Memory grids: Forgetting East Berlin in Krass Clement’s Photobook Venten på i går. Auf Gestern warten (2012)

Memory grids: Forgetting East Berlin in Krass Clement’s Photobook Venten på i går. Auf Gestern warten (2012)In the article, I argue that by means of qualities intrinsic to the medium of the photobook, the renowned Danish photographer Krass Clement (b. 1946) constructs a complex narration, which, on the one hand, seeksmeta-refl ection on the relationships between photography, memory, and the perception of reality, and, on the other, explores the post-GDR condition of Berlin and Germany. Venten på i går. Auf Gestern warten (Danish and German for “Waiting for yesterday”) includes both old and contemporary images, in both colour and black-and-white, but the book is neither (n)ostalgic nor documentary. Rather, I insist that Clement’s project epitomizes memory work and that its guiding principle can be understood through Rosalind Krauss’ concept of the grid. Th e grid is here inseparable from photography’s relation to memory and reality. I explore how the dialectics between remembering and forgetting, inherent to photography, is enacted by the book, and how it foregrounds the opaqueness rather than the transparency of the medium and perception. I also present how the universe constructed by Clement unfolds within the three temporal dimensions suggested in the title of the book: a present (post-ideological) suspension between the future and the past

Postmemory, stereotype, and the return home. Rewriting pre-existing narratives in Sofi Oksanen’s "Purge"

The article offers a discussion of Sofi Oksanen’s novel Purge, focusing on the book’s strategy of evoking stereotypical narratives about Eastern Europe, such as the (postcommunist) fallen woman and (Russian) return home narratives, as well as related intertexts, primarily Lukas Moodysson’s film Lilya 4-ever. I argue that Oksanen constructs the plot around clichés in order to challenge them in a subversive fashion, first and foremost, in the name of recuperating the notion of Home. Related to locality and the feeling of being at-home, where the wholeness of the (national) subject is possible, ‘home’ is staged as an alternative to stereotypes, associated with transnational travel and the apparatus of colonization. A significant counter-narrative embedded in the novel – and hitherto rarely discussed – is the exilic perspective with its idealization of the lost and imagined home(land). In Purge, this is mediated through the main character’s postmemory. By means of a postexilic narrative, home is reconfigured as a ‘third space’ – neither fully ideal and (ethnically) pure nor adhering to the aforementioned stereotypical narratives. The positive valorisation of home, despised by some critics as simplistic and conservative, does not prevent movement and dislocation from being included in the new experience of home(land) emerging from the post-Soviet condition

Podwodne, kosmiczne, duchowe. Miasta rosyjskie a sfera publiczna w filmach skandynawskich dokumentalistów

