What the hell....

What the hell is this on Fraggels' screen!....

Took a picture of it and we could get it off.

It says: your systeem is hacked by... and so on

All my Lovin'...

It's so sad, - or funny! - sometimes... life. It's all about love. But mostly we, humans, don't see it. Prefer to ignore it. Quarreling, even fighting instead.


Short cuts is a play written by and based on the short stories from Raymond Carver. It focus on the life of ordinary people. Made into a movie by Robert Altman. In his "Short cuts'  one of the stories is named: So much love and so nearby... (or something like that) The story is of course about our daily blindness.

O, I find out now that it's called: So Much Water So Close To Home

But.... but this  is a great love story . And great music .

And if you want more...

(It's old-fashioned, it's sentimental, it's from another century.... YES. And sorry. I got lost in this music on this lonely Sunday in icy Lodz)

Mur i Wieża

Yael Bartana’s film and video-installations have been included in many international exhibitions over the past years. In December Mur i Wieża had its premiere in the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw.

Mur i Wieża (Wall and Tower) elaborates on the first part of the trilogy, Mary Koszmary (2007). In Mary Koszmary (Nightmares) Polish left activist Stawomir Sierakowski (1979) incites in a compelling monologue in an empty stadion in Warsaw 3 million Jews to return to Poland. With in the background the motto ‘3.300.000 Jews can change the life of 40.000.000 Poles’, the works touches upon one of the most essential questions of Polish history – the disastrous results of the Holocaust for Polish society.

Mur i Wieża answers the call of Sierakowski. In the same propagandist style the film shows how a group of young traditionally dressed Jewish pioneers return to Warsaw. At the spot where in World War II the Warsaw Ghetto was located, and beside the impressive ‘Heroes of the Ghetto’ Monument, the cheerfully young people are building a new settlement reminding one of the settlements founded by Jewish colonists in the thirties on Palestinian soil.

Yael Bartana hints at the Zionist dream, with heroic images of strong, beautiful men and women building their new country undisturbed by difficult conditions. 

At the watchtower a blood-red flag with a new symbol has been raised – the Star of David combined with the Polish eagle. Approvingly watched by Stawomir Sierakowski, but simultaneously inquiringly looked upon by Polish passers-by.

With this work Yael Bartana rewinds history in a playful manner, strengthened again by the soundtrack. The film is supported by the Polish anthem Mazurek Dąbrowskiego, followed by the Israeli anthem Hatikva, played backwards. 
Mur i Wieża cleverly balances on a fine line between fact and fiction. It encourages everyone to critically scrutinize his or her own constructed ideas about migrations and religious-cultural conflicts .


This text is kindly lend but without permission from "Annet Gelink Galerie ", Amsterdam

See (again) the exerpt of Siekowski's speech in Warsaw.

Also a presentation with Yeal Bartana.

And a portret of Stamowir Sierakowski 

Third exploration Baluty

For our third exploration of the neigbourhood we wanted to look in the piece South of the church, there where also the Old synagogue Altshtot stood... "nothing remains from this synagoge", so I was curious to see if we could find out where it exactly was located on the Wolborskiej.

Gosia, Agnieszka and I started to walk in that direction to get an idea of the neighbourhood first. Well, it changed during the years as you can see in the pictures. it looks like, and it is actually is, not directly middle-class... but: blocs with apartments, nice houses, well painted, well maintained everything. Families with children, a man who tried to get his car out of the snow, somebody exercising her dog...

This neighbourhood really invites you to live here...

At the border from Baluty you find Park Staromiesky heavy used by the Balutians, winter and summer. 

And yes, there we find a sign of the former synagogue...  But is this the place where it stood on Wolborskiej? Most probably there where the apartments blocs are now.

This blog starts to go about synagogues only - yes, but... you cannot ignore the former presence from the Polish Jews here in Lodz and certainly not in Baluty... We have to incorporate that - unfortunataly historical - fact in our project without making it the main-issue.

So I promise this will be one of the last times about synagogues.

A little bit further (just behind the sign, you see a glimpse from it totally at the right-hand side of the picture) you find a statue with a text below it which says:

The ten commandments

a sculpter by Gustav Zemla

by page of history

a foundation for

the commemoration of

the presence

of Jews in Poland

november 1995

See in this respect next message: Mur i Wieża 

In The Ghetto....

