THE THINGS OF WARSAW – biography of things, biography of the city

Jarosław Trybuś

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The holdings of the Museum of Warsaw, which opened its doors in 1936, currently comprise over 300,000 objects related to the history of Warsaw – everyday things and ceremonial items, works of art and objects of convenience, mementos of people and of events. Our team of curators has spent 4 years selecting and showcasing 7,352 of them. We have assorted them into 21 themed rooms.

The museum objects are witnesses and participants in the history of the city.  We have striven to create conditions for a close encounter with them. They often provide a pretext for telling the stories of their owners and makers or relating ground-breaking events and long-term developments. Apart from things, the exhibition features a separate section providing data that allows one to put the city’s complex history in perspective.

ARCHEOLOGY BEYOND ARCHAĪOS

Dawid Kobiałka, Mikołaj Kostyrko, Kornelia Kajda

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ARCHEOLOGY BEYOND ARCHAĪOS. A CASE STUDY OF A PRISONER OF WAR AND INTERNMENT CAMP IN TUCHOLA (KUJAWY-POMERANIA PROVINCE)

KEY WORDS: archaeology of the recent past, prisoner of war camp, memory, heritage, materiality, remote sensing, LiDAR, Tuchola

SUMMARY

The starting point for this paper is a growing archaeological interest in the studies of material culture and landscapes from the recent past. It is argued that the traditional approach towards archaeology as a science that studies the ancient and the very old is too narrow to embrace the whole diversity of archaeological research in the contemporary times.

Within contemporary archaeological discourse, there are a few terms that try to account for archaeology beyond archaīos. One can just refer to the archaeology of us, the archaeology of the contemporary past, the archaeology of the recent past, archaeology in and of the present, or archaeology of the contemporary world. Not being synonymous, these terms nonetheless share a conviction that it is material culture, no matter how old or new, that is the constitutive element of archaeological practice.

Miedzianka/Kupferberg. Memory of the town

Filip Springer’s “Miedzianka: Story of a Disappearing” – Winner of Asymptote Journal’s 2016 Close Approximations Translation Contest and Shortlisted for the Ryszard Kapuscinski Prize, is a fascinating true story of a small mining town that, after seven centuries of history, disappeared.

Lying at the crucible of Central Europe, the Silesian village of Kupferberg suffered the violence of the Thirty Years War, the Napoleonic Wars, and World War I. After Stalin’s post-World War II redrawing of Poland’s borders, Kupferberg became Miedzianka, a town settled by displaced people from all over Poland and a new center of the Eastern Bloc’s uranium-mining industry. Decades of neglect and environmental degradation led to the town being declared uninhabitable, and the population was evacuated.

Mon cher Chopin and “Correspondence des arts”

The Creative Group Symfonia seeks to combine various fields of art based on Polish indigenous music, poetry and literature. All this is embedded in the landscape of Polish spirituality and romantic tradition.

Vernissage of the “Mon cher Chopin. Pictures inspired by Chopin’s music” exhibition:

19:00 | Wednesday, 28 June 2017
PROM Kultury Saska Kępa, Warszawa
Free entrance

https://goingapp.pl/embed/893784

Curators: Anna Forycka-Putiatycka and Barbara Bielecka-Woźniczko

Balkan Erotic Epic and memory of the body

 

In the Balkan Erotic Epic (2005) multi-channel video installation Marina Abramović – the Grandmother of the Performance, as she calls herself – combines performance with ritual. She returns to the pagan roots, referring to Balkan beliefs and practices, in which the body and sexuality play the key role. By recreating ritual activities, she shows the body in dialogue with nature. According to ancient beliefs fertility of the soil is inextricably linked to human fertility. Abramović’s monumental installation sublimates human vital and erotic functions – we find here the expression of pleasure drawn from visually aggressive sexual practices displaced by culture, and especially religion.

The Burren. Memories from the Middle-earth

The Burren is a limestone plateau in north County Clare, Ireland, dominated by karst landscape. It measures at least 250 square kilometers. This extraordinary region is rich in natural and cultural attractions. Traveling via the Wild Atlantic Way, along the rocky coast of the Atlantic Ocean, through the limestone desert interspersed with the green hills and valleys, you have the impression of traveling in time and space. In a moment you are back to the Neolithic Era, in the other you are crossing the gate to the world of fantasy full of Little People, Feries and other amazing creatures are well known from the J.R.R. Tolkien works.

Sarah Parcak fulfills people’s dreams about Archaeology

Morning clouds reveal Machu Picchu, ancient city of the Incas. Peru is home to many archaeological sites — and citizen scientists are mapping the country with GlobalXplorer. Photo: Design Pics Inc./National Geographic Creative GlobalXplorer, the citizen science platform for archaeology, launched two weeks ago. It’s the culmination of Sarah Parcak’s TED Prize wish and, already, more than…

“Everyone will find things on GlobalXplorer,” said Parcak. “All users are making a real difference. I’ve had photos from my friends showing their kids working together to find sites, and emails from retirees who always wanted to be archaeologists but never could. It’s really heartwarming to see this work.”

via ‘Armchair archaeologists’ search 5 million tiles of Peru — TED Blog

Three medieval worlds and the social memory of cultural heritage sites.

Grzegorz Kiarszys

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The presented book “Three medieval worlds. Iuxta castrum Sandouel” aims to tell the stories of the remains of medieval strongholds in the cultural landscape of the Góra district (Lower Silesia Region, Poland) and to restore their presence in the social discourse. The research project was financed by the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, coordinated by the National Heritage Board of Poland, with the aid from Archeo Landscapes Europe. The studies focus on the relics of early medieval strongholds and late medieval motte castles located in the Lower Silesia Region, Poland. These features are often considered as mysterious objects of anthropogenic origin. However, their original purpose and cultural value is seldom recognized by the local community.

History of the Computer Memory

The Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, U.S.,  is a nonprofit organization with a four-decade history as the world’s leading institution exploring the history of computing and its ongoing impact on society. The Museum is dedicated to the preservation and celebration of computer history and is home to the largest international collection of computing artifacts in the world, encompassing computer hardware, software, documentation, ephemera, photographs, oral histories, and moving images.

Cemitério dos Prazeres and Memory of the Dead

Cemeteries are one of the most impressive reflexes of an historic moment in a certain culture. Therefore, it is rather understandable why southern Europe cemeteries present features that cannot be easily found in Great Britain cemeteries, for example. However, if we look closer to Portuguese cemeteries, we can easily distinguish it from the Spanish, the French or even from the Italian ones.

Francisco Queiroz

The rainy and gloomy November especially encourages us to do some reflection and meditation on the transience, the death, and the fragility of human life. This is the best time for remembering the dead and visiting cemeteries. The Western world celebrates in this particular time of the year the Halloween, the All Saints’ Day, the All Souls’ Day from 31st October to 2nd November. At that time cemeteries are illuminated by thousands of candles and sunk in flowers, like in Poland. However, during the ending time of the year, the final resting places are usually empty.