The article discusses three documentaries made since 2000 by Scandinavian filmmakers: the Finnish director Marja Pensala’s The Eclipse of the Soul (2000) and two films by Danish authors: Boris Bertram’s Tankograd (2010) and Ada Bligaard Søby’s The Naked of Saint Petersburg (2010). All the films are portraits of Russian cities and their residents. In my study, I draw on concepts such as the “Russian soul”, private/public and bytie (the spiritual being)/byt (the daily grind), which, as I argue, are important aspects of all three films, and at the same time, useful tools for their analysis. Common to these documentaries is the fact that the authors direct their attention to the asymmetrical relation between the state’s position of power and its largely powerless citizens. The constitutive element of a city as such – being a public space, i.e. a space to which all people should have equal access and rights – appears largely distorted. As a consequence, the residents escape from their stark reality to create alternative, imaginary spaces – be it a lost paradise, like the underwater city of Mologa in Pensala’s film, a cosmic heterotopia, like the space of art in Bertram’s Tankograd, or a spiritual universe, like in Søby’s short documentary. In all these films, the directors’ point of reference – their cultural perspective – is emphasized as a filter, through which the Russian reality is perceived.Underwater, cosmic, spiritual. Russian cities in Scandinavian documentaries The article discusses three documentaries made since 2000 by Scandinavian filmmakers: the Finnish director Marja Pensala’s The Eclipse of the Soul (2000) and two films by Danish authors: Boris Bertram’s Tankograd (2010) and Ada Bligaard Søby’s The Naked of Saint Petersburg (2010). All the films are portraits of Russian cities and their residents. In my study, I draw on concepts such as the “Russian soul”, private/public and bytie (the spiritual being)/byt (the daily grind), which, as I argue, are important aspects of all three films, and at the same time, useful tools for their analysis. Common to these documentaries is the fact that the authors direct their attention to the asymmetrical relation between the state’s position of power and its largely powerless citizens. The constitutive element of a city as such – being a public space, i.e. a space to which all people should have equal access and rights – appears largely distorted. As a consequence, the residents escape from their stark reality to create alternative, imaginary spaces – be it a lost paradise, like the underwater city of Mologa in Pensala’s film, a cosmic heterotopia, like the space of art in Bertram’s Tankograd, or a spiritual universe, like in Søby’s short documentary. In all these films, the directors’ point of reference – their cultural perspective – is emphasized as a filter, through which the Russian reality is perceived. Artykuł omawia trzy skandynawskie filmy dokumentalne: Zaćmienie duszy (2000) fińskiej reżyserki Marji Pensali, Tankograd (2010) autorstwa Duńczyka Borisa Bertrama oraz Nadzy z Petersburga (2010) w reżyserii duńskiej twórczyni Ady Bligaard Søby. Każdy z dokumentów to portret wybranego miasta w Rosji i jego mieszkańców. Odwołując się do koncepcji takich jak „rosyjska dusza”, bytie/byt oraz sfera publiczna/prywatna, istotnych dla samych filmów i stanowiących zarazem narzędzie analizy i refleksji, artykuł podejmuje przedstawiony przez skandynawskich twórców problem asymetrycznej relacji między skupioną w rękach państwa władzą a zwykłymi obywatelami. Sfera publiczna konstytuująca miasto, do której obywatele powinni mieć w miarę możliwości równy dostęp, jawi się w omawianych dokumentach jako wysoce skrępowana. Bohaterowie filmów tworzą w konsekwencji własne, wyobrażone przestrzenie: dokument Pensali ukazuje zatopione miasto Mołogę przekształcone poprzez pracę pamięci w utracony raj, w filmie Bertrama przestrzeń sztuki przetworzona zostaje w kosmiczną heterotopię, a w portrecie Ady Søby wędrówki po Petersburgu w towarzystwie jego mieszkańca obrazują metropolię jako duchowe uniwersum. W każdym z dokumentów twórcy zwracają uwagę odbiorców na kulturowe filtry, dzielące ich od portretowanej rosyjskiej rzeczywistości

AT VENDE TILBAGE TIL UKENDTE STEDER - POSTHUKOMMELSE OG STED HOS JACOB DAMMAS, JACOB KOFLER OG MAJA MAGDALENA SWIDERSKA

RETURNING TO UNFAMILIAR PLACES. PLACE AND POSTMEMORY IN THE WORKS OF JACOB DAMMAS, JACOB KOFLER, AND MAJA MAGDALENA SWI-DERSKA | The emigration of three thousand Polish-Jewish citizens to Denmark as a result of the events in March 1968 in Poland has only recently attracted attention from filmmakers and writers in Denmark. Two documentary films and a novel, created within a relatively short period of time, deal with the topic: Jacob Kofler’s Statsløs (Stateless), 2004, Jacob Dammas’ Kredens (Dresser), 2007, and Maja Magdalena Swiderska’s The Border Breaking Bunch, 2008. The authors are all children of refugees and represent second generation in relation to the cultural trauma of exile. The article examines aesthetic approaches developed by the authors as they (re)tell personal stories, which are mediated through various strategies of postmemory (Hirsch 1997). Postmemory is distinguished from memory by a non-indexical relation to the past and a generational distance, and from history by a highly personal approach. However, it is not addressed here as a psychological category. On the contrary, I argue that postmemory can be viewed as both an analytical and a narrative and aesthetic tool. Questions of place and place-related identity are relevant and inseparable from the three authors’ creative reimaginings of the cultural and personal trauma. Thus, the article focuses on the concepts of place and postmemory, and their interdependencies in the analysed works. Close readings are combined with theoretical reflection, which allows the objects and theories to illuminate each other

Porous Borders: Crossing the Boundaries to ‘Eastern Europe’ in Scandinavian Crime Fiction

In Scandinavian crime fiction, an implicit dynamics is noticeable between the adjacent worlds: Scandinavia and ‘Eastern Europe’. The author of the article approaches their relation using the two interrelated concepts of border and boundary (Casey, 2011). While borders are fixed and established by conventional agreements, boundaries are natural, perforated, and undermine the impenetrability of the border. Accordingly, two main strands are discernible within the representations of ‘Eastern Europe’ in Scandinavian crime fiction: a ‘border perspective’ and a ‘boundary perspective’. The first strand is rooted in the old world with pronounced national divisions, while the other anticipates a globalised world, involving a dynamic view of the relation between the neighbours across the Baltic. As the article attempts to demonstrate, the border/boundary distinction can be fruitfully applied to the analysis of the Scandinavian discourse on ‘Eastern Europe’ with all its implications