#grzegorz kwiatkowski

[theoffingmag]

With the experience I wrote about in my new book, of the death of my first daughter, there is a moment when I realized that I did not want to die, to obliviate myself from this world, and that was a foundational realization for me because I genuinely didn’t know that about myself before. And to be clear, I don’t believe that you have to move past terrible things, or get “better,” or learn from them somehow. That kind of prescription is never my intention. I just mean that it took something cataclysmically overwhelming for me to realize my own desire to live.

Niina Pollari, from Q&A with Niina Pollari and Grzegorz Kwiatkowski

[mariacallous]

Meduza's The Beet: The artist, the shoes, and the death camp

Hello, and welcome back to The Beet! 

I’m Eilish Hart, the editor of this weekly dispatch from Meduza that brings you long-form journalism from across Central and Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. As it happens, our newsletter’s audience is just 275 subscribers shy of its next round number — and I’d love to reach that milestone before the year ends. So, please take a moment to subscribe to The Beet or, if you’re already a loyal subscriber, forward this email to a friend. Our newsletter is free, but Meduza’s reporting relies on support from readers like you, so spreading the word is a big help!

After last week’s conversation with Ukrainian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Oleksandra Matviichuk, we’re returning to our usual format with a report from Poland, courtesy of journalist James Jackson. As you may recall, James last wrote for The Beet on the eve of this fall’s Polish parliamentary election, which saw opposition parties collectively win more votes than the far-right Law and Justice Party (PiS). Having fallen far short of a parliamentary majority after eight years in power (in an election with record turnout, no less), the PiS cobbled together a doomed government that lasted all of two weeks before succumbing to a no-confidence vote on Monday. This paved the way for a new government under returning Prime Minister Donald Tusk, which had its swearing-in just yesterday. 

In the brief interregnum on Tuesday, another, far gloomier event in the Polish parliament grabbed headlines: Just before the vote of confidence in Tusk’s new government, lawmaker Grzegorz Braun — the hard-right, pro-Kremlin leader of a fringe monarchist party — disrupted the proceedings by taking a fire extinguisher to the candles on a menorah lit for Hanukkah. Braun’s fellow lawmakers roundly condemned the stunt, handing him a maximum financial penalty. The parliament’s speaker, who suspended Braun from the day’s session, also promised to report him to prosecutors. In the end, the incident only served to speed things along, as lawmakers withdrew their lingering questions for Tusk and got on with the vote. Meanwhile, a rabbi relit the menorah’s candles. 

All of this occurred while I was in the midst of the final edits for this week’s story, which is about none other than Grzegorz Kwiatkowski, a Polish poet and musician who has dedicated himself to raising awareness about his country’s Jewish history. Hailing from the northern port city of Gdańsk, Kwiatkowski has become known for his sharp criticism of Poland’s memory politics, particularly concerning the Holocaust and the thorny topic of Polish complicity. On his blog, Kwiatkowski said Tuesday’s incident in parliament was like a “big dark cloud” over Poland’s collective memory. And it’s precisely this type of cloud — one formed by hatred — that he’s been so actively working to sweep away. So, without further ado, over to James. 

Grzegorz Kwiatkowski at the site of the former Jewish ghetto in Gdańsk

BARTOSZ BAŃKA FOR THE BEET

The artist, the shoes, and the death camp

By James Jackson 

one of my forefathers must have had the gift of foresight:

I’ve only ever seen my closest in the animal light of their needs

which probably explains my isolation and loneliness

my last birthday observed in a rented bedsit

on the former Adolf Hitler Strasse in the Langhfur district

that day I took my life by turning on the gas taps

— Extract from on a hill by Grzegorz Kwiatkowski

Trudging through the soft earth of an autumnal forest, Grzegorz Kwiatkowski stops in a clearing. His trademark black jeans with gold ringmaster trim contrast against the greens and browns of the trees that rustle like the sounds of the Polish language in the wind.

Kwiatkowski is a man of many hats. He is a poet, the frontman of the post-rock band Trupa Trupa, and a critic of Poland’s memory politics.

For Kwiatkowski, this deserted spot just outside the grounds of the former Stutthof concentration camp encapsulates Poland’s complex and traumatized relationship with its past. Scattered on the forest floor and partially turned to mulch are the remains of hundreds of thousands of shoes taken from Nazi German death camps like Auschwitz.

Though Poland was a battleground for much of its history, today, the battleground is history itself. Debates about the extent of Polish collaboration in the German occupation and the Holocaust led the Law and Justice Party, which governed for the last eight years, to accuse critical historians of a “pedagogy of shame.” The courts even went so far as to prosecute scholars like Barbara Engelking and Jan Grabowski for defamation and order them to apologize for a factual inaccuracy about a long-dead mayor accused of handing over Jews to the Nazis. (The apology was later overturned on appeal.)

In 2022, the Law and Justice government demanded the equivalent of $1.3 trillion in reparations from Germany for damage done during World War II, when Poland lost 17 percent of its population — the highest proportion of any country — and saw cities like Warsaw bombed to rubble, with 85 percent of the capital destroyed.

Destruction in Gdańsk after World War II, 1945

ERICH ENGEL / ULLSTEIN BILD / GETTY IMAGES

Kwiatkowski explains that Stutthof, less than an hour’s drive from Gdańsk, was the leather repair center for all of Nazi Germany’s concentration camps in Europe. The shoes were stolen from their mostly Jewish owners — men, women, and children — and taken here to be converted into leather goods. When the Red Army liberated Stutthof in 1945, they found half a million shoes piled into mountains. These stood neglected until the 1960s, Kwiatkowski says, as Poland’s Soviet-backed communist regime suppressed much of the horror of the Holocaust from popular memory.

Established in 1962, the museum features an exhibit at the entrance with one pile of the shoes, but the rest were given a shallow burial in the forest and left to rot. “It’s the insanity of human beings,” Kwiatkowski says. He and a friend came across the decaying soles in 2015 and later told the story to the international press. After The Guardian and CBC reported on it, nothing changed. But when reporters from the German radio station Deutschlandfunk gave notice that they were coming, the museum staff reportedly panicked and had these artifacts of genocide dug up. 

The barracks at the Stutthof camp, photographed after the liberation

FLHC 20214 / ALAMY / VIDA PRESS

Two cremators at Stutthof, photographed after the liberation

COLLECTION OF THE UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM

“The museum workers were frightened and ashamed because the Germans would see it — it’s so paradoxical,” Kwiatkowski tells me, frustrated at this apparent attempt to brush history under the carpet. Unlike the museum curators, he sees confronting the crimes and neglect of history as his duty. “It’s a privilege to be a curator of this bloody past,” he says. “You can make an anti-hatred message from it: No killing, respect others.”

Later, a chance encounter at a car repair shop led him to doubt the local government’s claims that these artifacts had been disposed of respectfully. Allegedly, the local garbage dump turned away a truck carrying some of the shoes, so they burned the macabre cargo in a field next to the mechanic’s workshop. “I was very nervous and started to ask questions, but I was too curious, and then he [the mechanic] didn’t want to say more,” Kwiatkowski recounts as we drive away from Stutthof. “This is the story of Polish history.”

The shoes on display at the Stutthof Museum

BRUCE ADAMS / GETTY IMAGES

The mounds of shoes Grzegorz Kwiatkowski found in the forest near the former Stutthof camp

GRZEGORZ KWIATKOWSKI’S PERSONAL ARCHIVE

Victims and perpetrators 

The Stutthof camp isn’t just abstract for Kwiatkowski; it’s intimate. At age 16, his grandfather Józef was imprisoned there for the crime of secretly learning Polish, or for refusing to work as a forced laborer for the Germans, according to conflicting accounts from Kwiatkowski’s family members. Józef’s work was unimaginable, carting dead bodies from the camp hospital to the crematorium, a grim task he would later have to repeat while working as a forced laborer in Hamburg after Allied bombing raids.

One of Józef Kwiatkowski’s documents from the Stutthof camp

GRZEGORZ KWIATKOWSKI’S PERSONAL ARCHIVE

In the interim, he was forcibly conscripted into the Wehrmacht for a short stint, a common experience for men living near what was then the German city of Danzig. 

Years later, when visiting the Stutthof museum with his grandson, Józef “started crying and screaming,” Kwiatkowski recalls. “He was [reliving] the trauma,” the poet explains. “He affected my life in the biggest way because he was a broken, calm person.”

