I had a comprehensive publication that reminded me of events that I regret 9 years ago. At the time, Wrocław was the European Capital of Culture and I could not believe how completely this chance could be wasted. How can you spend a mountain of money and about the first achievements of Poland and the capital of Lower Silesia tell the planet – almost nothing.
Counting respective hundred, which is meaningful – in most unprinted pages volume “Space for Beauty. In action” is simply a strong proof of the past defeat. Yes, I took the chance to experience Enio Morricone or David Gilmour concerts at the time, but should it be an event to advance the heritage of a city distinguished by dignity – the European Capital of Culture?
This award was celebrated for a year, hence the publication on this subject takes the form of a calendar informing about what the European Capital of Culture boasted of each of 366 (because 2016 was a leap year) days. Fortunately, there were besides tiny series of concerts under the motto "Thousand of years of music in Wrocław" or the exhibition "Architecture of the 20th Century in Wrocław", but all of this kind was a drop in the sea of events without a single connection not only with the city, but besides with Poland or even – Europe. So it's like, for example, it's a
part of the “European Capital” Festival of nipponese Combat Arts. The overwhelming majority of events were connected with operas by Georg Bizet (if already opera in the Polish city, why not Moniuszko?), architects from Germany (as if there were no Polish), Czech movie (although a large part of Polish was created in Wrocław) or singing in Yiddish (the fact is that it is in this language that we sing most frequently in our city?).
The European Capital of Culture events specified as "I am European – the function of the European Parliament in my life" attest to the “European” nature of the European Union. It is as if in the cultural life of Poles, and in peculiar the Wrocławs, specified a marginal denial of everything European, like the Brussels-Strasbourg facade of fictional law and even more fictional democracy, played an highly crucial role. This is no longer Europeanism, it is the eventual jest – from the Europeanness. However, looking at events related to Wrocław, 1 can get the impression that what the organizers intended on behalf of the city was expected to be universal and bottom-up cultural life initiatives. This may have been interesting, but fictional to a degree no little than the celebrated Patiomkinian villages. Invented for the needs of events ended with its end.
Perhaps investment specified as the National Music Forum or the modernization of the Capitol Theatre is simply a real benefit of the European Capital of Culture. But it is truly painful to remember what the most apparent of all could then show and what he could gain. For immense money has been spent. And if you have funds that big, then no art is to enter into contracts with Italian, French or British artists. And absolutely all the remainder can already be done by these agencies, which in Wrocław have been doing large for decades organizing smaller, larger and immense events. It is these agencies, which put up dreamy and mobile audiences all year, agencies with crews equipped with lighting, sound system, scenography, hostesses, logistics, safety specialists and absolutely everything that could be needed.
I reviewed the book containing a list of everything that happened in Wrocław as the European Capital of Culture. The reasons for most of these events – I find it questionable. But real pain is caused by the awareness of what is most apparent and what has not happened. I will mention just a fewer examples of what is missing – it is simply a truly large sin. The first fact – an independent publishing movement was created in Wrocław under conspiracy conditions in the 1980s. Although pursued by all communist services and not only Polish, he issued almost 500 press titles. Despite arrests and prisons, they were frequently newspapers appearing regularly in tens of thousands of copies, for respective or even respective years, up to the numbers of 2 hundred, 3 100 and even higher. Similarly, an independent radiophone that, despite colossal operations to destruct it, broadcast over 600 broadcasts, utilizing respective twelve transmitters, involving hundreds of fearless creators. In addition, hundreds of books, “flying” universities, underground music, literary, scientific, theatrical... The scale of all this was the largest in the planet in Wrocław. Greater than outside Poland – throughout the russian empire from Cuba and Elbe to Sakhalin and Kuryle. Isn't that what should be included in the programme of the European Capital of Culture as what has been done in this city? And at the same time what was never known outside Polish borders? As something absolutely unique, original, unique, to the highest degree possible!
Example 2 – in 1975 the largest and most crucial festival in the past of the planet theatre took place in Wrocław. I was just over eleven years old at the time, but I besides remember the unusualness and scale of those events. And why did it happen at that time that absolutely all people who truly substance in the planet theatre – just came to Wrocław? That's due to the fact that Wrocław was the number 1 place in the world's theatrical life! due to the fact that it was in Wrocław that Tomaszewski's ensembles and, above all, Grotowski's. And then Wrocław was a real mecca of people of the theatre with absolutely all (except only Antarctica) continents. For years I have been calling for the creation of a centre in Wrocław, where multimedia techniques would play performances of the laboratory Theatre. present is no longer a method problem. We have museums in Poland, specified as those located under the Krakow marketplace Square. And there are communication devices in usage that make the individual on the another side of the planet as if they "materialize" standing in front of us and conducting a conversation with us. The same method could be utilized to reproduce the performances "Apocalipsis cum figris", "Siacuntala", "The Tragic past of Dr. Faustus", "The steadfast Prince" and another filmed many times, due to the fact that virtually everywhere "theater planet on its knees". Isn't that what Wrocław should show as the Cultural Capital of Europe? Shouldn't specified a centre be able to make more on this occasion?
What did we have instead? The book containing a nine-year-old program leaves no uncertainty that, being the European Capital of Culture, Wrocław has shown itself as a centre of what is dramatically secondary, embarrassingly ordinary, absolutely everyone known from tens of thousands of another places. Wrocław showed itself as presenting what was abroad to Wrocław and Poland, what was simply not ours, what was seemingly grey, ordinary, played and boring. And almost nothing of what is most crucial – on this absolutely exceptional occasion Wrocław did not show at all. More than sad. This is very painful – sad ...
Artur Adamski
