Does Postmodern Mean Capitalist? On Postmodernism and the Planned Economy in Poland and the German Democratic Republic

Does postmodern mean capitalist? This article attempts to answer this question by comparing postmodern neo-historicism in two late socialist contexts: the People's Republic of Poland, where in the 1980s the planned economy was progressively eroding and postmodern architecture mostly sponsored by non-state clients (private individuals, small housing cooperatives and the Catholic Church), and the German Democratic Republic (GDR), where in the 1980s the institutions of the state-planned economy remained in power and commissioned prominent postmodern projects. The inception of postmodernism in the early 1980s is commonly linked to the rise of neoliberalism in Western countries, characterized by figures like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Many iconic postmodern buildings celebrated “capitalist values” such as private capital, entrepreneurialism, and consumerism. Theorists of the time identified postmodernism with the “neoliberal turn” in Western Europe and North America, marked by the decline of the welfare state, the privatization of housing and public assets, and increasing wealth disparity. However, the article explores the notion that postmodern architecture in Eastern bloc countries, including Poland and the GDR, had different motivations and values than its Western counterpart. Despite operating within planned economies, postmodernism was influential in these countries. In both Poland and East Germany postmodern architecture shared certain characteristics: a critique of modernism, the use of historical references and quotations, and the incorporation of vernacular models. In both countries the overall output of construction was comparatively small due to an ailing economy, which was nonetheless still stronger in East Germany than in Poland. There were nonetheless important distinctions between postmodernism in East Germany and Poland. In East Germany, the institutions of the planned economy remained intact due to comparative political stability. State control over construction was inflexible.Poland, in contrast, implemented quasi-capitalist structures earlier and more gradually. Non-state entities, such as cooperatives and the Catholic Church, gradually gained approval for construction projects. Within the limitations of the slumping economy this allowed young architects to experiment with postmodern ideas beyond ideological constraints. These initiatives eventually led to a diverse architectural environment that continued even after the socialist regime ended. The article highlights the role of the Catholic Church in Poland, with numerous postmodern churches built during the 1980s. These buildings often had strong connections to the longstanding discourse on the Polish nation, which under socialism continued to hold positive connotations among both socialist officials and members of the opposition. They also reflected a desire for spiritual truth, providing an alternative to the perceived superficiality of socialist ideology. At the same time there were next to no postmodern projects financed by state institutions under the control of the ruling socialist party, the Polish Unified Workers’ Party. In this context, the article mentions churches such as Ascension Church in Warsaw-Ursynów (1980-85, Marek Budzyński, Zbigniew Badowski, Piotr Wicha), St Jadwiga in Kraków (1983-89, Romuald Loegler, Jacek Czekaj), or Our Lady Queen of Poland in Głogów (1985-89, Marian Fikus, Jerzy Gurawski). The article also discusses cooperative multi-family houses such as the infills on Legionów Józefa Piłsudskiego 2 in Kraków (1985-89, Wojciech Obtułowicz, Danuta Oledzka-Baran) or Przestrzenna 19-19A in Wrocław (1986, Anna Bożek-Nowicka), and the rebuilt old town of Elbląg (1979 master plan by Wiesław Anders, Szczepan Baum and Ryszard Semka, from 1983 revised and implemented under the influence of conservationist Maria Lubocka-Hoffmann, building design by various architects). In East Germany, postmodern projects were primarily initiated and financed by state institutions, aligning with the goals of the ruling Socialist Unity Party. The Nikolaiviertel project in East Berlin (1979-87, Günter Stahn and others) for example, recreated an old town using prefabricated concrete slabs, aiming to improve the state's image. However, such projects were less innovative and more utilitarian. Next to the Nikolaiviertel the article discusses projects such as the Friedrichstadt Palace (1983 Manfred Prasser and others) and the Zentrum Marzahn (1978, Wolf Eisentraut, Dietmar Bankert and others) in East Berlin, the Marktplatz area in Halle (1984-1989, Oswald Arlt and others) and the Five Gable House (1984-1986, Peter Baumbach and Erich Kaufmann) and surrounding buildings in Rostock. The economic underpinnings of postmodernism differed significantly in both countries. Poland's postmodern architecture largely emerged from private clients and non-state entities, reflecting the influence of capitalist pluralism. In East Germany, postmodern projects were predominantly top-down initiatives aimed at projecting an image of plurality, but firmly rooted in the institutions of the planned economy. The article argues that while the different economic regimes in Poland and the GDR did not lead to prominent stylistic discrepancies, they strongly influenced significance and perception of these projects in their particular national contexts. Challenging the notion that postmodernism is solely a product of advanced capitalism, the article argues that postmodern architecture in Poland and East Germany was shaped by capitalist ideas and values absorbed by non-capitalist regimes. Furthermore, it highlights the role of postmodernism in these countries as a reflection of their unique historical, political, and cultural contexts, distinct from the Western narrative