Kwiatkowski’s wife’s family suffered terribly, too. Many years into the couple’s marriage, his wife’s grandmother let slip that they had spent the war hiding in the forest. Initially, Kwiatkowski was confused — the German occupation was awful, but this wasn’t normal for ethnic Poles. Eventually, his wife admitted that her family was Jewish, but she had been raised to keep this quiet. “Will it help us here? No,” Kwiatkowski recalls her saying matter-of-factly, though he adds that she’s been more open about her Jewish identity in recent years.

A banner hung on a large synagogue in Danzig (Gdańsk) that reads “Come, beloved May and make us free from the Jews.” June 1939.

AUGUST DARWELL / PICTURE POST / HULTON ARCHIVE / GETTY IMAGES

Even after World War II, anti-Jewish violence in Poland continued to claim lives. In the town of Kielce in 1946, an angry mob, together with Polish soldiers and police, killed 42 Jewish refugees after a child falsely accused them of kidnapping. The massacre triggered a mass exodus of Poland’s surviving Jews, marking the first of four emigration waves during the communist era. The final outflow came as a result of an antisemitic campaign the communist authorities initiated in 1968. 

But it’s hard to talk about memory in Poland without running into contradictions, Kwiatkowski finds. “Poland has a victim complex,” he says, and the country was indeed a victim of aggression at the hands of both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. “It’s very complicated because Poland was devastated in a huge way, but on the other hand, [Law and Justice’s] historical narrative is that of a country that is only a victim and innocent.”

Nazi police and soldiers attack a Jewish man in Gdańsk after the German occupation of Poland in 1939

UNIVERSAL HISTORY ARCHIVE / UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP / GETTY IMAGES

Kwiatkowski mentions the recently beatified Ulma family as an example. Nazi German occupiers and local police summarily executed Józef Ulma, his pregnant wife Wiktoria, and their six small children in 1944, along with the eight Jews hidden in their home. “The point of the Ulma family is they were killed because [their] Polish neighbors told the Germans that they were hiding Jews,” he explains — an inconvenient fact often left out of this story of Polish Catholic heroism.

“Jewish people were shocked because the Poles were their neighbors. Many say the Poles were worse than the Germans. [Hearing this] shocked me — but they felt betrayed,” Kwiatkowski says. 

At the same time, he maintains that the main perpetrators shouldn’t be forgotten. “Germany and Austria are great at whitewashing history,” Kwiatkowski maintains, referring to the praise the two countries have received for their handling of Holocaust memory. “They did it as a nation, and they should feel bad.”

Beating the system

On top of being an outspoken critic of Poland’s nationalist memory politics, Kwiatkowski and his band Trupa Trupa provided music for director Agnieszka Holland’s award-winning film Green Border, which President Andrzej Duda and other leading government figures attacked for its depiction of Polish border guards mistreating refugees. But Kwiatkowski doesn’t want to be put in a box politically and says he supports the Law and Justice-backed demands for reparations from Germany. 

Granary Island, located on the Motława river in Gdańsk, is where the city’s Jewish ghetto once stood

BARTOSZ BAŃKA FOR THE BEET

“I don’t care about the left side or right side,” Kwiatkowski says, “The Polish political class is very corrupt, from left to right. In the 1990s, they were in one party,” he continues. “Polarization helps them. It’s a cynical game that benefits them.”

During the highly-charged campaign season for this fall’s parliamentary election, the brains behind the nationalist government, Law and Justice leader Jarosław Kaczyński, made increasingly wild statements, describing his arch-rival Donald Tusk of the center-right Civic Platform as the personification of “pure evil.” He even accused the opposition of harboring secret plans to ban Poles from mushroom picking. 

After the Civic Platform-led coalition won the elections, however, the musician’s tune changed. “I didn’t realize it would make me so happy,” Kwiatkowski tells me, praising the fact that his country had rejected nationalism and its accompanying rewriting of history. “The atmosphere after the elections is really great,” he continues. “If the new government wants to change positively and ethically and talk about [history] openly, I can use their positive attitude and build beautiful ethical works [of art].”

Of all Poland’s politicians, Kwiatkowski remains an admirer of Gdańsk’s most famous son: former dock worker and union leader Lech Wałęsa, who led the Solidarność movement to defeat communism and became Poland’s first president elected by popular vote. In recent years, Wałęsa has been mocked for his down-to-earth manner, celebrating his 80th birthday with a cake made of breaded pork cutlet and taking baths in beer. “He’s like a clown. He’s like Don Quixote,” Kwiatkowski says. “From his perspective, he was a nobody, and then he beat the communist system in Europe. It’s amazing.”

Even though he’s a father of two and now approaching his forties, there’s something similarly boyish about Kwiatkowski’s fascination with the history of his hometown, which produced such notable figures as writer Günter Grass and the country’s new prime minister, Donald Tusk. 

The Jewish cemetery in Gdańsk

BARTOSZ BAŃKA FOR THE BEET

The Red Mouse Granary building, which served as a ghetto for Gdańsk Jews

THE TIMES OF ISRAEL

The new memorial plaque on Granary Island

BARTOSZ BAŃKA FOR THE BEET

Back in Gdańsk, Kwiatkowski takes me on a tour of Jewish cemeteries that the local council demolished after the antisemitic purge in 1968; long grass has grown over what was once holy ground. A small community group now funds the maintenance of these ruins, which antisemites desecrate with tragic regularity.

As well as cheering on the change in government, Kwiatkowski is currently celebrating a rare victory in memorializing the past: Alongside local journalist Dorota Karaś, he successfully campaigned for the site of the former Red Mouse Granary — where the Nazis imprisoned local Jews before transporting them to concentration camps — to be officially commemorated. The local authorities have now installed a plaque marking the spot where “the German Nazis created a ghetto for Gdańsk Jews,” written in Hebrew, Polish, German, and English. 

But for every victory, there’s a new controversy, it seems. On Tuesday, far-right lawmaker Grzegorz Braun doused a menorah in Poland’s parliament building, lit with candles for Hanukkah, with a fire extinguisher — to near-universal condemnation. Kwiatkowski called for action in response to Braun’s antisemitic attack and promptly received an invite from Gdańsk’s mayor to take part in a Hanukkah candle-lighting ceremony at city hall alongside representatives of the local Jewish community. 

Grzegorz Kwiatkowski at the site of the former Jewish ghetto in Gdańsk

BARTOSZ BAŃKA FOR THE BEET

Primo Levi and Theodor Adorno disagreed about whether there could be poetry after Auschwitz. Perhaps it takes not just poets but also musicians, historians, and even quixotic jesters to preserve the memory of the Holocaust in the lands where it was committed. As Kwiatkowski wrote on social media after the ceremony at city hall, Gdańsk is a city that remembers. 

[goalhofer]

2024 olympics Poland roster

Archery

Wioleta Myszor (Gmina Czernichów)

Athletics

Daniel Sołtysiak (Pomorska)

Oliwer Wdowik (Rzeszów)

Albert Komański (Rzeszów)

Mateusz Borkowski (Starachowice)

Filip Rak (Opole)

Maciej Wyderka (Piekary Śląskie)

Damian Czykier (Białystok)

Krzysztof Kiljan (Łomianki)

Jakub Szymański (Warsaw)

Maher Ben Hlima (Warsaw)

Artur Brzozowski (Nisko)

Kajetan Duszyński (Siemianowice Śląskie)

Maksymilian Szwed (Łódź)

Karol Zalewski (Reszel)

Piotr Lisek (Szamotuły Srabtwo)

Robert Sobera (Wrocław)

Konrad Bukowiecki (Szczytno)

Michał Haratyk (Cieszyn)

Paweł Fajdek (Świebodzice)

Wojciech Nowicki (Białystok)

Marcin Krukowski (Warsaw)

Cyprian Mrzygłód (Gmina Domaniewice)

Dawid Wegner (Nakło Nad Notecią)

Magdalena Niemczyk (Versailles, France)

Aleksandra Formella (Gdynia)

Magdalena Stefanowicz (Bytom)

Ewa Swoboda (Żory)

Martyna Kotwiła (Radom)

Krystsina Tsimanouskaya (Warsaw)

Natalia Kaczmarek (Drezdenko)

Justyna Święty-Ersetic (Racibórz)

Anna Wielgosz (Nisko)

Klaudia Kazimierska (Włocławek)

Weronika Lizakowska (Kościerzyna)

Aleksandra Płocińska (Piaseczno)

Pia Skrzyszowska (Warsaw)

Alicja Konieczek (Zbąszyń)

