Artists to war. Pacifism z o.o.

The massacres carried out by Putin's troops in Buczy and Irpien are not media events that happen to us “somewhere in the world”, only generating short-lived bursts of emotion or anger. They contact us directly, origin real suffering and origin a sense of failure characteristic of grief after the death of loved ones.

Since 24 February 2022, the way of looking at media accounts illustrated by photographs with horrors of war has taken a completely fresh form in Poland. Suddenly, the observer's position changed dramatically. We stopped being spectators of individual else's suffering. We no longer agree with the analyses presented in Susan Sontag's consideration[1]. The massacres carried out by Putin's troops in Buczy and Irpien are not media events that happen to us “somewhere in the world”, only generating short-lived bursts of emotion or anger. They contact us directly, origin real suffering and origin a sense of failure characteristic of grief after the death of loved ones. We share the state of deep emotion and anxiety with the Lithuanians and Latvians, and possibly with respective another post-Soviet nations. The situation becomes highly uncomfortable for us, we start to feel like blind people who have regained their sight and abruptly find that they will lose sight again.

In this sense, differences within the European Union had to be noted. Although Viktor Yanukovych in 2013 prevented Ukrainians from associating with the European Union, Euromaidan has made it impossible for Ukrainians to be considered members of a common family, uniting all east European freedmen in countries recently freed from russian chains. That's why the attack on their sovereignty became a blow to us. surviving in the close back of the war, we can inactive feel the breath of death on our backs. We effort not to look up, not to paralyze ourselves with the spectrum of the impending catastrophe that will wipe humanity out of the face of the earth, but at the same time we do not want to be indifferent and powerless. We want to show solidarity with the fighting and suffering, trying to convey – even through works of art – unity with the defenders of the right to freedom Ukrainians and manifest commitment to the fight on the part of the righteous. On this occasion, thoughts arise about the unparadoned usage of manipulated soldiers as alleged cannon meat. Fear increases information about mobile crematoria, which allows the bodies of the dead to be disposed of without revealing their actual number, and about fields filled with piles of corpses that will never be buried worthy.

This issue was played – in its complex, multilayered complexity – at the exhibition entitled “Europe in the Face of 5th Freedom”, which can be seen at the Wilson Glass Gallery in Katowice by the end of March 2023. The Krakow artist Zbigniew Bajek recalled in this context the circumstances of planet War I. The Galician cemeteries with graves of respective tens of thousands of Russian and Austro-Hungarian soldiers, whose bodies meant places of battles fought during the First planet War, survived in Beskid Low. The architectural decor of these war necropolis was designed by 2 well-known architects: Austrian Hans Mayr (the chief architect of the C. and K. Military Command in Kraków) and Slovak Dusan Jurkovič, who applied elements derived from popular Carpathian construction in their projects. Among Jurkovič's most awesome works are cemeteries in Wola Cieklinski, Lusatia, Necessary, at the top of Rotunda or in the non-existent village Black. A Krakow artist with a camera went to these places to carry out a task that would aid us realize the parallel between the past and the present. An additional motive for his narration was the fact that the population of villages neighbouring these cemeteries fell victim to Operation “Wisła” – a political-military pacification action carried out between 1947 and 1950 on the initiative of the authorities of the People's Poland against the Ukrainian Insurgency Army and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists.

The Galician cemeteries of planet War I contain German inscriptions. At the top of Rotunda, for example, 1 can read the Tetrastists by Hans Hauptmann, an Austro-Hungarian army officer who reads:

Don't cry that the storm is howling over our grave,

on this lonely hill, located far from people,

Here we are closer to calling to eternity, and the sun, shining,

He throws his purple shroud on us all morning.

Bajek resigned in his Katowice installation from appeals to content expressed in pathetic German-speaking inscriptions over a century ago. In return, he chose the inspiring already for any time, equally easy, aphorisms of Franz Kafka, published respective years after the death of the author as Reflections on Sin, Suffering, Hope and the Right Way[2]. In an annex to the largest of the halls of the Wilson Glass Gallery, dedicated to the Kraków creator, clothes with the embroidered conviction of Kafka, between which were mounted on the light screens of photographs, hung. They depict Galician military necropolis in view of the Fairytale shirts with embroidered Kafka aphorisms. The photos are, in effect, documentation confirming the visit of Bajka to Beskid Low. He travelled to Jurkovič's architectural assumptions to see interesting Sepulcral objects and at the same time ponder over the destiny of thousands of human lives, which was not given individual life plans due to the fact that they were drawn into a political gameplay that proved fatal to them. Significantly, 1 of Kafka's aphorisms straight refers to the entanglements of earthly existence and represents man as a being subject to the illusion of freedom, behind which there is in fact enslavement:

He is simply a free and safe citizen of the Earth due to the fact that he is attached to a chain that is long adequate to make available to him all earthly corners, and at the same time only long adequate for nothing to pull him beyond the limits of the Earth. At the same time, however, it is besides a free and safe citizen of Heaven due to the fact that it is attached to a likewise calculated heavenly chain. So if he wants to go to Earth, he is bound for heaven’s collar, and erstwhile he wants to go to Heaven, the earth’s collar is an obstacle. Nevertheless, he has all the possibilities, and he feels it, yes, even opposes it all to be regarded as a mistake made in the first enslavement[3].

