The life among ruins is a well-known motif in the Polish urban, architectural and historical studies. The ruination, as a leit-motif, reappears now in a different setting – it is anymore connected solely to traditional heritage studies, but it stands as a real threat and challenge resulting from the Anthropocene condition. In this paper, the idea is to discuss the phenomenon of an intensified ruination as a sign of our, Anthropocene time, and further to confront it with a concurring concept of the Capitalocene and its meaning for critical heritage studies. While the first concept of the Anthropocene redirects our attention to new materialism, vitality and biological agency of material, cultural heritage, the other suggests a different approach and implications for heritage. The discussion on heritage in the Anthropocene and the Capitalocene will be illustrated by Alfred Seiland’s photographic series “Imperium Romanum”. 

Inverted Zoopolis. Companion Animals in the Warsaw Ghetto

The article, which uses inter-species theories of the city, is an attempt at studying presence of animals in the Warsaw ghetto during the Second World War, a space which redefined not only the human condition, but also conditions of animals. In the situation where animal companionship is radically limited under ghetto conditions, where the status of prewar ordinary life becomes problematic, a conceptualization of this radical shift becomes necessary. The article is an analysis of the relation between people and companion animals, mainly dogs, which have been shown in the context of ordinary and seemingly insignificant matters, such as walking through the streets of a closed district, but also such events as hiding in bunkers or the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. The issue of the relationship between people and animals in the space of isolation is an important category through the prism of which we can look at the dynamics of change and degradation of the existing cultural norms towards animals. This approach made it possible to see the relationship between animals and the Holocaust and to better understand the everyday life of the Warsaw Ghetto in the face of limit experiences. Paying attention to animals, which haven’t until now been given a place in traditional historical narratives, allows asking new questions and noticing new problems.  

Memory’s Atmospheres – à propos Survivors’ Park in Łódź

Our article concerns the Survivors’ Park in Łódź. It is located in the Litzmannstadt Ghetto area and is meant to commemorate people who had passed through it. We are interested in how the Survivors’ Park can be a site of memory. We try to show that the park plays such a role through the atmosphere it emanates. Referring to Gernot Böhme’s philosophy, we assume that atmospheres are not a condition of subjects, but are connected with the materiality of elements that make up a park, such as plants or buildings, and its moving contexts, such as other sites of memory or a district of a contemporary city. We also point out that in order to experience the Survivors’ Park as a memorial site, one should decide to travel through the Bałuty district of Łódź and the park area itself.

Sensory Garden as a Place of Affective Coexistence of Human and Non-Human Subjects in a City

The article analyzes the idea of a sensory garden as a place of symbiotic affective coexistence of human and non-human subjects in urban space, based on the concept presented in the study of green areas belonging to the “Zachęta” Housing Cooperative in Białystok prepared in 2018 by a team from the Białystok University of Technology. The article tries to answer the question of how the sensory garden becomes a space inviting to build affective connections between the entities that co-create it, and whether this reveals its potential leading to the blurring the boundaries between oppositional categories of “nature” – “culture”, “subject” – “object”. The authors note that the concepts of critical posthumanism appreciating the affective relationships between human and non- human actors, as well as non-humans going beyond the functional framework created by human, resonate in the idea of the sensory garden presented in the study. The sensory garden becomes a productivity sphere appreciating the value of the multi-sensory experience of the world, in which humans and non-humans find countless, often non-obvious ways of interacting with each other. 

Seascapes

This article is an attempt to develop a posthumanist reflection on port cities. The prevailing division into the water and land part of these cities implies many inequalities in the perception and treatment of both these areas and their inhabitants. On the other hand, the experience of port communities reported in books and articles seems to be embedded in the port as one place, without the need to divide it into water and land. The spatial development of these cities also confirms the small legitimacy of such a distinction. So could ports become places of “one life”? How could we equalize the rights of their human and non-human inhabitants? I am looking for answers to these questions in this text. 

The article provides an insight into the status of urban wild boars and their relationship with human neighbours, focusing on the spaces of conflict. The population of wild boars in Gdynia, Poland, serves as the point of departure for the study, which employs interviews with the local community, observations and discourse analysis of the local news portals. The article uses Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing’s concept of ferality as the framework for looking at the transformations undergone by the wild boars in the process of becoming city dwellers and considers Donna Haraway’s making kin as the possibility of multispecies “getting on well”. Demonstrating the impossibility of simple solutions, the text further looks at the problematic notion of management, to propose a rethinking of the concept through care and attention as a possible path to conviviality.

Warsaw in Flowers – Non-Human Dwellers of Balconies

The author analyses the significance of plants cultivated on balconies for thinking about urban green spaces. Balcony gardens are presented as spaces where plants are arranged and cultivated by individuals on a daily basis in a mainly unprofessional way. Balcony gardens are discussed as vernacular gardens that are both private and as such they reflect the intentions and tastes of their owners and public insofar as they belong to the public space together with the balconies supporting them. The author contends that the balcony garden is worth considering as a useful point of reference whenever vernacular practices aimed at enhancing green urban spaces are at stake. The reason is that tensions that make balcony gardens so particular are characteristic of urban greenery. As a result, one has to accept that it is not possible to impose any norms on vernacular green urban practices and that different people’s approaches to plants (reluctance included) have to be recognized and acknowledged. The balcony garden may also be treated as a sort of paradigmatic example of how plants may be treated as non-human dwellers. The argumentation is structured around the presentation of the “Warsaw in flowers and greenery” contest which was established in mid 1930s and then re-established in mid 1980s and whose aim is to promote cultivation of flowers and plants on window sills, balconies, in courtyards and front yards. 

* Artykuł jest rezultatem pracy naukowej finansowanej w ramach programu Ministra Nauki i Szkolnictwa Wyższego pod nazwą „Narodowy Program Rozwoju Humanistyki” w latach 2016–2019 (0059/NPRH4/H2b/83/2016).

Life Begins at the Landfill. On Unwanted City Inhabitants

The article deals with the problem of the ambivalent status of garbage in urban space. The author explores, based on the Diana Lelonek Center for Living Things project, how wastes co-create new ecosystems, undermining our understanding of the concepts of environment and wasteland, and resists the capitalist logic of overproduction and redundancy.