Aneta Konieczek (Zbąszyń)

Kinga Królik (Pabianice)

Anastazja Kuś (Olsztyn)

Alicja Wrona-Kutrzepa (Lublin)

Aleksandra Lisowska (Braniewo)

Angelika Mach (Warsaw)

Katarzyna Zdziebło (Mielec)

Marika Popowicz-Drapała (Gniezno)

Olga Chojecka (Siedlce)

Mariya Zhodzik (Baranavichy, Belarus)

Nikola Horowska (Gmina Wolsztyn)

Klaudia Kardasz (Białystok)

Daria Zabawska (Białystok)

Malwina Kopron (Puławy)

Anita Włodarczyk (Rawicz)

Maria Andrejczyk (Suwałki)

Adrianna Sułek-Schubert (Bydgoszcz)

Basketball

Adrian Bogucki (Leszno)

Filip Matczak (Zielona Góra)

Michał Sokołowski (Warsaw)

Przemysław Zamojski (Elbląg)

Boxing

Mateusz Bereźnicki (Szczecin)

Damian Durkacz (Knurów)

Julia Szeremeta (Chełm)

Aneta Rygielska (Toruń)

Elżbieta Wójcik (Karlino)

Canoeing

Mateusz Polaczyk (Limanowa)

Grzegorz Hedwig (Nowy Sącz)

Wiktor Głazunow (Gorzów Wielkopolski)

Przemysław Korsak (Gorzów Wilkopolski)

Jakub Stepun (Trzcianka)

Katarzyna Szperkiewicz (Olsztyn)

Klaudia Zwolińska (Nowy Sącz)

Dorota Borowska (Nowy Dwór Mazowiecki)

Sylwia Szczerbińska (Białystok)

Dominika Putto (Mrągowo)

Martyna Klatt (Poznań)

Helena Wiśniewska (Bydgoszcz)

Karolina Naja (Tychy)

Anna Puławska (Mrągowo)

Adrianna Kąkol (Kraków)

Climbing

Aleksandra Kałucka (Tarnów)

Aleksandra Mirosław (Lublin)

Cycling

Stanisław Aniołkowski (Warsaw)

Michał Kwiatkowski (Chełmża)

Mateusz Rudyk (Oława)

Alan Banaszek (Warsaw)

Krzysztof Łukasik (Warsaw)

Marta Lach (Gmina Osiek)

Kata Niewiadoma (Limanowa)

Agnieszka Skalniak-Sójka (Krynica-Zdrój)

Marlena Karwacka (Sławno)

Nikola Sibiak (Darłowo)

Urszula Łoś (Pruszków)

Daria Pikulik (Darłowo)

Wiktoria Pikulik (Darłowo)

Paula Gorycka (Kraków)

Diving

Robert Łukaszewicz (Rzeszów)

Equestrian

Jan Kamiński (Milanówek)

Adam Grzegorzewski (Łódź)

Dawid Kubiak (Tomaszów Mazowiecki)

Maksymilian Wechta (Poznań)

Kata Milczarek-Jasińska (Warsaw)

Aleksandra Szulc (Łódź)

Sandra Sysojeva (Warsaw)

Gorza Korycka (Warsaw)

Robert Powała (Trzebiatów)

Wiktoria Knap (Zielona Góra)

Fencing

Jan Jurkiewicz (Toruń)

Michał Siess (Gdańsk)

Adrian Wojtkowiak (Poznań)

Andrzej Rządkowski (Wrocław)

Alicja Klasik (Rybnik)

Renata Knapik-Miazga (Tarnów)

Martyna Swatowska-Wenglarczyk (Szczecin)

Aleksandra Jarecka (Kraków)

Martyna Jelińska (Toruń)

Hanna Łyczbińska (Toruń)

Julia Walczyk-Klimaszyk (Warsaw)

Martyna Synoradzka (Poznań)

Golf

Adrian Meronk (Wrocław)

Judo

Adam Stodolski (Warsaw)

Piotr Kuczera (Rybnik)

Angelika Szymańska (Włocławek)

Beata Pacut-Kłoczko (Warsaw)

Pentathlon

Kamil Kasperczak (Warsaw)

Łukasz Gutkowski (Warsaw)

Natalia Dominiak (Warsaw)

Anna Maliszewska (Zielowna Góra)

Rowing

Fabian Barański (Włocławek)

Mateusz Biskup (Gdańsk)

Dominik Czaja (Kraków)

Mirosław Ziętarski (Golub-Dobrzyń Powiat)

Martyna Radosz (Bydgoszcz)

Katarzyna Wełna (Stanisławice)

Sailing

Maks Żakowski (Koszalin)

Michał Krasodomski (Warsaw)

Szymon Wierzbicki (Poznań)

Paweł Tarnowski (Gdynia)

Dominik Buksak (Gdynia)

Agata Barwińska (Iława)

Maja Dziarnowska (Gdańsk)

Julia Damasiewicz (Poznań)

Sandra Jankowiak (Szamotuły)

Aleksandra Melzacka (Gdynia)

Shooting

Tomasz Bartnik (Warsaw)

Maciej Kowalewicz (Olsztyn)

Aleksandra Pietruk (Białystok)

Julia Piotrowska (Gdynia)

Natalia Kochańska (Zielona Góra)

Aneta Stankiewicz (Bydgoszcz)

Klaudia Breś (Bydgoszcz)

Swimming

Piotr Woźniak (Olsztin)

Adrian Jaśkiewicz (Warsaw)

Piotr Ludwiczak (Kolobrzeg)

Jakub Majerski (Katowice)

Krzysztof Chmielewski (Warsaw)

Michał Chmielewski (Warsaw)

Ksawery Masiuk (Tarnów)

Jan Kałusowski (Łódź)

Mateusz Chowaniec (Katowice)

Dominik Dudys (Gmina Lipowa)

Bartosz Piszczorowicz (Kalisz)

Kamil Siederadzki (Siemianowice Śląskie)

Kacper Stokowski (Warsaw)

Kata Wasick (Kraków)

Kornelia Fiedkiewicz (Legnica)

Adela Piskorska (Oleśnica)

Laura Bernat (Lublin)

Dominika Sztandera (Dzierżoniów)

Zuzanna Famulok (Katowice)

Julia Maik (Kalisz)

Paulina Peda (Chorzów)

Table tennis

Miłosz Redzimski (Warsaw)

Katarzyna Węgrzyn (Warsaw)

Anna Węgrzyn (Warsaw)

Zuzanna Wielgos (Warsaw)

Natalia Bajor (Warsaw)

Tennis

Magdalena Fręch (Łódź)

Magda Linette (Poznań)

Iga Świątek (Raszyn)

Alicja Rosolska (Warsaw)

Triathlon

Roksana Słupek (Bydgoszcz)

Volleyball

Michał Bryl (Łódź)

Bartosz Łosiak (Jastrzębie-Zdrój)

Łukasz Kaczmarek (Krotoszyn)

Bartosz Kurek (Wałbrzych)

Wilfredo León (Lublin)

Aleksander Śliwka (Jawor)

Grzegorz Łomacz (Ostrołęka)

Jakub Kochanowski (Giżycko)

Kamil Semeniuk (Kędzierzyn-Koźle)

Paweł Zatorski (Łódź)

Marcin Janusz (Nowy Sącz)

Tomasz Fornal (Kraków)

Bartłomiej Bołądź (Krzyż Wielkopolski)

Norbert Huber (Brzozów)

Maria Stenzel (Kościan)

Klaudia Alagierska (Milanówek)

Agnieszka Korneluk (Poznań)

Magdalena Stysiak (Gmina Wieluń)

Martyna Łukasik (Gdańsk)

Aleksandra Szczygłowska (Elbląg)

Joanna Wołosz (Elbląg)

Martyna Czyrniańska (Krynica-Zdrój)

Malwina Smarzek (Łask)

Katarzyna Wenerska (Świecie)

Natalia Mędrzyk (Lębork)

Magdalena Jurczyk (Dukla)

Weightlifting

Weronika Zielińska-Stubińska (Biała Podlaska)

Wrestling

Zbigniew Baranowski (Białogard)

Robert Baran (Jarocin)

Arkadiusz Kułynycz (Miastko)

Anhelina Lysak (Warsaw)

Wiktoria Chołuj (Białogard)

[slaskie-portale-internetowe]

Trasa „Lata z Radiem i Telewizją Polską” – przystanek piąty: Park Śląski!

