Bernie Krause and His Sound Archives. Between Wild Nature and Embodied Relation

The paper aims to compare two natural sound archives by Bernie Krause, Wild Sanctuary (being developed since 1968) and Dawn Chorus (established in 2020), from the perspective of ecology paradigms changes that have occurred over the years. The author assumes that both of the abovementioned projects are consistent with each other in respect of the goals formulated by Krause – they are thought to affect their listeners and evoke ecological attentiveness among them – but differ in terms of their structure and presupposed strategies of enhancing human-environment entanglements. The first part of the article is dedicated to the description of analysed projects. Also, the article considerations are being positioned as the amplification of the previously published paper by Renata Tańczuk (who treated Wild Sanctuary as an Anthropocene archive). Secondly, the author investigates the visibility of the archive production process in the forms in which they were publicly shared. Afterwards, the conceptualizations of the Nature underlying both of the archives are described. Finally, the author presents the differences in the affective agencies of Wild Sanctuary and Dawn Chorus, coming to the conclusion that the latter project, not the former one, responds to the contemporary requirements imposed on the pro-environmental artistic and research activities.

Homosexual Reverse Catastrophe. The Men with the Pink Triangleand Damned Strong Love

The article offers in-depth, critical analysis of the books The Men With The Pink Triangle: The True Life-and-Death Story of Homosexuals in the Nazi Death Camps by Heinz Heger and Damned Strong Love: The True Story of Willi G. and Stefan K. by Lutz van Dijk, touching upon the topic of Nazi persecutions of homosexuals. Both texts are being presented as matrix testimonies, which not only widened the Second World War discourse by introducing the homosexual victim, but also initiated homosexual variant of what Przemysław Czapliński’s called the “reverse catastrophe”. Although concentrating precisely on male war-time experience, the texts significantly exceed the dominant, male-centered narrative pattern. By discussing the issues such as ambiguous authorship, differences between narrative strategies, brutalization of the language and the authors’ attitudes towards body, sexuality or violence, the article demonstrates—thus far seldomly considered—“catastrophic potential” of the publications. Attention is also being drawn to the fact that by virtue of their existence, homosexual war-time experience no longer has to be considered—to use Sławomir Buryła’s term—“non-verbalizable”.

The dispute betweenglobal and local in philosophy– the rise of new technologies in China according to Yuk Hui

The aim of this article is to discuss the relation between global and local in the works of certain philosophers of technology. The main focus is the concept of cosmotechnics created by Yuk Hui, a philosopher who is strongly influenced by Peter Sloterdijk and Bernard Stiegler. In the text we examine how Heidegger’s question about technology has led Sloterdijk and Stiegler to introduce their criticisms but also to build their original concepts that view the modern technology more favorably. For Yuk Hui those thinkers are a strong inspiration, however, he criticise them for being too Western-oriented and adds another contexts – the role of China as both a postcolonial state with it’s unique philosophical tradition and as a center for new technologies. Then the introduces cosmotechnics as a form of cultural a priori that is a mixture of moral and cosmological thinking resulting in a locally-specific approach to technology. It also allows him to talk about a local-global dichotomy in a new, interesting way. This however includes also some signs of a new universlaism rooting from the Chinese culture.

The truth of screen. On the practice of screenshotting

The article explores the phenomenon of the popularity of screenshots and the variety of contexts in which they are used. Screenshotting is treated as a social practice, drawing on the theory of practices, primarily Theodore Schatzki's approach. On its basis, two aspects of the creation of screenshots are highlighted: bodily-material and social framework. Analysis of both results in the description of screenshotitng as a dispersed practice and a key component of integrative practices, especially those that deal with proving the truth. Finally, those reflections lead to the postulate that screenshots should be given greater recognition in the social sciences as an important source of knowledge about everyday life on the internet.

Psychobiography- if it has to be reductionist? Lucy in the mind of Lennon as an example of a bridge between the humanities and psychology

In the article I will present Tim Kasser’s psychobiography entitled Lucy in the Mind of Lennon as an example of a non-psychoanalytical psychobiography that is multidisciplinary. Psychobiography will also be treated here as an opportunity for the humanities and psychology to come closer, and this rapprochement will be presented from the perspective of the humanities. At the same time, I would like to point out that psychobiography may come close to the assumptions of empirically oriented disciplines. In a broader context, the article also introduces the reader to the contemporary approach to psychobiography, as well as a discussion with previous ways of presenting it.

