Cezary Wąs

Krytycy sztuki zainteresowali się powierzchnią obrazu w związku ze specyficznym jej użyciem przez malarzy takich jak Jackson Pollock. Teoria Clementa Greenberga zakładała, że malarstwo abstrakcyjne posługiwało się powierzchnią obrazu w sposób odmienny od malarstwa wcześniejszych czasów. Krytyka poglądów Greenberga wykazała, że jego tezy zależne są od przekonań Hegla o logicznym rozwoju dziejów. Poglądy na temat powierzchni obrazu oparte były ponadto o założenie, iż jest ona bardziej zjawiskiem niż bytem. W doświadczaniu efektów powierzchni obrazu miały mieć udział pierwotne siły stanowiące podstawę istnienia świata. Zgodnie z tym założeniem funkcjonowanie dzieła sztuki tworzy wydarzenie w egzystencji jednostki, w którym w sposób szczególny doświadcza ona swego istnienia. Wszelkie tego rodzaju sugestie krytyków sztuki, jej historyków czy filozofów na temat sposobów funkcjonowania dzieła są jednak przede wszystkim treściami literackimi. Nie można precyzyjnie odpowiedzieć na pytanie czy są one prawdziwe ani w jakim zakresie przejawiają się w nich problemy moralne i polityczne czasów, w jakich powstały.

Książka Cień Boga w ogrodzie filozofa. Parc de La Villette w Paryżu w kontekście filozofii chôry przedstawia dyskusje filozoficzne, jakie
towarzyszyły projektowaniu rozległego parku w paryskiej dzielnicy La Villette. Zrąb założeń teoretycznych parku stanowiły teksty Bernarda Tschumiego, w których kwestionował on tradycyjne sposoby tworzenia
dzieła architektury, postulując w zamian zastosowanie długiego szeregu negacji porównywalnych z objawami kryzysu metafizyki charakterystycznego dla współczesnej filozofii. Nie jest zatem przypadkiem, że w publikacji zawierającej tekst teoretyczny Tschumiego na temat Parku de La Villette znalazł się też esej Jacques’a Derridy rozwijający niektóre z koncepcji projektanta parku. Kolejnym etapem włączania filozofii w proces projektowania założenia był cykl
dyskusji Petera Eisenmana z Derridą, które całkowicie przeniosły tworzenie parku w świat myśli, bez akcentowania potrzeby ich realizacji
w rzeczywistości materialnej. Głównym tematem tych dyskusji był problem chôry, podjęty przez późniejszych komentatorów i wykorzystany
do interpretacji parku jako dzieła, w którym przejawia się filozofia początku odnosząca się do spraw polityki, moralności i religii. Park
został zatem zinterpretowany jako przestrzeń inwencji w zakresie tworzenia nowych zasad funkcjonowania wspólnoty i demokracji. Myślenie o przyszłości politycznej może jednak przekraczać
horyzont zwykłych oczekiwań. Chociaż poglądy filozoficzne zawsze złączone były z problemami współczesności, a metafizyka niekiedy
splatała się z bieżącą polityką, to zarazem do obyczajów filozofii należało także przekraczanie horyzontów i refleksja o całkowitej Inności
i Niemożliwości. Rozważania na ich temat przesunęły dyskusję w stronę tradycji teologii apofatycznej i współczesnych dociekań dotyczących
wiary i religii. Parc de La Villette zyskał wtedy nowe postsekularne znaczenia, które umożliwiają przypisanie mu funkcji świątyni Inności (L’Autre) i Niemożliwości (Impossible

Pomniki występowały w kulturach starożytnego Bliskiego Wschodu w różnorodnych formach i funkcjach.
Nawet w najstarszych kulturach znajdowały zastosowanie monumenty o formach figuralnych
(jak posągi), w postaci obrobionych geometrycznie kamieni (jak stele, obeliski czy piramidy), ale także jako dzieła architektury (jak tzw. twierdza Sargona). Funkcje, jakie spełniały dzieła pomnikowe, były wielorakie, bowiem upamiętnianiu czy uwiecznianiu, zatem funkcjom podstawowym, towarzyszyły funkcje kształtowania zbiorowego wyobrażenia o początku pewnego okresu historycznego, wskazywania na pochodzenie władzy czy podsumowywania długotrwałych doświadczeń prawnych. Niektóre formy i motywy ikonograficzne jeszcze z okresu predynastycznego Egiptu utrwaliły się w późniejszych epokach, następnie przeniesione zostały do sztuki europejskiej i przetrwały tam aż do końca czasów nowożytnych.