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[rallytimeofficial]

Grzyb e Kwiatkowski con MS Munaretto nel terzo round del campionato polacco

🔴 🔴 Grzyb e Kwiatkowski con MS Munaretto nel terzo round del campionato polacco

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[felinevomitus]

Lonely Hearts Club Band: an interview with Trupa Trupa's Grzegorz Kwiatkowski

Trupa Trupa by Michal Szlaga. From left: Rafał Wojczal, Wojtek Juchniewicz, Tomek Pawluczuk, Grzegorz Kwiatkowski

Ilia Rogatchevski catches up with the Polish quartet’s front man to discuss Gdansk’s tumultuous history, the films of Werner Herzog and the importance of boredom to the creative process

Trupa Trupa are an art rock band from Gdansk. Fusing elements of post-hardcore, no wave and psychedelia, the four-piece exude a restless energy that bears the hallmarks of Fugazi’s uncompromising punk ethos. Fronted by the poet Grzegorz Kwiatkowski, the band weave absurd lyrics through liquifying guitar riffs, angular bass lines and concise percussion. Repetition plays a key role in their work, as is evidenced by their playful band name, which roughly translates to a troupe of corpses.

Trupa Trupa released their first two albums Headache and Jolly New Songs, through independent labels Blue Tapes and ici d'ailleurs. Both records received international praise. In his Quietus review of the band’s debut, Wire contributor Tristan Bath called Headache ”their first moment of true greatness”.

On the 26 February the band announced that they had signed to Sub Pop, whose label head Jonathan Poneman revealed that he thinks of the band “as a thunderstorm with big gusts, explosions and torrential downpours”. He made the decision to sign them three years ago, but, he says, “it took me a long time to get it done”. Coinciding with the news, Trupa Trupa released the brand new track “Dream About”, with an accompanying video by Norwegian artist Benjamin Finger.

Ilia Rogatchevski: Congratulations on signing to Sub Pop. How did it happen?

Grzegorz Kwiatkowski: Jonathan Poneman, the boss of Sub Pop, was at our gig at OFF Festival in Katowice. He enjoyed the gig and suggested that he would like to work with us. That was six years ago. Through the years we were working hard, but we weren’t working for Sub Pop or anyone else. Of course, we were curious. We knew that it could happen.

The breaking point was when we played SXSW in 2018. The gig was in a small Irish pub. David Fricke from Rolling Stone was there and Robin Hilton from NPR. All these important people came and my amp broke. I asked the stage manager if he had something else, but he didn’t. Suddenly, one person from the audience said: “I’ve got an amp I can give you.”

In 20 minutes we played songs which should be played in 35. The fastest concert ever. We were so angry. Everything was going wrong. The bass player’s guitar stopped working. We kept on playing, but he was shouting with his guitar over his head. These journalists thought: Woah, man! What a band. They are crazy. We are lucky to have strange accidents working on our side.

Is the band a conduit for accidents, then?

We are really open to mistakes. We love absurdity and paradoxes. The band seem a bit dark, but we love to act like clowns. We just wrote many songs with our producer (Michał Kupicz), but we really don’t know if they will be accessible. Let’s see.

“Dream About”

Benjamin Finger directed the music video for your new song “Dream About”. How did that collaboration come about?

We played with him at a great gig in Cafe Oto in London and became friends. The video looks like hipster stuff from the internet, but it’s his own tapes. We love this kind of atmosphere. It’s very important for us that we are not pretending to be a professional rock band, which makes a professional video. We were afraid that Sub Pop would tell us what to do. Of course, we were wrong. They are totally open to this kind of DIY art.

In a previous interview you suggested that the “spiritual strategy of DIY” is important to the band. Can you define what you mean by that?

You can feel it inside the music that it’s not a PR project. The important thing about Trupa Trupa is that [our] albums are a bit boring. I like to be bored. Our new songs remind me of the atmosphere from Samuel Beckett. Samuel Beckett’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The time is running. We are waiting. We are observing. It’s a meditative, pessimistic thing.

Samuel Beckett’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. I like that. In the past you’ve cited The Beatles as a core influence. They were very forward thinking for their time, but are now so canonised that we no longer consider them to be experimental. With that in mind, what sets you apart from other guitar bands working today?

Bands as we are, they don’t exist, because they break up after one or two years. But we exist and are more established than ever. Quite unique, I think, is that we are very democratic in our vision. Every one of us has a strong personality. One is a painter, the second one is a graphic designer, the third a poet, the fourth a reporter and a photographer. Every one of us is trying to put his view inside of the band. It’s kind of a competition. We don’t want to [exist] for the audience. The most important thing is ourselves. I know that sounds narcissistic, but we are friends and this music comes from our friendship.

You guys are based in Gdansk. Have you always been there?

We all live in Gdansk, but not all of us were born here. Tomek Pawluczuk [drums] and Wojciech Juchniewicz [bass] came here from Białystok and Skarżysko-Kamienna, respectively, for studies at the Academy of Fine Arts. Me and Rafał Wojczal [keyboard, guitar] are friends from the same neighbourhood. This is our city and I think that it’s got some impact on us, even if we don’t want it. It’s a very special place, for sure.

What aspects of it seep into your work?

It is the history. Gdansk is connected to the Second World War, to the movement of Solidarity. For me, the place called Westerplatte – the place where the war started – was the dream place for a child. It was like a video game.

There is a mixture of many things in the air still. It’s a really horrifying place, even. For example, a few weeks ago our mayor [Paweł Adamowicz] was murdered. The whole of Poland is in big shock. Gdansk is the city of transgression. Big things are still happening here.

There is also big, great nature around us. We love these landscapes. All of us love Werner Herzog movies, for example. It’s a bit connected to the German aesthetic, I guess. On the other hand, we have our inner landscapes and stories, which are not so connected to the city.

It’s interesting that you mention Herzog. In a previous interview you said that “Jolly New Songs” was a Fitzcarraldo moment for you: the band building an opera house in the middle of the rainforest.

Brian Fitzgerald, the main character of Fitzcarraldo, is a hero for me in the same way as Don Quixote. I’d like to be someone and achieve something, but after all I’m a loser. Every day I wake up and think I will be a better man. It’s not that I would like to be the Übermensch. I would like to be a good man, but I would also like to be a good artist who is constructing his strange ideas and objects.

Listening to “Dream About”, I would compare it to another Herzog film: Lesson Of Darkness (1992), which documents the burning of the oil fields in Kuwait after the Gulf War. It’s contemplative and mellow, but very dark as well.

I think you’re right with this example. For me, the new material is the same. It’s pessimistic, naive and slow. You can hear in this song [“Dream About”] that it’s a bit broken. It’s resigned, calm. Almost every [one of our] songs pretends to be a regular song, but they’re really mantras about nothingness. They really are songs of nowhere.

Trupa Trupa will perform three dates at SXSW 2019 on 14, 15 & 16 March, as well Poznań on 26 April and Sharpe Festival, Bratislava, on 27 April.

Ilia Rogatchevski Originally published by the Wire, 26 February 2019

[fastrygajezyka]

Grzegorz Kwiatkowski

[emzeciorrr]

HYPER SCAPE from Platige Image on Vimeo.

We are pleased to present you animation which introduces an entirely new Hyper Scape universe created by Ubisoft. The animation reveals an almost 3-minute vision of the real and virtual worlds from the year 2054. Our artists have been involved in this cinematic trailer project since the very beginning, from the work on the script to setting up dynamic animation in line with the high-octane pace of the in-game action. One big focus was the creation of the hyper-realistic model for the main characters.