Zbigniew Bajek, “Eternal rest”

For the author of the Katowice installation, it is crucial to interpret the content accompanying the receipt of his work. On 1 of the explanation levels contained in his installation, we realize the similarity of processes that mark almost all wars, in which the lives of the individual cease to number at all and thousands of soldiers die on fronts fighting for targets, with which sometimes even they do not necessarily identify themselves. On the another hand, erstwhile we look at reality from another perspective, it may seem interesting that erstwhile we consider purely human values, humanitarian values, we halt putting the burden on the past burdened with the baggage of history, and then – free from political manipulation – we have adequate empathy to aid neighbors who have been presented to us so far as eternal enemies. We can forget about the occasional drawn from the Lamus of the Volynian Crimes, we do not shift conflicting events to younger, innocent and unconscious generations and begin to establish relationships in our surroundings based on a purely human, free from all historical animosity.

Young Catholic artist Szymon Prandzioch referred to the empathy of Poles shown to the citizens of the war-torn Ukraine in paintings exhibited in Wilson. He signaled in them the exodus of millions of Ukrainians an thought of highways with signs directing escapees from behind Bug to information points located in our country. Prandzioch's giant compositions, drawn with flamingos, however, take on a much broader context. They point out that the war that is going on next to us touches us all equally, rapidly cutting off the anticipation of moving along the road that we have chosen. The last of the series of images depicts a consecutive road that seems to encourage fast driving. However, on the sight of the ellipse are visible the arches of fire and commuters will be confronted with a situation from which there will be no exit. In fact, the war lions of fire and smoke destroying the surviving environment of our neighbours have already devoured the dreams and hopes of many people in neighbouring countries, placing on the roads they have chosen insurmountable dams.

Therefore, the reaction to the Russian-Ukrainian war in Poland is frequently anger and anger, which penetrates us profoundly due to the helplessness of the escalation of a conflict that absorbs hundreds of thousands of human lives. The Katowice Expressionist Michael insignificant decided to vent his rage, painting aggressively aggressive colour stains depicting Putin as a monster with many bloody tentacles, whose opposition is resisted present by celebrated Snake Island defenders. Among the impetuously applied stains on the canvas is simply a Cyrillic inscription indicating the Russian occupiers to which they should go...

The work of Marian Oslislo, a prof. associated with the Katowice Academy of plan Department, is in the other pole of empathy. His author is arranged in the Wilson Glass Gallery a area recalling associations with a bunker located in the rubble of a home blown up. It's empty and dark like a prison cell. The only trace of the presence of man in it is the poesy of Marianna Kyivowska written on the wall in expressively in capital letters:

The poem that I shout due to the fact that only

That's all I can do, so I do.

I do God’s work with this poem

With a poem I scratch my face in mourning...

The works of insignificant and Oslo seem to be ubiquitous present in those who, as Hannah Arendt put it, have not been affected by a condition that makes it impossible to decently structure ethical values and are alien to them is the banality of evil. Although even those who feel empathy for war victims of the fire tend to believe that war is never the right solution, they are increasingly convinced that in armed conflict there is always this side to be "kibicated" due to the fact that it represents justice. This was felt even by Albert Einstein, who always portrayed himself as a declared pacifist, but in 1933, erstwhile Hitler came to power, his pacifism proved to be a formation akin to a "limited liability company" and the scientist began to talk out loud (being a German patriot!) to appeal for intervention in the form of a declaration of war to the Germans. In turn, erstwhile the times of comparative peace had come, and it was essential to guarantee that this condition was maintained, the German-Jewish physicist again spared no energy to spread his pacifist message. Just before his death in 1955, together with Bertrand Russel, he wrote an appeal to humanity (known as Russell-Einstein Manifesto) in which he demanded unity in his efforts to accomplish permanent peace through disarmament and agreement. In the text signed yet by 11 prominent scientists, he addressed the planet leaders with the words, “Remember your humanity and forget the rest!” (“Remember your humanity, and forget the rest!”).[4].

[1]Susan Sontag, Seeing others suffer, crowd. S. Magala, Wyd. Karakter, Kraków 2010.

[2]Professor Zbigniew Bajek, who is active professionally with the Krakow Academy of Fine Arts, is the author of the task KAFKA 2024, implemented as part of the scholarship program of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage, https://projectkafka.com/index.php/about/.

[3]‘Er ist ein freier und gesicherter Bürger der Erde, denn er ist an eine Kette gelegt, die lang geneg ist, um ihm alle irdischen Räume frei zu geben, und doch nur so lang, dass nichts ihn über die Grenzen der Erde reiβen kann. Gleichzeitig aber ist er auch ein freier und gesicherter Bürger des Himmels, denn er auch an eine ähnlich berechnete Himmelskette gelegt. Will er nun auf die Erde, drosselt ihn das Halsband des Himmels, will er in den Himmel, jenes der Erde. Und trotzdem hat er alle Möglichkeiten und fühlt es, me, er weigert sich sogar, das Ganze auf einen Fehler bei der ersten Fesselung zurückzuführen’, cited for: https://projectkafka.com/index.php/aphorisms/7/, translation of the author.

[4]K. R. Ghodsee, Einstein’s Pacifism: A Conversation with Wolfram Wette, https://www.ias.edu/ideas/2015/ghodsee-einstein-pacifism.