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“Ludzka naturo, sama-ś swym nieprzyjacielem
I sama sobie szkody wyrządzasz zbyt wiele!”

Owidiusz, Pieśni miłosne, księga III

Upadek cywilizacji często jest dość nagły – to efekt domku z kart – gdy bowiem ich zapotrzebowanie osiągnie granice możliwości zasobów naturalnych, stają się bardzo podatne na wahania przyrody. Najbardziej bezpośrednim zagrożeniem spowodowanym zmianami klimatycznymi jest niestabilność pogody powodująca serię nieurodzajów w tak zwanych światowych spichlerzach. Częstotliwość i nasilenie susz, powodzi, pożarów oraz huraganów rośnie, a powodowane przez nie zanieczyszczenia – w połączeniu z wojnami – nakręcają spiralę destrukcji.

Eksperci medyczni martwią się, że natura może niebawem zaskoczyć nas jakąś epidemią: miliardy tłoczących się naczelnych (wielu z nich chorych, niedożywionych) latają samolotami w tę i z powrotem. To darmowy lunch czekający na zwinnego mikroba. “Matka natura zawsze przychodzi na ratunek społeczeństwu dotkniętemu […] przeludnieniem – stwierdził ironicznie Alfred. W. Crosby – a jej posługi nigdy nie są subtelne”.

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.

Youthful Memory in Superaging

Felicia W. Sun, Michael R. Stepanovic, Joseph Andreano, Lisa Feldman Barrett, Alexandra Touroutoglou and Bradford C. Dickerson

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Youthful Brains in Older Adults: Preserved Neuroanatomy in the Default Mode and Salience Networks Contributes to Youthful Memory in Superaging

ABSTRACT

Decline in cognitive skills, especially in memory, is often viewed as part of “normal” aging. Yet some individuals “age better” than others. Building on prior research showing that cortical thickness in one brain region, the anterior midcingulate cortex, is preserved in older adults with memory performance abilities equal to or better than those of people 20–30 years younger (i.e., “superagers”), we examined the structural integrity of two large-scale intrinsic brain networks in superaging: the default mode network, typically engaged during memory encoding and retrieval tasks, and the salience network, typically engaged during attention, motivation, and executive function tasks. We predicted that superagers would have preserved cortical thickness in critical nodes in these networks.

Tannenberg-Denkmal and the cult of memory

History, is devoted to its memory. It is built from collected fragments of information, the detritus of knowledge about the past, and the relics of memories lost.

Memory, in this case it is not a record of experienced recollections but an attempt at an orderly re-assembling of lost memory. It is memory arranged in the form of an archive.

Oblivion, is tantamount to the erasure of the memory of the monument. Devastation experienced years ago, pillage and the dispersion of its unwanted (alien) remains provokes a set of basic questions:

Should one speak about the Tannenberg-Denkmal now?
How should one speak about it?

Dorota Nieznalska, Tanneberg-Denkmal. The cult of memory!

The Tanneberg – Denkmal, built-in 1925-1927, was once a monumental building, located between Olsztynek and Sudwa villages, in former East Prussia and present Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship of Poland. It commemorated the victory of the Prussian army over the Russian in the Battle of Tannenberg 1914. Later on, it became also the mausoleum of Paul Hindenburg, a German military man, a field marshal (Generalfeldmarschall), and politician – the President of the Reich during the Weimar Republic and the early Third Reich in 1925-1934.

Irena Saława. The Guardian of Place of National Remembrance

Throughout her life Ms Irena Saława takes care of the World War I cemetery in the Nieprześnia village. There lie bodies of 123 fallen soldiers of the Austro-Hungarian and Russian armies. Together with her husband, 8 other people and a couple of horses, they built the graves with their own hands.

David Szauder: Failed memories

David Szauder

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I am inspired by the parallels I see between human memory and computer memory: our brains store away images to retrieve them later, like files stored away on a hard drive. But when we go back and try to re-access those memories, we may find them to be corrupted in some way.

When we see a picture we are able to remember the details, but only for a short period. In the long term we start to lose parts of the details and we fill the gaps with our self-generated memories instead of those lost fragments.

Travels, Migration and Memory of Things

“A journey, after all, neither begins in the instant we set out, nor ends when we have reached our door step once again. It starts much earlier and is really never over, because the film of memory continues running on inside of us long after we have come to a physical standstill. Indeed, there exists something like a contagion of travel, and the disease is essentially incurable.”
Ryszard Kapuściński, Travels with Herodotus

 

Curatorial Text

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Travellers. Voyage and Migration in New Art from Central and Eastern Europe.

Artists: Adéla Babanová, Daniel Baker, Olga Chernysheva, Wojciech Gilewicz, Pravdoliub Ivanov, C.T. Jasper & Joanna Malinowska, Irina Korina, Taus Makhacheva, Porter McCray, Alban Muja, Ilona Németh & Jonathan Ravasz, Roman Ondak, Tímea Anita Oravecz, Adrian Paci, Vesna Pavlović, Dushko Petrovich, Janek Simon, Radek Szlaga & Honza Zamojski, Maja Vukoje, Sislej Xhafa

Curator: Magdalena Moskalewicz
Collaboration on the part of Zachęta: Magdalena Komornicka

Vlad Basarab. The Archaeology of Memory Installation

From the beginning of history, there has been a connection between words and clay as the first forms of written knowledge were on clay tablets. While the loss of collective memory seems like a natural occurrence that one cannot stop, it is never too late to try to revitalize culture and language. Books have always seemed to make knowledge more tangible, yet in these videos they are crumbling away, dissolving in what appears to be a natural process. There is a sense of nostalgia for knowledge and culture.

Vlad Basarab

The Archaeology of Memory Project is an installation consist of books made out of clay, wooden table, and water. The Artist has chosen to reference books as a historic symbol of knowledge and collective memory. The videos are time-lapse recordings of clay books being dissolved over the course of seven days by dripping water.

Modderwiese. Palimpsest of Memories

What else than a natural and mighty palimpsest is the human brain? […] Everlasting layers of ideas, images and feelings, have fallen upon your brain softly as light. Each succession has seemed to bury all that went before. And yet in reality not one has been extinguished.

Thomas de Quincey

Henryka Molenda and Julian Kaczmarek were born during World War II on the territory of the Second Polish Republic. Henryka was born in 1942 in Radowicze, within the Kovel district in the Volyn region. Julian was born two years earlier, in Podborowo, within the Szamotuły district in the Poznań voivodeship.