People
Ola Bilińska, Poetry
o.bilinska@biweekly.pl
born 1986, singer, songwriter and translator, student at the English Literature Department of Warsaw University. She is currently writing her MA thesis on the influence of music, sound and performance on the poetry of G.M. Hopkins, T.S. Eliot and Dylan Thomas. In an attempt to put theory into practice, she writes song lyrics and translates for other bands, most recently for Pustki. Ola sings in Płyny, an urban-folk band from Warsaw, and Muzyka Końca Lata, a group of nostalgic neo-bigbeaters. Her own stage project involving poetry, music and image has started off recently under the name Babadag.
Tomasz Cyz, Dwutygodnik.com Editor-in-Chief, Music
t.cyz@dwutygodnik.com
born 1977, essayist, music critic. He’s trying for an honorary [honoris causa] master’s degree. Collaborator and member of the Zeszyty Literackie editorial staff. Author of books on opera: Arioso and Powroty Dionizosa [‘Dionysus returns’]. As ‘T.’ he has written the libretto for Dobromiła Jaskot’s Fredro. Playwright for Mariusz Treliński and Teatr Wielki - Polish National Opera (2005-2006), cooperates with the MALTA Festival. He has lived in Tarnów, Cracow, Poznań, and is currently based in Warsaw. In march 2010 he debuted as a director at the Łódź Opera with Antonín Dvořák’s Rusalka. He can’t swim.
Bogusław Deptuła, Art
b.deptula@dwutygodnik.com
Art historian, critic, author of exhibitions. He has contributed to Elle, Tygodnik Powszechny, Zeszyty Literackie, Res Publika Nowa. He has worked with TVP Kultura for the past few years. Free time, and any time really, turns into cooking.
Jakub Górnik, Strategy and Technology Consultant
j.gornik@dwutygodnik.com
Software engineer, entrepreneur and consultant. He graduated from Polish Japanese Institute of Information Technology with a degree in Software Engineering and studied as a visiting scholar in Japan and Italy. Curious about the business impact of technology.
Zofia Król, Deputy Editor, Literature – cooperation
z.krol@dwutygodnik.com
born 1980, she studied philosophy and Polish studies at Warsaw University. She’s writing her doctorate at the Polish Academy of Sciences’ Graduate School for Social Research. She’s occupied with the ‘attentiveness’ category in French phenomenology and 20th century Polish and American poetry (respectively: Miłosz, Białoszewski and O’Hara, W.C. Williams, Reznikoff). Author of reviews and essays, contributor to Zeszyty Literackie and Tygodnik Powszechny. When she’s not reading simple poems about things and moments, she likes to stare at still life paintings and eat pasta. She lives in Warsaw.
Juliusz Kurkiewicz, Literature
j.kurkiewicz@dwutygodnik.com
born 1979, educated as a journalist and philosopher. Literary critic. Contributor to Gazeta Wyborcza, Polityka, Zeszyty Literackie, and the literary supplement of Tygodnik Powszechny. Assistant on leave at the Polish Academy of Sciences’ Polish Language Institute. Currently reading Flaubert and Nabokov, watching movies by Malick and Coppola (the daughter), listening to Bob Dylan and Roisin Murphy. But that’s in a flux, as everything else. He lives in Warsaw. Moved from Cracow, but doesn’t miss it just yet.
Paulina Kwiatkowska, Film – cooperation
p.kwiatkowska@dwutygodnik.com
Lecturer at Warsaw University’s Polish Culture Institute. Editor-in-chief of Orgia Myśli [‘The orgy of thoughts’ www.orgiamysli.pl]. Contributor to, among other, Kwartalnik Filmowy, Nowe Książki and Dialog. She is occupied with theory and history of film and philosophy of the image. Her interest in body and image manifests in the theory of somatography, which she develops in usually modernistic film analysis. As the film section’s editor, she deliberately admits that she writes film reviews rarely, but reads them more and more often... She practises being a cinephile in a domestic environment, watching Tsai Ming-liang.
Agnieszka Słodownik, Biweekly.pl Editor-in-Chief
feedback@biweekly.pl
born 1979, Warsaw School of Social Sciences and Humanities graduate. She published a poetry book typographically designed by Wojtek Pakier. She co-created the Strefa podtekstu programme in the Polish Jazz Radio when it still existed, and was an editor of the art zine Meble. After that there was the three years at sea – the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf – and three months in the mountains – Nepal. Still running barmleczny.com, and cutting stencils for the-pigs.com. English absorbed in a Junior High School in Queens. 666% water.