Songs: “Oral Poetry of Industrial Civilization”

The presented article poses a question about the limits of the art of lyricism, and more specifically about the methods of literary studies capturing certain specific or border phenomena that have emerged from it and gained an independent status, and the song/songs is one of such phenomena. Hence, the title of the study includes a quotation from an important work by Paul Zumthor, it is both the starting point and the thesis of the text. The thesis of the study is the judgment that songs can be called literature, provided that we clearly emphasize that they are not poetry, but oral poetry. It is a completely different entity from lyricism, it gained its own language, fully fledged in culture, it emerged from poetry, it evolved and became a new type of cultural text. The aim of the reflection is an attempt to take a closer look at this extraordinary adventure, which this evolution, and even revolution, has become, because it is the rapid expansion of rock music, the outbreak of counterculture in the second half of the 20th century, and with them – the incredible development of various types of songs. The article addresses, inter alia, the following issues: describes “helpful methodologies”, gives terminological suggestions and mentions the “technical” aspects of song studies. Selected examples of research perspectives are also given.

The article tries to answer the question of what the specificity of Morawski’s aesthetics is. I indicate that Morawski is in favour of historical-cultural relationalism, where aesthetics is practised as a philosophical discipline, whose object of cognition is aesthetic qualities and values, and in art they are reduced to artistic qualities and values which it ultimately replaces with a set of aesthetic invariants. In the concluding part I undertake a polemic with Morawski’s standpoint on reducing artistic qualities and values in art to aesthetic qualities and values and with his diagnosis of the end of art.

Metamorphosis of Aesthetics

Many aesthetic lecturers feel that the subject of their lectures is not so much aesthetics as the history of aesthetics, the aesthetic views of Plato and Aristotle, Kant and Hegel, Hume and Burke, British philosophers of taste and German romantics. Does this mean that aesthetics is nourished by its own past, nourished by reinterpretations of its classics, defends concepts and categories that no longer inspire anyone? Don’t they open up new cognitive perspectives? Does this mean that aesthetics is dead today, like Latin or Sanskrit, and that its vision of art and beauty is outdated, out of date and completely useless?

Stefan Morawski in the introduction to the anthology Twilight of Aesthetics – Alleged or Authentic? he wrote that he did not know the history of aesthetic thought that would begin in the eighteenth century with Baumgarten. Today we can meet with such an approach more and more often. Many authors assume that in the second half of the 18th century, modern aesthetics was born as a science of senses, how our higher (sight, hearing) and lower senses (taste, smell, touch) contribute to our knowledge of the world.

In the introduction to the anthology cited here, Stefan Morawski divides the history of aesthetics into four periods of unequal length. The Morawski diagram seems to be a convenient starting point for defining the changing object of aesthetics. The first of the periods distinguished by Morawski is the longest one, lasting from Ancient Greece to Enlightenment, can be called the history of aesthetic thought, the second is philosophical aesthetics, the third is a time of emancipation and institutionalization of aesthetics as autonomous discipline, and the fourth period leads beyond the limits of classical aesthetics.

Biometrics in the Art of New Media

The review is devoted to the main themes presented in the book by Ewelina Twardoch-Raś Sztuka biometryczna w perspektywie filozofii post- i transhumanizmu. W stronę estetyki postafektywnej [Biometric Art in the Perspective of the Philosophy of Post- and Transhumanism. Towards Post-affective Aesthetics]. The author emphasizes the pioneering nature of this publication on a global scale, because so far no monographic author’s study of this issue has been published. Biometric art can be included in the broad context of contemporary new media art, but its specificity is considered in this case primarily in the context of posthumanist and transhumanist philosophy and the author’s interpretation of post-affective aesthetics. The review pays particular attention to the author’s accurate recognition that biometric art is a practical step beyond the world of new media and establishing a new area of ​​post-media practice. In this case based on biomediation defined as “post-media hybridization” of biological and technological components.

The article discusses the key text of Mieczysław Porębski(1921-2012), an outstanding Polish art historian and art critic, which is vital for understanding his proposed idea of ​​creating a metacritical language that would allow description of the contemporary art world − Introduction to Metacriticism (first edition around 1966, second 1983). All Porębski's publications on this subject are mentioned in the article to obtain a full picture of this concept in the researcher's writings. The importance of creating it for critical-artistic methods is emphasized. The sources of inspiration for the idea of ​​metacriticism (including bibliographic ones) and the implementation of its assumptions in the text itself are shown, taking into account the approximate mid-twentieth century historical context of methodologies developed on the basis of structuralist reflection, especially the influence of information theory and game theory. The ways in which Porębskicame to formulate the assumptions of metacriticism are presented, also through analysis of the language itself.

The idea of ​​metacriticism is placed in the wider context of the researcher's scientific work too, linking it with his proposal to divide the history of art criticism into the so-called criticism of poets and criticism of experts, as well as the idea of ​​the iconosphere postulated by him, which proves to be a pioneering one for contemporary research on visual culture. Finally, the paper suggests that the idea of ​​metacriticism can be the beginning of the present-day style of writing about art.