Intensive relations between philosophical deconstruction and architecture, which were present in the late 1980s and early 1990s, belong to the past and therefore may be described from a greater than before distance. Within these relations three basic variations can be distinguished:
the first one, in which philosophy of deconstruction deals with architectural terms but does not interfere with real architecture,
the second one, in which a collaboration between Jacques Derrida and a group of architects interested in his concepts is commenced,
and the third one, in which completed or only designed objects or new concepts of deconstruction created by architects gain their supremacy over philosophy.
The following book analyses these three possible ways, first of all with the reference to Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi.

The term “style” was associated with the periodization of art and architecture in Johann Joachim Winckelmann’s work Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums (1764). Despite the passage of time, many elements of Winckelmann’s theory in hidden form remained valid in the following epochs. The influence of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s philosophy led to the belief that the circumstances of the creation of a work of art affect its forms and contents. This view was argued by art historians in the late 1960s. Criticism of historicism in humanistic research was initially carried out under the influence of the philosophy of science of Karl Raimund Popper. At that time, the beliefs about the existence of ideological values of subsequent epochs that determine the forms and content of works of art were rejected. Another form of criticism of historicism stemmed from the philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer, who recognized that a work of art actualizes the message of tradition in contact with the viewer. A critique of historicism in architecture, based on Popper, can be found in the work of David Watkin. The errors in the historiography of modernist architecture were characterized by Panayotis Tournikiotis. He showed contradictions in the definition of avant-garde modernism that occurred in the first two generations of his historians. Today, however, the concepts of styles still contain threads of thought reaching back to Winckelmann and Hegel. The basic feature of the functioning of contemporary styles in architecture is their historicism reaching beyond history, and therefore not so much imitation of old forms, but rather a critical examination of the intellectual foundations of architecture.

A collection of nine letters from the Catholic theologian Romano Guardini to his friend Fr. Josef Weiger was published in 1927. In Mies van der Rohe's library of several hundred items, it was a book that he used to formulate the basic principles of his own architecture. The aim of the article is to present the content of Guardini's book and its influence on the views and work of Mies van der Rohe. The architect's insightful monographs, especially the book by Fritz Neumeyer, accurately document the relationship between the theologian's statements and attempts to adapt them to the theory of architecture. The more recent analysis of these relationships presented in the article leads to the conclusion that Mies van der Rohe set himself the task of finding a pure spirit in the world of pure abstractions. His creative involvement was a form of contemplating and developing forces which, although contained in nature or technology, can also be considered transcendent.

Wszelka metafizyka jest niemożliwa do pomyślenia bez swych niemal równoczesnych negacji , jednak filozofia Maurice’a Merleau-Ponty’ego (1908-1961) jest częścią nurtu, w którym krytyka podstawowych założeń myślowych prowadzona była z pełnym rozmysłem i wolą stworzenia nowych interpretacji podstawowych pojęć filozoficznych, w tym zwłaszcza pojęcia bytu. Przypadek filozofii Merleau-Ponty’ego wskazuje na jeszcze jedną możliwość: silna polemika z określoną tradycją metafizyczną, a taką była właśnie myśl tego filozofa, w wielu szczegółach powtarza podejścia, które kwestionuje a ostatecznie tworzy koncepcje kreujące nową metafizykę opartą o nieprzekonujące założenia. Siła tej filozofii zawarta jest w jej słabościach: zastosowane negacje, chociaż uwikłane w powtórzenia stanowisk, które krytykowały, pozostawiły jednak ślad w historii myśli a nieukończone wywody otworzyły nowe możliwości rozwiązywania problemów, które nie zostały w niej rozwiązane.