Jakub Socha, Film
j.socha@dwutygodnik.com
born 1983, film theory graduate at Adam Mickiewicz University. Film critic. Krzysztof Mętrak competition winner in 2007. Co-founder of the past Gazeta Filmowa (‚Film Newspaper‘). He contributes to Film, Kino, Stopklatka. Co-author of books: Polskie kino niezależne (‚Polish independent cinema‘) and Nie chcę spać sam. Kino Tsai Ming-Lianga (‚I don’t want to sleep alone. The films of Tsai Ming-Liang‘). What’s his point? Not to be dissapointed.
Paweł Soszyński, Theatre
p.soszynski@dwutygodnik.com
born 1979, theatre anthropologist, culture researcher with an emphasis on an anegdote-gossip history of European culture. Author of the philosophical parody Tajemnice Szumina [‚Szumin’s mysteries‘] (2002) and the novel Nieżywi i leworęczni [‘Dead and left-handed’] (2004). This April brought his second novel Osoby [‘Persons’]. He has published, among other, in Dialog, Machina, Konteksty. He has been a contributor to the literary monthly Lampa for many years. Amateur of B-, and worse, horror movies. He lives in Warsaw.
Katarzyna Tórz, Side Effects
k.torz@dwutygodnik.com
born 1982 in Poznań. Warsaw University Philosophy graduate (2006). She is interested in certain theatrical manifestations (currently mostly the Flemish ones), visual anthropology in practise and complicated and ironic crossword puzzles. Co-creator of the para-artistic group niczero. She lives, thinks, and works in Warsaw.
Joanna Wichowska, Theatre – cooperation
j.wichowska@dwutygodnik.com
Theoretician and practitioner of theatre. After the theory injection at the Jagiellonian University of Cracow she worked as an actress: in Warmia (Węgajty), Lublin Voivodeship (Gardzienice), Massachusetts (Double Edge Theatre) and Warsaw (Długonogie Tancerki Wudu – ‘Leggy Voodoo Dancers’). She was an editor of op.cit magazine. Collaborator of Didaskalia. Until recently she was a literary manager of Norwid Theatre in Jelenia Góra. Prefers travelling to staying, preferably toWallachia in Serbia.
Columnists: Irena Grudzinska-Gross, James Hopkin, Jarosław Lipszyc, Chris Niedenthal, Maria Poprzęcka, Anda Rottenberg, Joanna Tokarska-Bakir, Alek Tarkowski & Mirek Filiciak
“The cover”: Filip Zagórski (#1, #11), OJTAM OJTAM group (#2), Jakub Bauman (#3), Sławomir Belina (#4), The Pigs (#5), niczero (#6), Jakub Górnik (#7), Rene Wawrzkiewicz (#8), Paweł Dunin-Wąsowicz (#9), Malwina Konopacka (#10, #13, #16), Agnieszka Słodownik (#12), enenek (#14), Ania Czarnota (#15), Michał Szuszkiewicz (#16), Maciej Boenisch (#17)
The columnists’ portraits: Twożywo group
Translators: Arthur Barys, Michał Czarniecki, Jan Szelągiewicz, Marcin Wawrzyńczak
Photo Editor: Marta Lutostańska
Proofreading: Arthur Barys
Web-design: Endorfine
Why all this?
A year after Dwutygodnik's first issue it was clear that its English version is a necessity. Why? Because we wanted to share. Hence Biweekly.pl came into existence.
But why poems, ABCs, notes? Why electric, side effects, views? Why briefly and who’s who and why? Why all this talking and writing? We came upon such a sentence: ‘culture is not an obligation, one can do very well without it’ (Kot Jeleński). And we do not dare to state otherwise.
Yet, there are those, who, for some reason, do not want to live without it. Maybe they do remember Witold Gombrowicz and, just like him, they desire culture without all this juvenility and senile atrophy, butterflies and rainbows, dust and exaltation, patriotic and pseudo-intellectual demands. We once read in his ‘Diaries’ the following words: ‘literature is threatened with becoming a soft-boiled egg, while being, which is its calling, a hard-boiled egg.’
I egg your pardon? It’s not just literature that's endangered. We try not to limit ourselves. We try to be sharp. We are ironic (but not sarcastic), we take it easy (but not painlessly) and, above all, we say: there is no obligation ‘to be cultured.’ And that’s where our slogan comes into play: link with culture. Polish culture, because that’s us, but also with all its unpredictable forms that connect through cultural supranational diversity.
So why all this?
Culture is essential, because one can live without it.
BIWEEKLY.PL – link with culture.
@john_biweekly