In The Ghettoooo..... 

About Baluty Baluty (2)

In this second 'message' "About Baluty-Baluty" I want to tell more about the project itself.
This message is a direct continuation of the first message in this blog. (see About Baluty-Baluty )
But now I will more focus on content, ideas, attitudes, approaches and actions. What and How.

In 2008 I met Krzysztof Candrowicz, director of the Fotofestiwal Lodz, and he told me about Baluty and the thoughts he had to do a photography project in Baluty. This project would have be linked with the theme of the Lodz Fotofestiwal 2010.
The theme should be and is All my lovin' and it focuses on family and family relations. In short it is about the joy and the pain connected with being a member of a family. How do people experience family relations?
The idea of the Baluty-project was/is that for the 'Fotofestiwal Lodz' it should be nice to have something on this theme coming from the city of Lodz itself.
Candrowicz' had seen something of my previous projects and his thought was that a kind of more social, more natural and intimate view on families living in Lodz could be a good supplement to the year programme of 2010.
So, later - I proposed to undertake this project and his answer was 'yes'.

15/01/2010

Trwają przygotowania do kolejnej edycji Fotofestiwalu.
Jego głównym punktem będzie wystawa “All my lovin’. Wszystko o miłości”, poświęcona relacjom rodzinnym i miłości.
W prezentowanych projektach znajdziemy więc humor, pasję, walkę, historię i kompromis, nieco nostalgii i dużo refleksji.

Główny weekend zaplanowaliśmy na 6-9 maja. Sam festiwal potrwa do 30 maja.
Więcej informacji już w przyszłym miesiącu na naszej nowej, odświeżonej stronie internetowej.

So, in the Baluty-Baluty project we are going to focus on family and family life. For this I should like to work with approximately six or eight families in the two months before the opening of the Fotofestiwal Lodz 6 May 2010. That means that we are going to do the photo project named Baluty Baluty in March and April 2010 starting 8 March.


In the workshop each family gets one or more simple point-and-shoot camera(s). During the workshop they will have the opportunity to act as a 'real' photographer in their own life.

Family, family-members and family-life will be the main overall subject. In this respect they will documenting their everyday life, family, (auto)portrait, friends, surroundings and for example the themes dreams, wishes, ambitions. 


Acting in this way the family-members will get a special and most probably unexpected insight in their own life. For every participant this will be a meaningful experience. 

The Baluty-Baluty workshop will result in an exhibition in the Foto Festiwal in May 2010, most probably in the neigbourhood Baluty itself.

For sure it will also gives the visitor an unexpected and surprising insight in the lives of the Balutians.

Later more on Baluty-Baluty.

And....  take the time to listen to this music!

All my Lovin '

All My Love

Wish You Were Here

Snow

Tonight and in the early morning it was snowing. It is a very dry and thin snow. But it gives quite a lot of snow... After a while looking out of my window I saw this fresh snow already covered by a dark-grey layer of everything what's in the air, coming out the chimneys, obviously.

Not much movement in between these houses except dirty snow, a cat coming out a basement (see the traces!) and playing in the snow (couldn't catch him/her with the camera) and people coming out with their dogs for some exercise and other necessary operations.

Open letter to Pavel Stingl, filmdirector

Dear Pavel,

I saw the trailer of your film "A ghetto named Baluty" (the movie itself seems not to be available yet) but... I don't think I like this film... It gives a lot of picturesque, colourful and tearjerking details from nowadays old Baluty. Nice! Well photographed!

BUT, these colourful sequences from nowadays Baluty in the movie (note: I cannot understand the text/speech; so my impression is only based on what I see) are consequently compared with images from the real ghetto in the Third Reich...

But this is something you cannot compare... not in the film and also not in a trailer.

I mean, Baluty today is NOT a slave laboury camp where at his peak 200,000 people where crammed in the old quarter of Stary Miasto and the slum quarter of Baluty, an area amounting to only six square kilometres where during the four years the ghetto existed some 60,000 people died through starvation, disease, hypothermia, suicide or execution.

In your film you cannot the contemporary rag merchant with his caddie compare with Jews (or Roma) transporting their last belongings and travelling towards their extermination.

Yes, Baluty is partly suffering from poverty, alcoholism and unemployment but this is first of all not the whole story and second absolutely in nothing comparable with the ghetto history.