Client: Ubisoft Montreal Director: Bartłomiej Kik Executive Producers: Piotr Prokop Producer: Agata Bereś CG Supervisor: Bartosz Skrzypiec Art. Director: Karol Klonowski Head of CG: Bartłomiej Witulski Head of Production: Magdalena Machalica Character art director: Rafał Kidziński Production assistant: Patrycja Romanowska, Marina Sawicka, Anna Zdrojewska Department Manager: Tomasz Wróbel Team Producer: Paweł Gajda, Piotr Gochnio, Ariana Jeż, Klaudia Sordyl Production Coordinator: Dominika Gwardyńska, Marta Krasoń, Maja Kuriata, Anna Stańczak, Adrianna Użycka Storyboard: Michał Murawski Stillomatic: Katarzyna Bobel Lead Enviroment Artist: Paweł Adamajtis Sequence Lead Enviroment Artist: Robert Filipowicz Enviroment Artists: Mariusz Zastawny , Przemysław Sacharczuk, Robert Kudera , Michał Rudkowski , Nauzet Naranjo , Miguel Fonseca , Piotr Nowacki, Daniel Kłos , Oguzhan Kar, Andrzej Augustyniak, Tomasz Kawecki, Adrian Jaśkiewicz, Michał Horba, Adam Jakimiuk, Marcin Białecki, Piotr Mróz, Jarosław Mróz, Marek Mróz, Adam Zimirski, Michał Olechno, Anna Dąbrowska, Kuba Dąbrowski, Paweł Mierzyński, Jarosław Kościański, Ireneusz Jaworski Modeler: Artur Woźniak Hair Grooming Artist: Mirosław Pączkowski, Marcin Kłusek, Chris Debski, Michał Skrzypiec, Rafał Kidziński Lead Character Artist: Sebastian Lautsch Character Artists: Szymon Kaszuba, Artur Owśnicki, Klaudiusz Wesołowski, Maciek Hrynyszyn, Agnieszka Strzęp, Łukasz Kamiński, Paweł Brudniak, Artem Gansior, Filip Adamiak, Artur Woźniak Lead Asset Look Dev Artist: Piotr Nowacki Asset Look Dev Artists: Piotr Orliński, Filip Adamiak, Sebastian Deredas, Żaneta Szabat, Arya Sowti, Łukasz Lesiak, Artem Gansior, Paweł Brudniak Shot Look Dev Artists: Paweł Szklarski, Mateusz Sroka, Character FX Artists: Bartosz Miraś, Kacper Żuliński, Jakub Tyszka, Oleksandr Gorodyskyi Lead Character TD: Bartłomiej Przybylski Character TD: Olga Bieńko, Robert Chrzanowski, Mateusz Matejczyk, Rafael Vitoratti Lead Lighting Artist: Przemysław Patyk Lighting Artists: Michał Pancerz, Krzysztof Olszewski, Marcin Jóźwiak, Michał Witek Lead Compositing Artist: Łukasz Przybytek Compositing Artists: Mateusz Węglarz, Adrian Bałtowski, Dmytro Kolisnyk, Agata Wacławiak-Pączkowska, Witold Płużański, Rafał Szyc, Selim Sykut, Michał Skrzypiec, Andrzej Przydatek, Tomasz Przydatek, Seweryn Czarnecki Lead Previz Artist: Dominik Wawrzyniak Previz Artists: Zuzanna Suska, Jan Sojka, Filip Gracki, Grzegorz Mazur, Michał Kaleniecki, Anna Szustak-Borowska, Amelia Baj, Marta Wadecka, Tomasz Czubak Lead Animation Artist Sequence: Krzysztof Faliński Lead Animation Artist Sequence: Bartosz Jerczyński Animation Artists: Filip Pachucki, Robert Urban, Adam Zienowicz, Franciszek Rzepka, Błażej Andrzejewski, Oleh Ridzel, Olga Szablewicz - Psiuk Lead FX Artist: Michał Firek FX Artists: Michał Grądziel, Rafał Rumiński, Agata Cichosz, Filip Tarczewski, Michał Śledź, Jarosław Armata Lead Matte Paint Artist: Maciej Biniek Matte Paint Artists: Waldemar van Deurse, Igor Firkowski, Adam Trędowski On Line: Michał Własiuk, Karol Klonowski On Line consultant: Hubert Zegardło Grading: Piotr Sasim Conforming: Michał Własiuk CTO: Tomasz Kruszona Lead Pipeline TD: Jarosław Zawiśliński Pipeline TD: Łukasz Dąbała, Witold Duraj, Adrian Krupa, Tomasz Kurgan, Maksim Kuzubov, Sergii Nazarenko Lead Render Wrangler: Rafał Wójcikowski Render Wranglers: Kamil Boryczko, Łukasz Derda, Marcin Jóźwiak, Mateusz Mazur Head of IT: Piotr Getka IT: Jakub Dąbrowski, Krzysztof Konig, Marcin Maciejewski, Łukasz Olewniczak Audio/Video Technique - DI Support: Maciej Żak, Kamil Steć, Cezary Musiał, Piotr Dudkiewicz Motion Capture TD: Aleksander Szymkuć, Grzegorz Mazur Motion Capture Performers: Maria Ruddick, Monika Mińska, Maciej Kwiatkowski, Sławomir Kurek, Jakub Grossman Concept Artist: Krzysztof Rejek, Marcin Kowalski Motion Designer: Adam Blumert Production baby: Antonii Baja

[maceikblog]

Co się dzisiaj działo? #39 8.2.2022

Turniej ITF w Canberze: Weronika Falkowska-Naiktha Bains 6:4 4:6 4:6

Weronika Falkowska/Olivia Gadecki-Naiktha Bains/Paige Mary Hourigan 6:0 6:2

Kobiece Ashes: Australia (164/2, Meg Lanning 57, Annabel Sutherland 4/31) pokonała Anglię(163, Tammy Beaumont 50, Sophie Ecclestone 1/18) 8 wicketami

NCAA: Virgina Tech Hokies-Pittsburgh Panthers 74:47

Turniej WTA w Sankt Petersburgu: Magda Linette-Aliaksandra Sasnowicz 5:7 6:4 4:6

ICC Cricket League 2: Oman zremisował z ZEA

Turniej ITF w Grenoble: Michał Dembek/Miguel Damas-Gabriel Debru/Arthur Gea 7:5 6:7(0) 5-10

Turniej ITF w Porto: Maja Chwalińska-Quirine Lemoine 6:0 0:6 6:3

Turniej ATP w Rotterdamie: Hubert Hurkacz/Felix Auger Aliassime-Ivan Dodig/Marcelo Melo 6:4 2:6 10-7

FIFA Club World Cup: Palmeiras-Al Ahly 2:0

CEV Liga Mistrzów: OK Maribor-ZAKSA Kędzierzyn-Koźle 0:3

League Two: Carlisle-Port Vale 1:3

Igrzyska Olimpijskie w Pekinie, Dzień 4

Snowboard, slalomy równoległe:

panie

1. Ester Ledecka (CZE)

2. Daniela Ulbing (AUT)

3. Gloria Kotnik (SLO)

5. Aleksandra Król

22. Weronika Biela-Nowaczyk

24. Aleksandra Michalik

panowie

1. Benjamin Karl (AUT)

2. Tim Mastnak (SLO)

3. Victor Wild (RUS)

5. Oskar Kwiatkowski

9. Michał Nowaczyk

Biathlon, bieg indywidualny mężczyzn:

1. Quentin Fillon Maillet (FRA)

2. Anton Smolski (BLR)

3. Johannes Thignes Boe (NOR)

Grzegorz Guzik

Narciarstwo klasyczne, sprinty

panie

1. Jonna Sundling (SWE)

2. Maja Dahlqvist (SWE)

3. Jessica Diggins (USA)

39. Izabela Marcisz

50. Weronika Kaleta

panowie

1. Johannes Klaebo (NOR)

2. Federico Pellegrino (ITA)

3. Alexander Terentev (RUS)

19. Maciej Staręga

58. Kamil Bury

Saneczkarstwo, jedynki kobiet:

1. Natalie Geisenberger (GER)

2. Anna Bereiter (GER)

3. Tatyana Ivanova (RUS)

27. Klaudia Domaradzka

Hokej na lodzie kobiet:

USA-Kanada 2:4

Japonia-Czechy 3:2 po karnych

Finlandia-Rosja 5:0

Szwecja-Dania 3:1

Curling, turniej par mieszanych:

mecz o brązowy medal:

Szwecja-Wielka Brytania 9:3

mecz o złoty medal:

Włochy-Norwegia 8:5

Pozostałe konkurencje medalowe:

Narciarstwo dowolne, big air kobiet:

1. Gu Ailing Eileen (CHN)

2. Tess Ledeux (FRA)

3. Mathilde Gremaud (SUI)

Super Gigant mężczyzn:

1. Matthias Mayer (AUT)

2. Ryan Cochran-Siegle (USA)

3. Alexander Aamodt Kilde (NOR)

Łyżwiarstwo szybkie, 1500m mężczyzn:

1. Kjeld Nuis (NED)

2. Thomas Krol (NED)

3. Kim Minseok (KOR)

[theoffingmag]

I am writing about something which is too big for me — too complicated, too cruel, and too full of moral obscenities. In some way by writing, I am facing something I shouldn’t face. For me, writing about history is writing about family, and writing about family is writing about myself. Why am I this kind of person who is very optimistic and full of joy, and on the other hand afraid of human beings because of their hatred and murder potential? I don’t want to create a false theatrical stage in which I am a good observer and the world is bad — I think that this evil potential is in all of us. But when we find out about it, then it’s our moment to wake up.