30 Years of MEARU Exhibition

An exhibition and event to look back over 30 years of MEARU's research

Being Bella Baxter : 'Poor Things' in book and film

A comparison of the differing worldviews and philosophies which underlie Alasdair Gray's book 'Poor Things' (1992) and Yorgos Lanthimos's film version of the book released in 2024

Beyond Formal and Informal: Mid-twentieth-century Residential Architecture in Barcelona's El Carmel Neighbourhood

This article discusses houses on the periphery of Barcelona and in particular in the El Carmel neighbourhood, which were built by poor country-to-city migrants from southern Spain in the post-Second-World-War period. They were constructed following two typologies: barracas (sheds), one-storey huts on an irregular street plan, and coreas (‘Korea houses’), more formally-looking one-to-three storey structures lined up on orderly laid-out streets. Based on archival documents, contemporaneous publications and interviews with former autoconstructores (self-builders), the article analyses both social conditions and physical structures. While these buildings were often unauthorised and constructed by informal means, they were just as often built with the landowner's consent, involving architects and building professionals, and retroactively legalised. The article concludes that in this respect Barcelona's ‘informal neighbourhoods’ in fact straddled the realms of the formal and the informal, to the extent that the habitual distinction between formal and informal architecture has to be considered inadequate

Cinema in the Gallery: The Movies in Artists’ Film and Video

Since its inception, artists have been fascinated by cinema, but the past twenty years has seen an intensification of direct engagements with mainstream cinema, forming a compelling body of artists’ film that, as yet, shows no signs of completion. These engagements are diverse and range from the silent single elongated quotation that is Douglas Gordon’s 24-Hour Psycho (1993) to the surreal pastiched imitations of Bollywood and Western genre conventions in Shezad Dawood’s Feature (2008) and often involve transposing aspects of cinematic exhibition into the gallery space. This book proposes to critically map, categorise and examine this substantial and expanding body of work, building on the insightful criticism initiated by a spate of major survey exhibitions from the mid-1990s to the 2010s, but going further to designate it as the site of a new film avant-garde, one that interrogates dominant film forms, their cultural impact and resonance. By discussing the work of emerging artists such as Jesse Jones and Rachel MacLean alongside that of more established artists such as Matthew Barney and Candice Brietz, this book intends to reinvigorate the existing canon of ‘cinematic’ artists films. In addition, by identifying a range of theoretical frameworks, the chapters of this book produce insightful analyses that aim to enliven discussion beyond an interest in individual works or artists. The book is divided into two sections, each of which focuses on one of the two principal formal approaches taken to engagements with cinema; namely sampling and imitation. Each section is then divided into three chapters that identify, define and examine different themes and formal strategies that connect various examples of artists’ films. Examples of chapter titles are: ‘Found Footage as Feminist Poetics’; ‘The Documentary Turn in Contemporary Art’; and ‘Deadpan and Other Types of Dissonance.

A Divided Landscape: A relational, qualitative investigation of falls prevention technology and services with older people and professionals in North and South Lanarkshire

Previous research has shown that fear of falling has a significant impact on mental health and wellbeing in older people. However, introduction of supportive technology can face complex challenges due to user’s fears and expectations around its use. No Need to Fall aims to work with professionals, older people, and unpaid carers to co-create digitally enabled, relational, and proactive approaches which can prevent falls. The project is funded by the Health Foundation and is being done through a multi-organizational partnership led by Scotland’s Digital Health & Care Innovation Centre, NHS Lanarkshire, and the University of Strathclyde. In the first phase, we used participatory workshops and semi-structured interviews to understand the professional landscape and lived experiences of older people. Our initial research showed two significant gaps. First, on-the-ground professionals struggled to coordinate care due to organisational and IT barriers. Their lack of access created a disparity in their professional relationships and limited their ability to follow up on changes to care. Second, older people had little awareness of falls prevention services, and avoided engagement with supportive technology due to their fears around ageing, loss of control, and personal blame. This creates anxiety in their relationships with caregivers. In our next phase, we plan to work with on-the-ground professionals to co-create new digital tools which can coordinate care in the event of a fall. Second, we will work with older people and carers to explore how relationships which support falls prevention can be mediated through mutual ownership, goal alignment, and data sharing