Furthermore, I saw several nowadays ghetto's and I can tell you this: Baluty is a special neighbourhood, it certainly is, but Baluty has nothing to do with a ghetto, really nothing!

No Pavel Stingl, I will give it a try but I don't think I will make it 87 (or 83?) minutes long.

You say: Baluty then and Baluty now have much in common.... No Pavel Stingl, Baluty then and Baluty now have nothing in common.

It's easy going counterfeiting - falsifying - history. Or worse.

Rob Houkes

pictures by Henryk Ross from his book Lodz Ghetto Album

Can't get...

I can't get these burnt synagogues out of my head. This one on my way home from Baluty today. The Great or Wielka synagogue. Details here.

Today the site is used as a parking lot.

Maps & facts of Lodz and Baluty

And finally for the ones who are devoted to geographical facts and admirers of maps here a link to the Lodz/Baluty district.
Coming from the Piotrkowska (down in the middle of the map) and after crossing the Park Staromiesky you hit ulicy Wolborskiej where the former Jewish quarter, later the ghetto and nowadays Stare Baluty starts.
More or less everything above these line (and visible on the map) is where we planned to focuse on for our project.

On Wolborskiej 20 stood the Orthodox Synagogue "Altshtot" . It was the oldests synagogue in Lodz, first constructed entirely from wood, later relocated and replaced with stone in 1860 - 1863.
Burnt down by the Nazis at the night of November 15-16, 1939, so - notice! - even before there was a ghetto established.
No trace of the synagogue remains today.

Click here to see how this synagogue was build . For me this is also a kind of a map and in this case certainly one with a dramatic impact.
See more about this Stara Synagogyue on Wolborska 20 and all other synagogues in Lodz.
See also the very impressive list of Synagogues, prayer houses and others.

Furthermore I found a particular "map" of the old ghetto.

It had been made by:

Leon Jakubowicz, a shoemaker by training and a native of Lodz, began constructing this model of the Lodz ghetto soon after his arrival there from a prisoner-of-war camp in April 1940. The case holds a scale (1:5000) model of the ghetto, including streets, painted houses, bridges, churches, synagogue ruins, factories, cemeteries, and barbed wire around the ghetto edges. The model pieces are made from scrap wood. The case cover interior is lined with a collection of official seals, a ration card, and paper money, and the case exterior is covered with metal coins.

See here his model of the Lodz ghetto

And here a more detailed version of the same model

Next you will find  all important information about Lodz with (at the right-hand side) a map of Poland in which Lodz is situated in the middle.

Finally - zooming out - maps of  Poland itself:

This is our Bronx...

Coincidences, random actions which give the sensful whole after a while or unexpected meetings becoming crucial in your life - we usually try  to remember it.

For me it was buying a bookguide about Jewish Lodz for my friend's birthday, visiting Baluty with Gosia and Rob and watching a documentary film "A ghetto named Baluty" during the same week.

Director Pavel Štingl tells some facts about a Jewish ghetto established by the Nazis in 1940. Investigates Baluty with the help of Czech Jews and inhabitants of the quarter so the documentary is very subjective and full of emotions.
It is worth seeing though focused only on poverty, alcoholism, and unemployment found in Baluty. "This is our Bronx" - says one of the Balutars from the film.

Watch it and comment!

About this blog

This Baluty-Baluty blog serves different purposes.

Baluty-Baluty.blogspot.com is first of all a part of the Baluty project itself, it will be finally a component in the eventual result, one of the outcomes of the project.
Baluty-Baluty.blogspot.com tells about our discoveries, troubles, thoughts, doubts, aroused curiosity, stupefaction, facts, sense and nonsense.
The whole process of realising this project will become afterwards traceable and visible for everyone who wants to find out. Not at least ourselves!
It's has been meant as a daily journal, you could see and read or use it as a more personal diary, or a notebook.

Baluty-Baluty.blogspot.com is also using and playing with 'new media' in a project. In this sense it's an experiment. We will see if and how it works.

This 'journal' will be made by everybody who wants to give comments or, being a member of the team or a participant/contributor, add their own observations, information, found footage and thoughts.

Sharing and collecting information and showing and telling about different perceptions Baluty-Baluty.blogspot.com functions as a communication tool during the project.
A tool to tell everybody interested and especially all the involved people about the progress and the nature of the project.