Bernie Krause and His Sound Archives. Between Wild Nature and Embodied Relation

The paper aims to compare two natural sound archives by Bernie Krause, Wild Sanctuary (being developed since 1968) and Dawn Chorus (established in 2020), from the perspective of ecology paradigms changes that have occurred over the years. The author assumes that both of the abovementioned projects are consistent with each other in respect of the goals formulated by Krause – they are thought to affect their listeners and evoke ecological attentiveness among them – but differ in terms of their structure and presupposed strategies of enhancing human-environment entanglements. The first part of the article is dedicated to the description of analysed projects. Also, the article considerations are being positioned as the amplification of the previously published paper by Renata Tańczuk (who treated Wild Sanctuary as an Anthropocene archive). Secondly, the author investigates the visibility of the archive production process in the forms in which they were publicly shared. Afterwards, the conceptualizations of the Nature underlying both of the archives are described. Finally, the author presents the differences in the affective agencies of Wild Sanctuary and Dawn Chorus, coming to the conclusion that the latter project, not the former one, responds to the contemporary requirements imposed on the pro-environmental artistic and research activities.

Homosexual Reverse Catastrophe. The Men with the Pink Triangleand Damned Strong Love

The article offers in-depth, critical analysis of the books The Men With The Pink Triangle: The True Life-and-Death Story of Homosexuals in the Nazi Death Camps by Heinz Heger and Damned Strong Love: The True Story of Willi G. and Stefan K. by Lutz van Dijk, touching upon the topic of Nazi persecutions of homosexuals. Both texts are being presented as matrix testimonies, which not only widened the Second World War discourse by introducing the homosexual victim, but also initiated homosexual variant of what Przemysław Czapliński’s called the “reverse catastrophe”. Although concentrating precisely on male war-time experience, the texts significantly exceed the dominant, male-centered narrative pattern. By discussing the issues such as ambiguous authorship, differences between narrative strategies, brutalization of the language and the authors’ attitudes towards body, sexuality or violence, the article demonstrates—thus far seldomly considered—“catastrophic potential” of the publications. Attention is also being drawn to the fact that by virtue of their existence, homosexual war-time experience no longer has to be considered—to use Sławomir Buryła’s term—“non-verbalizable”.

The dispute betweenglobal and local in philosophy– the rise of new technologies in China according to Yuk Hui

The aim of this article is to discuss the relation between global and local in the works of certain philosophers of technology. The main focus is the concept of cosmotechnics created by Yuk Hui, a philosopher who is strongly influenced by Peter Sloterdijk and Bernard Stiegler. In the text we examine how Heidegger’s question about technology has led Sloterdijk and Stiegler to introduce their criticisms but also to build their original concepts that view the modern technology more favorably. For Yuk Hui those thinkers are a strong inspiration, however, he criticise them for being too Western-oriented and adds another contexts – the role of China as both a postcolonial state with it’s unique philosophical tradition and as a center for new technologies. Then the introduces cosmotechnics as a form of cultural a priori that is a mixture of moral and cosmological thinking resulting in a locally-specific approach to technology. It also allows him to talk about a local-global dichotomy in a new, interesting way. This however includes also some signs of a new universlaism rooting from the Chinese culture.

The truth of screen. On the practice of screenshotting

The article explores the phenomenon of the popularity of screenshots and the variety of contexts in which they are used. Screenshotting is treated as a social practice, drawing on the theory of practices, primarily Theodore Schatzki's approach. On its basis, two aspects of the creation of screenshots are highlighted: bodily-material and social framework. Analysis of both results in the description of screenshotitng as a dispersed practice and a key component of integrative practices, especially those that deal with proving the truth. Finally, those reflections lead to the postulate that screenshots should be given greater recognition in the social sciences as an important source of knowledge about everyday life on the internet.

Psychobiography- if it has to be reductionist? Lucy in the mind of Lennon as an example of a bridge between the humanities and psychology

In the article I will present Tim Kasser’s psychobiography entitled Lucy in the Mind of Lennon as an example of a non-psychoanalytical psychobiography that is multidisciplinary. Psychobiography will also be treated here as an opportunity for the humanities and psychology to come closer, and this rapprochement will be presented from the perspective of the humanities. At the same time, I would like to point out that psychobiography may come close to the assumptions of empirically oriented disciplines. In a broader context, the article also introduces the reader to the contemporary approach to psychobiography, as well as a discussion with previous ways of presenting it.