Sound of Violent Images / Violence of Sound Images: Pulling apart Tom and Jerry

Violence permeates Tom and Jerry in the repetitive, physically violent gags and scenes of humiliation and mocking, yet unarguably, there is comedic value in the onscreen violence.The musical scoring of Tom and Jerry in the early William Hanna and Joseph Barbera period of production (pre-1958) by Scott Bradley played a key role in conveying the comedic impact of violent gags due to the close synchronisation of music and sound with visual action and is typified by a form of sound design characteristic of zip crash animation as described by Paul Taberham (2012), in which sound actively participates in the humour and directly influences the viewer’s interpretation of the visual action. This research investigates the sound-image relationships in Tom and Jerry through practice, by exploring how processes of decontextualisation and desynchronisation of sound and image elements of violent gags unmask the underlying violent subtext of Tom and Jerry’s slapstick comedy. This research addresses an undertheorised area in animation related to the role of sound-image synchronisation and presents new knowledge derived from the novel application of audiovisual analysis of Tom and Jerry source material and the production of audiovisual artworks. The findings of this research are discussed from a pan theoretical perspective drawing on theorisation of film sound and cognitivist approaches to film music. This investigation through practice, supports the notion that intrinsic and covert processes of sound-image synchronisation as theorised by Kevin Donnelly (2014), play a key role in the reading of slapstick violence as comedic. Therefore, this practice-based research can be viewed as a case study that demonstrates the potential of a sampling-based creative practice to enable new readings to emerge from sampled source material. Novel artefacts were created in the form of audiovisual works that embody specific knowledge of factors related to the reconfiguration of sound-image relations and their impact in altering viewers’ readings of violence contained within Tom and Jerry. Critically, differences emerged between the artworks in terms of the extent to which they unmasked underlying themes of violence and potential mediating factors are discussed related to the influence of asynchrony on comical framing, the role of the unseen voice, perceived musicality and perceptions of interiority in the audiovisual artworks. The research findings yielded new knowledge regarding a potential gender-based bias in the perception of the human voice in the animated artworks produced. This research also highlights the role of intra-animation dimensions pertaining to the use of the single frame, the use of blank spaces and the relationship of sound-image synchronisation to the notion of the acousmatic imaginary. The PhD includes a portfolio of experimental audiovisual artworks produced during the testing and experimental phases of the research on which the textual dissertation critically reflects

The chloride of silver answers perfectly, 25 October 1835

This photographic work was exhibited at ‘Chasma’ - an exhibition of work by Royal College of Art School of Arts & Humanities PhD exhibition mentored and curated by Beaconsfield. Chasma brought together artist-researchers from the RCA’s School of Arts and Humanities in an exhibition mentored by Beaconsfield. The works in the exhibition are all further steps in the process of excavating new knowledge – new expressions of the untold and yet unseen. This photograph is part of a larger series of work re-visiting, re-enacting and re-touching marginal histories of early photography. Scottish Polymath Mary Somerville’s (1780–1872) protophotographic experiments of 1835 were first published as Expériences sur la transmission des rayons chumiques du spectre solaire, à travers différents milieux in Comptes rendus. Made in an age before photographic images could be fixed (rendered permanent), her photochemical experiments exist today only in written word. This work re-enacts Somerville’s chemical and optical experiments, producing a physical encounter that offers an insight into the perception and experience of colour before the so-called ‘invention’ of photography in 1839

Perspectives: Richard Long's A Line Made By Walking

A short film made by the National Galleries of Scotland, in conversation with Stephanie Strain, Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh. "In this episode of Perspectives, artist, writer and lecturer Amanda Thomson joins Stephanie Straine, in front of an artwork at the National Galleries of Scotland that caught her eye — A Line Made by Walking, by Richard Long (1967). This is one of many conversations, offering fresh perspectives on artworks in our galleries. Brilliant creative thinkers choose a work they love and share their way of seeing art and our world. Amanda Thomson is a visual artist and writer who is also a lecturer at the Glasgow School of Art. Originally trained as a printmaker, her interdisciplinary work is often about notions of home, movements, migrations, landscapes and the natural world and how places come to be made.

The Scent of Roses: A Cultural History of Rose Perfumes

One does not need to be a perfume connoisseur to recognise the scent of a rose. Its liberal use in modern perfumery has familiarised many with its characteristics and made the rose a part of our olfactory language. However, this ubiquity belies its enduring and mythic status. Throughout history, rose perfumes have been variously used to anoint royalty, cleanse heretics, symbolize Gods, express virginity, cure ailments and flavor celebratory food but this correlation between the scent, beauty and divinity is not fixed. Rose perfumes have also embodied immorality, announced subversion, and signified death. Whilst many of these uses are a distant memory, fashion houses and perfumers still draw upon and reconfigure these contradictory connotations in the development of their perfumes today. The talk will chart this history and consider the role that mythology, religion, horticultural advances, literature and the growth of the popular press have played in the shifting fashionability of the rose and its perfume