Grzegorz Kwiatkowski on poetry and political psych-rock, from Q&A with Niina Pollari and Grzegorz Kwiatkowski

[suprasl]

Uroczyste poświęcenie cerkwi Zwiastowania w Monasterze Supraskim

W dniu modlitewnego wspomnienia Wszystkich Świętych, w niedzielę, 27 czerwca, w Monasterze Zwiastowania Bogurodzicy w Supraślu odbyła się wyjątkowa uroczystość. Po niemal czterdziestoletniej odbudowie poświęcona została główna świątynia monasteru – cerkiew Zwiastowania Bogurodzicy.

Uroczystościom przewodniczył Jego Eminencja Wielce Błogosławiony Sawa, metropolita warszawski i całej Polski. 

Towarzyszyli mu hierarchowie z zagranicy: metropolita włodzimierzo-wołyński i kowelski Włodzimierz (Ukraina), biskup Margweti i Ubisi Melchizedek (Gruzja), i z kraju: arcybiskup białostocki i gdański Jakub, arcybiskup wrocławski i szczeciński Jerzy, arcybiskup bielski Grzegorz, biskup łódzki i poznański Atanazy, biskup hajnowski Paweł, biskup supraski Andrzej, biskup siemiatycki Warsonofiusz, a także licznie przybyli duchowni z całej Polski.

W podniosłym wydarzeniu uczestniczyli przedstawiciele władz centralnych i lokalnych: sekretarz stanu w Kancelarii Prezydenta RP Adam Kwiatkowski reprezentujący Prezydenta RP Andrzeja Dudę, poseł do parlamentu europejskiego Krzysztof Jurgiel, poseł na Sejm RP Eugeniusz Czykwin, wojewoda podlaski Bohdan Paszkowski, marszałek województwa podlaskiego Artur Kosicki, przewodniczący Sejmiku Województwa Podlaskiego Bogusław Dębski, burmistrz Supraśla Radosław Dobrowolski, Podlaski Wojewódzki Konserwator Zabytków Małgorzata Dajnowicz, Rektor Politechniki Białostockiej prof. dr hab. Maria Kosior-Kazberuk, Rektor-Komendant Akademii Marynarki Wojennej w Gdyni komandor prof. dr hab. Tomasz Szubrycht, Dyrektor Muzeum Podlaskiego Waldemar Wilczyński, zastępca Dyrektora Regionalnej Dyrekcji Lasów Państwowych Dawid Iwaniuk, proboszcz supraskiej parafii rzymskokatolickiej ks. Andrzej Chutkowski i wielu innych przedstawicieli władz lokalnych, służb mundurowych, Lasów Państwowych, nadzoru budowlanego, świata kultury i nauki.

Już od godzin porannych wierni gromadzili się w cerkwi Zwiastowania i na monasterskim dziedzińcu, na którym ustawiony był telebim. 

Wielu z nich przybyło z różnych części kraju, dzięki zorganizowanym pielgrzymkom autokarowym. W ten sposób pielgrzymowali m.in.. wierni z Warszawy, Krakowa, Wrocławia, Poznania, Lublina i wielu miejscowości Podlasia. 

O godzinie 9. nastąpiło powitanie metropolity Sawy i przybyłych biskupów. Hierarchów witały dzieci i młodzież, starosta z radą parafialną, ojcowie i bracia monasteru. 

Następnie głos zabrał ordynariusz diecezji białostocko-gdańskiej, Jego Ekscelencja Arcybiskup Jakub, który powitał zaproszonych gości i wszystkich wiernych. Hierarcha w krótkim słowie dziękował wszystkim zaangażowanym w odbudowę świątyni, a szczególne podziękowania za podjęcie decyzji o odbudowie świątyni i opiekę nad tym niezwykłym przedsięwzięciem skierował do Jego Eminencji Metropolity Sawy. 

Po Arcybiskupie Jakubie do zebranych z arcypasterskim słowem zwrócił się Zwierzchnik Polskiego Autokefalicznego Kościoła Prawosławnego Jego Eminencja Metropolita Sawa.

– Długo czekaliśmy na tę historyczną chwilę – mówił w swoim przemówieniu Hierarcha – Głęboko wierzę, że dziś nikt nie pozostaje obojętny wobec wydarzenia, które stało się świętem naszej Cerkwi, Której pełnia uczestniczy w dzisiejszej uroczystości. O ile każda świątynia oddziałuje na społeczeństwo, jest potrzebna i wznosimy ją z radością, o tyle w tej kryje się historia i dusza Prawosławia. Odbudujemy ją ku pokrzepieniu serc i jako pomnik dla przyszłości i jako świadectwo przeszłości naszych ojców, matek, braci i sióstr. Dlatego też od pierwszych dni swojej służby arcypasterskiej w diecezji białostocko – gdańskiej zwróciłem uwagę na konieczność odbudowy świątyni Zwiastowania Najświętszej Marii Panny, uzmysłowiając niepowetowaną szkodę jaką był brak tej świątyni.

Eminencja szczegółowo wspominał dzieje odbudowy cerkwi od roku 1981, kiedy to został arcybiskupem białostockim i gdańskim. Podkreślił: – Monaster supraski przez całą swoją działalność zasłużył się nie tylko dla Prawosławia, ale i dla kultury narodowej. W latach największego rozkwitu stał się posiadaczem cennych rękopisów, pamiątek kultury i sztuki słowiańskiej. Był miejscem pobytu i pracy wielu wybitnych ikonografów, architektów i pisarzy.

Swoje słowo metropolita Sawa zakończył podziękowaniami skierowanymi do osób, które przyczyniły się do odbudowania głównej świątyni Bogurodzicy.

Po przemówieniach hierarchów, rozpoczął się obrzęd poświęcenia cerkwi, którego główna część sprawowana była w części ołtarzowej. 

Na zakończenie z pobliskiej świątyni św. Jana Teologa do nowo poświęconego ołtarza przyniesiona została cząstka świętych relikwii, po czym sprawowana była pierwsza Święta Liturgia. 

W jej trakcie zanoszono modlitwy za żyjących i zmarłych budowniczych i ofiarodawców głównej cerkwi supraskiego monasteru. 

Minister Adam Kwiatkowski odczytał następnie list Prezydenta RP Andrzeja Dudy skierowany do uczestników uroczystości. 

Prezydent napisał: – Z radością przyjąłem wiadomość o tym, że Ławra Supraska odzyskuje swój centralny, najważniejszy obiekt, czyli historyczną cerkiew główną. (...) Siedemdziesiąt siedem lat temu miał miejsce szczególnie dramatyczny epizod w ponad pięćsetletniej historii klasztoru. Wycofujące się wojska niemieckie, wypędziwszy mnichów wysadziły w powietrze świątynię, której piękno, okazałość oraz czczone tutaj ikony zaliczane przez wieki do prawdziwych skarbów polskiego prawosławia. (...) Dzisiaj jednak wpisany w naszą chrześcijańską wiarę triumf życia nad śmiercią i dobra nad złem staje się, ustępując żalowi i cierpieniu, źródłem radości i wdzięczności. Uroczystość ta ma bowiem istotny wymiar symboliczny. Jest świadectwem duchowego odrodzenia i materialnego wzrostu Polskiego Autokefalicznego Kościoła Prawosławnego – chrześcijańskiej wspólnoty wiary i wartości, której liczni wierni wspaniale służyli i nadal służą Rzeczypospolitej, budując jej pomyślną przyszłość oraz powiększając jej dobra duchowe.

Minister Kwiatkowski przekazał w imieniu Prezydenta RP w darze Monasterowi Supraskiemu łampadę.

Następnie głos zabrali: wojewoda podlaski Bohdan Paszkowski, marszałek województwa podlaskiego Artur Kosicki, poseł do parlamentu europejskiego Krzysztof Jurgiel, burmistrz Supraśla Radosław Dobrowolski oraz zastępca Dyrektora Regionalnej Dyrekcji Lasów Państwowych w Białymstoku Dawid Iwaniuk. 

Wszyscy niemal jednogłośnie podkreślali wagę wydarzenia jakim jest ukończenie odbudowy i poświęcenie cerkwi Zwiastowania Bogurodzicy. Gratulowali wszystkim, którzy przyczynili się do tego dzieła. Burmistrz Supraśla przekazał w darze pokaźnych rozmiarów reprodukcję Supraskiej Ikony Bogurodzicy.

