books + consumerism = mésalliance Talk with Dorota Masłowska Literature When I’m here in Warsaw, reading just seems so pornographically unproductive. It’s horrible that in the time it takes to read a book, you could watch seven films and documentaries or watch 150 music videos – Dorota Masłowska about piles of books and the pornographically unproductive act of reading
My Mortality Should Touch You BY Adam Wiedemann Literature There’s no ‘using’ Szymborska. Every one of her best poems is a self-contained monad governed by its own set of secret laws, which usually end up as crude imitations when attempted by anyone else
POETRY:Dandyism Counterattacks BY Andrzej Kotański Literature Poem by Andrzej Kotański and its audio interpretation by Ola Bilińska
HALF A PAGE: On the Death of Andrzej Lepper BY Joanna Tokarska-Bakir Media Death is death is death. A cross was put up after his death, and under the cross candles were lit
SOMETHING OR OTHER:The Crevice BY Irena Grudzińska-Gross Media Where did they come from – all these young and not so young adults who remind us of what we were not so long ago? And why is this crevice so scary
Straight from Heaven, dir. Piotr Matwiejczyk BY Jakub Socha Film The theme of Smoleńsk is little more than a lure in ‘Straight from Heaven’. Matwiejczyk has built a narrative corpus that could easily be used for any other occasion
Jewish Surrealism BY Karol Sienkiewicz Art He uses humour as a tool with which to probe the resilience of social taboos. Roee Rosen in Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw till 3 July
WHO'S WHO AND WHY:Marcin Koszałka BY Agnieszka Le Nart Film ‘Film is a way for me to overcome fear, to learn to one day die with dignity. Not to cry out in panic, not to be afraid’
An Emo Opera BY Adriana Prodeus Film The aging parents’ emotional incompetence makes you want to reeducate them, but what they really need is forgiveness. The cult of immaturity, which they have fallen victim to, at times turns into patriarchal rigidity and hysteria
THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN REVISITED:B as in Bobsled BY Małgorzata Łukasiewicz Literature The Magic Mountain presents a case against what Mann called a “fatal enchantment”, the sources of which he saw in German Romanticism, in Novalis, Schopenhauer, Wagner. In fact, a sled is the perfect choice for the vehicle of the death-as-seductress
An Empty Bed BY Rafał Marszałek Film The author demands the audience’s absolute concentration. A moment of inattention would deal a deadly blow to the viewer’s perception of The Forest. And, to a certain extent, to the ambition of Dumała himself