Songs: “Oral Poetry of Industrial Civilization”

The presented article poses a question about the limits of the art of lyricism, and more specifically about the methods of literary studies capturing certain specific or border phenomena that have emerged from it and gained an independent status, and the song/songs is one of such phenomena. Hence, the title of the study includes a quotation from an important work by Paul Zumthor, it is both the starting point and the thesis of the text. The thesis of the study is the judgment that songs can be called literature, provided that we clearly emphasize that they are not poetry, but oral poetry. It is a completely different entity from lyricism, it gained its own language, fully fledged in culture, it emerged from poetry, it evolved and became a new type of cultural text. The aim of the reflection is an attempt to take a closer look at this extraordinary adventure, which this evolution, and even revolution, has become, because it is the rapid expansion of rock music, the outbreak of counterculture in the second half of the 20th century, and with them – the incredible development of various types of songs. The article addresses, inter alia, the following issues: describes “helpful methodologies”, gives terminological suggestions and mentions the “technical” aspects of song studies. Selected examples of research perspectives are also given.

The article tries to answer the question of what the specificity of Morawski’s aesthetics is. I indicate that Morawski is in favour of historical-cultural relationalism, where aesthetics is practised as a philosophical discipline, whose object of cognition is aesthetic qualities and values, and in art they are reduced to artistic qualities and values which it ultimately replaces with a set of aesthetic invariants. In the concluding part I undertake a polemic with Morawski’s standpoint on reducing artistic qualities and values in art to aesthetic qualities and values and with his diagnosis of the end of art.

Metamorphosis of Aesthetics

Many aesthetic lecturers feel that the subject of their lectures is not so much aesthetics as the history of aesthetics, the aesthetic views of Plato and Aristotle, Kant and Hegel, Hume and Burke, British philosophers of taste and German romantics. Does this mean that aesthetics is nourished by its own past, nourished by reinterpretations of its classics, defends concepts and categories that no longer inspire anyone? Don’t they open up new cognitive perspectives? Does this mean that aesthetics is dead today, like Latin or Sanskrit, and that its vision of art and beauty is outdated, out of date and completely useless?

Stefan Morawski in the introduction to the anthology Twilight of Aesthetics – Alleged or Authentic? he wrote that he did not know the history of aesthetic thought that would begin in the eighteenth century with Baumgarten. Today we can meet with such an approach more and more often. Many authors assume that in the second half of the 18th century, modern aesthetics was born as a science of senses, how our higher (sight, hearing) and lower senses (taste, smell, touch) contribute to our knowledge of the world.

In the introduction to the anthology cited here, Stefan Morawski divides the history of aesthetics into four periods of unequal length. The Morawski diagram seems to be a convenient starting point for defining the changing object of aesthetics. The first of the periods distinguished by Morawski is the longest one, lasting from Ancient Greece to Enlightenment, can be called the history of aesthetic thought, the second is philosophical aesthetics, the third is a time of emancipation and institutionalization of aesthetics as autonomous discipline, and the fourth period leads beyond the limits of classical aesthetics.

Biometrics in the Art of New Media

The review is devoted to the main themes presented in the book by Ewelina Twardoch-Raś Sztuka biometryczna w perspektywie filozofii post- i transhumanizmu. W stronę estetyki postafektywnej [Biometric Art in the Perspective of the Philosophy of Post- and Transhumanism. Towards Post-affective Aesthetics]. The author emphasizes the pioneering nature of this publication on a global scale, because so far no monographic author’s study of this issue has been published. Biometric art can be included in the broad context of contemporary new media art, but its specificity is considered in this case primarily in the context of posthumanist and transhumanist philosophy and the author’s interpretation of post-affective aesthetics. The review pays particular attention to the author’s accurate recognition that biometric art is a practical step beyond the world of new media and establishing a new area of ​​post-media practice. In this case based on biomediation defined as “post-media hybridization” of biological and technological components.

The article discusses the key text of Mieczysław Porębski(1921-2012), an outstanding Polish art historian and art critic, which is vital for understanding his proposed idea of ​​creating a metacritical language that would allow description of the contemporary art world − Introduction to Metacriticism (first edition around 1966, second 1983). All Porębski's publications on this subject are mentioned in the article to obtain a full picture of this concept in the researcher's writings. The importance of creating it for critical-artistic methods is emphasized. The sources of inspiration for the idea of ​​metacriticism (including bibliographic ones) and the implementation of its assumptions in the text itself are shown, taking into account the approximate mid-twentieth century historical context of methodologies developed on the basis of structuralist reflection, especially the influence of information theory and game theory. The ways in which Porębskicame to formulate the assumptions of metacriticism are presented, also through analysis of the language itself.

The idea of ​​metacriticism is placed in the wider context of the researcher's scientific work too, linking it with his proposal to divide the history of art criticism into the so-called criticism of poets and criticism of experts, as well as the idea of ​​the iconosphere postulated by him, which proves to be a pioneering one for contemporary research on visual culture. Finally, the paper suggests that the idea of ​​metacriticism can be the beginning of the present-day style of writing about art.