The author analyzes women’s artistic practices, framed as manifestations of environmental art of memory of violence and destruction – both political violence directed against people and violence directed against nature. The analyzed artists appear not so much as contemporary incarnations of Benjaminian angel of history, but rather as figures who while turning backwards descent into the depths, and as such not so much look at the debris as they penetrate it. Their practice is seen here as learning from the coexistence with the matter of the past and the past of the matter – the theoretical tool that the author employs is that of the postindustrial heap (hałda). The author shows how, by analyzing the works of such artists as Joanna Rajkowska, Karolina Grzywnowicz, Diana Lelonek, one can think differently about the relationship with the past and even the very idea of historicity today.

Badania te zostały sfinansowane w całości przez Narodowe Centrum Nauki, grant nr 2021/41/B/HS2/01437.

The article is a proposal to apply the concepts of biorubbles and bioruins in relation to post-industrial sites. On the basis of field observations and critical analysis of concepts such as post-industrial places, technofact, ruin or indunatura, the author tries to propose an approach closer to the non-anthropocentric understanding of landscape, in which the emphasis is primarily on the vital nature of destruction and waste.

In the detailed part, the article proposes an analysis of artistic projects, e.g. Marcin Doś, Mona Tusz and Diana Lelonek, as well as revitalized or abandoned post-industrial sites (including the Grodziec cement plant and the site of the Orzegów coking plant in Ruda Śląska). The author presents the natural overgrowing of post-industrial rubble as an alternative to planned revitalization, which from the point of view of nature’s needs seems to be a much more successful action than the planned reconstruction of the ecosystem.

Ruderal ecologies can be regarded as places where more-than-human actants start to operate. In this article, places abandoned by a man, are called “prospective ruination” to emphasize the verb of decomposition function and to reorient the cognitive perspective of decay into the future, understood as a new human and more-than-human ruderal assemblages of culture-natures. The author of this text truly believes, that providing this kind of view, expands the Polish imaginary related to the rubble, reorienting the perspective of decay, to the vibrant more-than-human agencies and forces. The subject of the research reflection on ruderal ecologies (Caitlin DeSilvey), which constitute a. living archive, is Karolina Grzywnowicz’s project Weeds exhibited in 2015 at Zachęta in Warsaw. By introducing the term “biomnemonic witness” (gr. Mnemosyne, goodness of memory), the author emphasizes the subjectivity of the plant kingdom and its floral agencies in creating cultural and biological entanglements. The coda of the sketch problematizes the notion of a living archive and determines the trajectory of getting out of the anthropocentric cognitive impasse.

One of the phenomena which scope expanded during the period of restrictions related to COVID-19 was a social turn towards the past, observed especially in social media, identified as a nostalgia trend. Understood as a sentimental longing for something that has already passed that causes sadness or pleasure by remembering something and wishing it could be experienced again, nostalgia was one of the tools for dealing with the hardships and uncertainty of the pandemic times. Individual users of social media willingly undertook communication focused around memories, expressing regret for times long gone that had been seen in their idealized form as easier and happier. This trend has been effectively used in marketing focused on nostalgia. It was only effective when it evokes positive memories and evokes good feelings in the recipients that encourages the more to reach for the product or service offered. This specific turn towards this period of time was used as a tool that allowed not having to face terrifying moments and often difficult present, and even more so the unknown future. Thus, uncertain of the future and terrified of the present, the pandemic consumer was all the more susceptible to peaceful and happy images from the past, which both algorithms and commercial entities gave him. In these circumstances, one can point to a specific management of pandemic nostalgia by entities that are essentially external to the individual user.

In the text, I discuss the problems of the genocide experience in the context of mass tourism. I point out that large-scale Holocaust memorials and genocide museums incorporated into the mass-tourism industry are drowning out cries of remembrance. I propose three categories of commemoration: “Captions”, “Monuments” and “Stand-alone Works”. The latter category includes fine art photography among others. Using the case of the photographic series Koenigsgraben, I point out that the category of “Stand-alone Works” seems to have the greatest potential (next to historical enviro mental activeness) to free the cry of remembrance from beneath the concrete of the monuments.

The article analyzes Queering the Crip, Cripping the Queer (Schwules Museum, Berlin, 2022/2023) – the first international exhibition which centred on the intersections of queer and crip history, culture, and activism. Drawing on the theoretical framework of cultural disability studies, Ojrzyńska examines its key thematic areas, such as inclusion, aesthetic beauty, history, and resistance. Informed by the minoritarian ethics of representation, Queering the Crip… showed how a museum exhibition can serve as a site of inclusivity and a resource for inclusive practices, nurturing solidarity and a sense of connection across various categories of social exclusion, invisibility, and marginalization, with major focus on “quip” identities, to use the neologism put forward by Quiplash. It expanded the Schwules Museum’s reach beyond those members of the queer community who fit in the bodily and mental “norm” as well as stimulating reflection on the place and role of disability in culture and society. In fact, the exhibition presented disability and queerness as identities and alternative ways of being in the world that can intersect and have a strong subversive political, ethical, and aesthetic potential.