Do zgromadzonych zwrócili się także hierarchowie przybyli z zagranicy. Podkreślali oni swoją wielkość radość z możliwości uczestnictwa w tak ważnym dla polskiego prawosławia wydarzeniu.

Na zakończenie, głos zabrał namiestnik Monasteru Supraskiego, biskup Andrzej, który podziękował metropolicie, przybyłym hierarchom i gościom za udział w uroczystościach. Zaznaczył, że odbudowa cerkwi jest cudem, który świadczy o uwielbieniu przez Boga pobożności wiernych trwających w świętej wierze prawosławnej. Na ręce metropolity Sawy przekazał w darze insygnia zwierzchnika Cerkwi – dwa enkolpiony (panagije) i krzyż.

Uroczystości w Supraskiej Ławrze, zakończył posiłek przygotowany przez braci monasteru przy współpracy z siestryczestwem i bractwem młodzieży.

Cerkiew Zwiastowania to obiekt szczególny z punktu widzenia duchowego i artystycznego. To ewenement w historii architektury. Ogniskuje się w nim dorobek dziejowy wielu narodów słowiańskich, zbiega się wiele tradycji i wpływów. Oryginalność architektury cerkwi Zwiastowania polega na połączeniu w budownictwie cerkiewnym gotyckiego i bizantyjskiego stylu. Konstrukcja cerkwi przypomina świątynie obronne Mądrości Bożej w Połocku, Synkowiczach i Małomożejkowie. Powstała w latach 1503-1511. Jej ściany pokryły freski autorstwa mnicha Nektariusza z Serbii. Świątynia została wysadzona przez wojska hitlerowskie w 1944 r. Od roku 1984 trwała jej wieloletnia odbudowa zakończona w roku bieżącym.

Tekst. ihumen Pantelejmon (Karczewski), Michał Gołub Fot. hieromnich Serafim, Sławomir Kiryluk, Aleksandra Jarosławska, Wojciech Stasiewicz

[zyciestolicy]

Trudna sytuacja przed środowym meczem - dwóch piłkarzy reprezentacji Polski ma koronawirusa!

Trudna sytuacja przed środowym meczem – dwóch piłkarzy reprezentacji Polski ma koronawirusa!

Dwóch piłkarzy reprezentacji Polski – Grzegorz Krychowiak i Kamil Piątkowski są zakażeni koronawirusem. Członkowie sztabu szkoleniowego z wyjątkiem Kwiatkowskiego uzyskali negatywne wyniki. We wtorek rano Jakub Kwiatkowski poinformował o pozytywnych wynikach testu dwóch piłkarzy reprezentacji Polski: Grzegorza Krychowiaka i Kamila Piątkowskiego. Jednocześnie rzecznik kadry dodał, że on sam…

[whileiamdying]

The Tiny Desk is working from home for the foreseeable future. Introducing NPR Music's Tiny Desk (home) concerts, bringing you performances from across the country and the world. It's the same spirit — stripped-down sets, an intimate setting — just a different space. SET LIST "Another Day" "Dream About" "None of Us" MUSICIANS Grzegorz Kwiatkowski: vocals, guitar; Wociech Juchniewicz: vocals, bass, guitar; Tomasz Pawluczuk: drums; Rafał Wojczal: keys, guitar, ondes Martenot CREDITS Audio by: Michał Kupicz; Producer: Bob Boilen; Audio Mastering Engineer: Josh Rogosin; Video Producer: Morgan Noelle Smith; Associate Producer: Bobby Carter; Executive Producer: Lauren Onkey; Senior VP, Programming: Anya Grundmann

[paullev]

Agnieszka Stecko-Żukowska speaks to Paul Levinson about the impact on Poland of the Russian invasion of Ukraine

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 296, in which I interview Polish social media researcher Agnieszka Stecko-Żukowska about the impact on the Russian invasion of Ukraine on her family, her studies, and her country.

Video of this interview is here.

Previous interviews about the impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine:

with Polish poet and member of the bank Trupa Trupa, Grzegorz Kwiatkowski

with Ukrainian writer Katia Iakovlenko

  Check out this episode!

[yakunitatanai-shin]

Autor II

kiedy żyłem w lesie malowałem lasy

kiedy żyłem nad brzegiem angielskich jezior malowałem słońca chowające się w jeziorach Little Tarn i Windermere

teraz żyję między wami i jedyne co udaje mi się malować to śmierć

tak jest w istocie: waszą istotą jest przede wszystkim umieranie nieustające spalanie nawet po rozpadzie ciała bezlitosne poniżające

—  ”Osłabić” Grzegorz Kwiatkowski  

[bluetapes]

New interview with Trupa Trupa on at The Quietus!

It’s been something of a long slog for me this week – a new job, packing up and moving out of the one-bed rising-damp-and-arsehole-neighbours flat I lived in in South London for four years and moving into a new place in the dark heart of Nottinghamshire, all with a mewling three month old girl in tow. This isn’t me complaining – it’s all context. Because when I finally get hold of Grzegorz Kwiatkowski, member of Polish post-punk-no-wave-psych-rock malcontents Trupa Trupa, I am heavily laid down with mucus and medication, rundown and broken. We have been trying to get our planets to align for a couple weeks. I expect frustration, anger, disdain, contempt. Instead, I get gracious civility. “This is the most important year of your life, no? So you need to take your time to make sure your baby grows up to be the best she can be.”

A tenuous analogy here (and one I’m sure my daughter won’t especially enjoy when she gets older) but Kwiatkowski and the other members of Trupa Trupa - Tomek Pawluczuk (drums), Wojtek Juchniewicz (voc, guitar) and Rafał Wojczal (keys, guitar) - must feel the same. The four-piece have spent five years crafting an aesthetic that spans genres and eras, from Sonic Nurse-era Sonic Youth to an electrified and frothing Pere Ubu, an esoteric Slint or a Lynchian take on Siouxsie & The Banshees, which culminated in the critically acclaimed second album Headache in 2015.

That album, pushed out into the world by the normally avant garde/ electronic/ noise/ ambient trail-blazers Blue Tapes, was an immediate slice of melted influence and frayed synapses, traipsing manically from 60s rock deconstructions to post-punk pealings and no-wave wrecking balls, all tied together with intelligence and brio. It was a truly breathtaking album as notable for its breaths as for its blusters, and the world (well, the chosen few) held its collective breath to see what would be borne forth next.

Yet as any creative tends to look at their work as something of a birth and Jolly New Songs (also through Blue Tapes) has been gestating for quite some time, almost two years, the excitement and anxiety and relief that comes with such labours of love lie heavy on Kwiatkowski as its birthday looms – October 27.

Grzegorz Kwiatkowski: We liked Headache and we still like Headache, so we are not so arrogant or self-assured enough to believe that anything that came afterwards would live up to it. There was so much positive feedback for Headache, so it was a joyful time for us. That said we were very tired because there was so much that came along surrounding that nice feedback, a lot more than we ever expected, and it was great but it really took it out of us. We started to write new songs, then one year exactly after the premiere of Headache we said to each other, “Are we ready for another baby? Another Headache?” We respect the Headache baby but we felt it was too exploited in a way. So this time we tested this new album on many people first, on our friends and journalists, people at festivals, as because it is part of us it is difficult to see if we were making Headache part two. We see us as evolutionary, not revolutionary. We didn’t want to change outright – but we wanted to step forward, evolve.

Jolly New Songs could take on many different meanings as a title. The phrase itself could be seen as jocular, even pantomime-esque, certainly here in the UK anyway, and yet it’s something of a misnomer as many of the tracks on here aren’t joyful at all. How then do you think that phrase encapsulates what’s happening on the album?

GK: In the past we have always had problems giving names to our albums, mainly because we find that things could mean different things to each of us. So we refused to name them – our first EP is called EP, our first album is just called LP. Our second album was called ++ or Cross Crossbecause it was the (image on the) cover. When Headache arrived we couldn’t see how we couldn’t give it a name, so came up with a new challenge – whatever we all thought was the best track would become the name of the album. So with Jolly New Songs it wasn’t anything intentional. On the other hand we often have done things unconsciously without considering the step, so it has transformed into something else. Not only is it paradoxical – it isn’t jolly at all, but sad – but it is somewhat lighter an album that Headache is, as those songs carried a lot of darkness.

