’ side of the wall that determines the versions of sovereignty, the citizenship-related entitlements, including the economy of the human rights. On the one hand, the policy on migration has evolved to ease off the border control. On the other, there is a proliferation of the walls that continue to divide the spaces of Europe, ‘us’ and ‘them’. We witness a proliferation of symbolic walls and the less visible walls reminiscent of the Berlin Wall now transformed into the East Side Gallery of murals. A section of the Wall reminds us about the political, socio-economic and cultural divide between the West and the East Germany, the latter a former member of the Soviet bloc, now a ‘new’ European space. Symbolic walls are stronger than their physical manifestations. They prevail and continue to exist in our cognitive spaces and the systemic structures across the geo-political map of Europe despite their so-called material dis- appearance. Embodied experience and personal account can provide frames for wall crossing, border crossing, migration routes and various diasporas

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