Baluty-Baluty.blogspot.com is like a table full of food*) with different tasts and nutritive healthy and sometimes probably not so healthy stuff.

I hope that our blog will raise understanding, interest, support, enthusiasm and not at last pleasure.

*) Agnieszka

Gdanska/Lodz

It's freezing!

Some Poles have a nice sense for understatement; they say it's chilly... Minus 17 degree Celsius today! Chilly?

The one who made this sign seems more realistic to me.

Agnieczka said: Normally it's never that cold here. This winter is like they have in Russia. But now we have it also here!

And there is more to come.... On the radio they speak about minus 26 and even minus 30... for the weekend.

Yes, it's  freezing!

Second exploration of Baluty

For our second exploration of the  Baluty-district we focuse on the old Baluty again but 'north from the church' which seems to be in the middle from 'Stare Baluty'. On the map this part of Baluty is described as Os Berlinskiego. It's roughly the area inside the lines Zachodnia, Lutomierska/Zawiszy, Franciczkanska and Wojska Polskiego.

One my way to Baluty I nearly 'tumbled' over this sign on the pavement... Earlier I must have missed it or it was covered by snow. Anyhow, it shocked me. I walked just through the gates of the ghetto!...

The sign on the pavement says "Litzmannstadt Ghetto 1940 - 1944". Litzmannstadt is how Lodz was renamed by the Nazies. Read about this - this is a must - an article about language policy in the Third Reich written by William Bostock which tells also in short but very adequate what happens in the ghetto . More words are no needed to understand.


See for the whole article of William Bostock this link .


I realize as never before that I walk in a 'guilty landscape'. This term is coming from the Dutch artist Armando who dedicated his whole work to this subject since he played as a boy in the fields and woods where many cruelties from war had been taken place. He speaks of guilty or accused landscape, which means that the landscape/cityscape itself is also 'guilty' by transforming and hiding what had happened.
How do we/I deal with this topic? I mean, I see at the very moment I walk there the fences, and the gate, and all the people hopeless locked in, I nearly feel the pain and the suffering; it's still in the streets...


I meet Agnieszka and Gosia, tell them about my discovering of the sign and my thoughts and feelings. We decide to do our walk, that's probably how we and people in general deal with the horrible facts from the past: just go on with life and doing what you planned to do.


The sun is shining. We are impressed by the photographic opportunities we see around and start walking and taking photographs which us deliver comments from people around that it is if we are walking in a museum.... Not the best way to connect with the people but we decide one time to sin...



Next time we will hide the camera. But for now it's 'reading the city'. With the camera. Without avoiding all stereotypes. That's why the rest what follows in this message now: photographes with a very few comment, and a very few people.

American flag above the market...

"Accused city-scape"?  Back-side of the building which was the Gestapo headquarters during WW II.

And this absolutely sad building is the same former Gestapo headquarter from the frontside... Nowedays a pharmacy, a sauna and a tattoo shop....

Crossing Zawiszy/Lagiewincka

Street phone on the same crossing

"Traditional" yard

This is about 'Red army of Balutians...  .

This seems to be brandnew flats...

Made with a template you can buy in the big shop Manufaktura in Baluty

Centre of 'Stare Baluty"? For us it is, for a moment. Till we know better.

Malewicz?

On our way to Baluty yesterday... an unexpected encounter with Kazimir Malewicz ... the younger one.

First visit Baluty

Finally we went for our first orientation really to the Baluty-district. To see at the map it's quite a huge quater. So we decided first to focus on the borders of the old ghetto. To see what it is, how it looks... how big it is. To get the taste of the old Baluty. Sniffing the atmosphere and meeting the people.

Gosia and Agnieszka did some research on the internet after "the old Baluty" and brought maps and books.

We walked along Zahodny and it turns out that we where on our way to the old Jewish cemetary which was situated outside the borders of the old ghetto. We followed our path and walked without knowing or realizing along the old walls of the cemetary...

Asking this lady for the old cemetary, she pointed out where it was, just where we where!

We missed the memorial sign.

and we found the stone... which says:

The old Jewish cemetery on Wesola street. established April 4, 1811 was in use until 1922. The German occupiers began to destroy the cemetery in 1942; the cemetery was completely destroyed by the communist authorities in the years 1949 - 1954.

The grounds hold about 12.000 graves.