Can you elaborate on the darkness of the songs? Is it in the composition, the rhythm…

GK: Some of the songs we see as march songs. ‘Never Forget’ obviously. ‘Jolly New Song’ also. There is this movement we really like, Franz Schubert’s Lieder Winterreise (Winter Journey), very short German songs, and I thought aspects of the songs on the album have this aspect of fighting, yet in the same way full of energy and full of joy.

There is a clear disparity between the albums on the first listen; with Headache there was this restless sense of urgency, something that has somewhat been laid aside on Jolly New Songs. Yet nothing is truly joyous or indeed clear-cut on the new album, which undercuts any sense of immediacy. Headache really hits you sonically, a kinetic blast, while this one is far more insidious that gets under the skin. Was that part of that evolutionary process, to take what was successful with Headache and juxtapose it with more subtle, dissimilar methods? It is imbued with unease, therefore making it difficult to describe the journey it takes you on.

GK: While we were testing this new material on everyone – friends, family, musicians, journalists, owners of labels – it isn’t common that 95% of the feedback is the same, yet with Jolly New Songseveryone says that there wasn’t the aggression that was in the last one, that you needed to listen two, three times, maybe even four times, to truly get it. But not because it was hard to understand but because there is an atmosphere built into the songs that is hard to describe, and it lingers. Conclusions change about the album the more it is listened to. But strangely we as members faced the same problem. In the past making a track listing has been really easy, it falls into place. With this, every member envisioned the track listing in a different way. The songs lend themselves to interpretation far more than Headache does or even could. There is this book by Julio Cortazar, an Argentinean writer who lived in France, where you could read it in any order you want (Hopscotch) . So to settle it for the album, we chose the track listing in alphabetical order. So the listener can see that. But really our producer (Michał Kupicz) sent us the masters in alphabetical order and that spoke to us in another way, to choose the order as accident. A very strange compromise but we were satisfied. This shows that it is a strange album, and we respect it, but of course are really open to other voices (to interpret it).

Some of the songs feel quite nebulous; not that they are half-formed, more like a spectre or ghost, haunting the listener. Songs seem to be getting going, building, exploding, and then they are gone again. Yet the next song starts and the whisper of the last doesn’t leave you, your mind is still processing what has happened beforehand.

GK: I think that most things that happen in the band come through accidents. We promise ourselves never to be bored at rehearsals and to be satisfied with that. I think we are testing many things all of the time, so nothing becomes fixed in place, we are always shifting. There are four members of Trupa Trupa but it is really rare in the band that there is a fully democratic idea from the band. For us we see ourselves something like Fugazi, where every member is a composer, every member has a distinct voice, every member is author and owner of their lyrics. Every member has particular tastes and listens to different kinds of music. For me, the most important music is the classical style of music you know, Glenn Gould, as well as the Beatles and the Velvet Underground. For Wotjek who also is singing it is the Swans, Fugazi, Sonic Youth, more the New York avant garde scene. Rafal (guitar) is more a fan of Elliott Smith… So when we meet each other, we never have time to make one proper vision, so we are carrying these backgrounds with us. Maybe that is why what we are catching is very strange. We can come together with a song but it is just the body, like architecture, like sketches. We build from the musical blocks that we have.

It is such a diverse melting pot musically, but you are also well steeped in things literary seeing as you are a recognised and published poet. In the press notes it’s stated that Walt Whitman was an influence on the last song on the album, ‘To Me’. Were there other literary or political influences that helped with the building of these songs from architectural sketches to Jolly New Songs?

GK: There are many paths taken, and can be taken, through the lyrics of this record. They come often from very dark and very pessimistic situations, and the people of Gdansk where we are from. It is in the north of Poland by the sea and is best known because the Second World War started here. On the other hand the solidarity that came about for the people of Gdansk informs it as well. On the other hand one of the world’s greatest pessimists in Arthur Schopenhauer was born here. These are all influences without even thinking about them. And for many years, centuries, Gdansk was not part of Poland but more of a free city, a port, with these shipyards, a gateway to the world, something like Hamburg or Liverpool. So Gdansk has always had a history of spreading new ideas. But there are many other influences on this album, most of which take things at a dark angle. ‘Never Forget’ – there are not many songs about the Holocaust and Shoah. My grandfather was a prisoner in a concentration camp not far from Gdansk, and many Polish people were in or have direct relationships with people who were in concentration camps. Poland is the site of the world’s biggest genocide. On the other hand my grandfather was also a German soldier in Wehrmacht, so there are very complicated histories here and they leave impressions on us, they mark us. But again, these are just songs. I would like people just as much to treat the songs just as songs. I don’t like to talk at length about famous artists or events in history because it may inform me and what I do but it may make a song into a situation that can only come at in a particular way or with a particular idea in mind.

Even if you divorce the songs from these totemic influences, the sonic palette you have created is not so discerning that anyone will be led down the same aural path. The genre staples – post punk, psych rock, noise rock, the avant-garde, the influences you have mentioned already – can lead to very different interpretations. Christian Eede, from tQ, reviewed ‘To Me’ and described it as “triumphant”, and the presser from Blue Tapes & X-Ray Records describes elements as “anthemic” – and outside the slipstream of the album perhaps it is. But for me the album subverts those mainstream signifiers to the point where ‘To Me’ comes across more as a sly counterpoint to what we would expect crossover songs to be…

GK: See, it is what you want it to be (laughs). The word anthemic – what does it mean? To me I don’t – is it religious? A national anthem? ‘To Me’ could be powerful, and I don’t want to say it isn’t, but to me it isn’t. Others have compared us to psychedelic music and no-wave, or mentioned bands like Swans, Shellac, Slint, Beak>… Nothing we do is conventional, like a rock song structure, which is what I think of as anthemic. But then what do I know?

You write the songs!

GK: It’s not what I think, I think we are a deconstructive rock situation. But people hear what they hear.

Very pragmatic of you! Well let me tell you how I listened to this album. You sent me a couple different versions of Jolly New Songs quite a few months ago now, so I have listened to it often. So the final listing has been somewhat disorienting to me, because after the dark journey that you take me on, ending with ‘To Me’ – I can’t work out if it’s a tip of the hat to hope, or if it’s more of a brainwashed downer denouement, something Orwell or Bradbury or Levin would concoct, like Rosemary’s Baby (which incidentally I watched on mute while listening to this album a couple months ago), where such a landscape of murkiness and uncertainty breaks you down in a sort of “if you can’t beat them, join them” kinda way. I can’t shake the unnerving feeling that, in the context of the album, having these moments of pop lightness only serves to subvert notions of hope, a sucker punch ending to a dystopian story where the protagonist hasn’t broken free at all but is very much a cog in the machine. Now I may be in a totally unique position in how the album makes me feel, but that unsettling nature makes me return the needle to the beginning. That sort of grotesque emotion and the Self, it’s unnerving yet utterly transfixing.

GK: Yes! To be truthful I have been pushing for such a hypothetical outlook (in the music) because ‘To Me’ becomes a sly wink, a slap to the audience to wake up, you’re wrong, there is something else going on here. Michael Haneke, a great Austrian film director, for me the album is positioned in this downward position so that the ending comes out like a Haneke film. It could be seen as one thing, but hopefully it can be seen as a perverse version of something more conventional. You mention Rosemary’s Baby and to me this is very much a movie album. ‘Love Supreme’ for example is very much similar to Roman Polanski, offering sound for a creepy horror movie. It’s cinematic in a very graphic sort of way.

I have been really floored by this album, but it is one that has crept up on me, like the best paranoid slowburn horrors of Haneke, Polanski and even Ti West of recent times, a subliminal listen. It feels like a slanted way to appreciate an album…

GK: As band members we had really similar reactions to how the music was coming about. We were coming up with ‘Only Good Weather’ and we looked at each other and said, “What the fuck? What are we singing, what are we playing? It’s stupid!” But we felt there was something to it, so we kept it. And then we came up to the second part of the song, the disaster part, and we were even surer that there was something to this, even if we didn’t know what ‘this’ was. Which made us happy because it isn’t easy to make not obvious guitar based psychedelic music anymore. What we have ended up with on Jolly New Songs are songs that are kinda traditional, but on the other hand are soundtrack songs, on the other hand they are like ‘Never Forget’ with this strong story about a death camp, on the other hand they are ghost songs for a kitschy horror film. I know I shouldn’t be so positive about the songs because I cannot be objective, but I can say we liked it but we were really interested in what everyone else’s reactions would be, in the way the songs kinda freaked us out also.