Cities played a major role in human civilization, but there have been major changes in their forms. Throughout their long history, they have exhibited characteristics that contradict each other. Historians, noticing the differences in the properties of cities, pointed to their many types. The decisive division assumed that "oriental" cities are ruled by autocratic regimes, while "western" cities are liberal and democratic. This kind of division was often questioned, especially because it seemed that liberal-democratic systems had finally dominated world politics in the late 20 th century. The turn of the 21 st century showed that such predictions were not correct. Rem Koolhaas' theory of Generic Cities demonstrates that there has been an unexpected change and that city forms in which Western culture values are irrelevant are now gaining importance.

Underwater cities of the 20th and 21st c.: between utopia, experiment and commercial proposal
The projects of underwater cities in the second half of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st c. represent changes in the world of ideas and technical capabilities of that time. Optimism and competition between great powers and political systems dominated in the 1960s. The designs of this period were characterized by faith in the unlimited possibilities of civilization development. In later years, the development of science and technical capabilities had an impact on the courage of projects. Towards the end of the 20th c., environmental protection problems began to be included in projects. At that time, the calculation of possible profits turned out to be the decisive factor in the implementation of the projects.

The history of sacral buildings in Lower and Upper Silesia in the period after the end of World War II begins with the reconstruction of the Gothic cathedral in Wroclaw, destroyed during the siege of Wrocław by the Red Army in spring 1945. The renovation of the cathedral in 1946-1949, took place during conditions of the Communist Party's struggle to gain full political power and striving to weaken the role of the Church. In 1951, state authorities interfered in the structure of the Church through election of a person submissive to the new state system as vicar general. Consecration of the restored cathedral of St. John the Baptist in 1951 was therefore held during the intensification of communist terror and now can also be considered as part of the collective memory of the times of Stalinism. All important works of sacred architecture built in later times were associated with political events in Poland in a similar way.
After October 1956, when the first phase of liberalization of the socialist system came to an end, the authorities initially issued permits to build new churches, and soon returned to their vision of building a completely secular society. The plans for establishing new churches were treated as inciting the backward masses against the modern state. Clergymen building churches were arrested under false allegations and even when they succeeded in completing the erected objects, part of their ideological content is the memory of the persecution of their builders (Chorzów: the church of St. Florian and the church of the Holy Spirit).
The next waves of building new churches took place after the tragic events of December 1976 (the church in Siechnice near Wrocław, the Holy Spirit in Wrocław), after the wave of protests in June 1976 (the church at the Millennium housing estate in Katowice), after the Solidarity revolution in August 1980 (church in the Popowice estate in Wrocław). After the declaration of martial law in December 1981, military commissioners sought to avoid social tensions and massively granted permits to erect thousands of sacral buildings throughout Poland. A characteristic feature of this period is the church of St. Barbara in Giszowiec - Katowice district. When the parliamentary and political system in Poland changed in June 1989, most of the needs in the sphere of sacral architecture had been met.
The history of subsequent periods of building new churches, which have always been rooted in tragic historical events, is closed by the Church of Christ the Redeemer of the World, the first in half a century without a cultural link to political events in Poland.

The „Athens Charter” is a document that exists in several versions and none of them should be ignored. Learning about the differences between these versions provides knowledge about important controversies in the group of participants in the IV CIAM Congress. The analysis of discussions in the period preceding the IV Congress shows that some CIAM members were not convinced by Le Corbusier's vision of building towers among park spaces and did not share this architect's contempt for the traditional form of urban development. Balanced position in the final version of the „Findings” (Constatations/Feststellungen) undertaken at the congress and reinforced in the publication „The Ahens Charter” by Le Corbusier in 1943 gained different interpretations in the construction practice.
Some planners limited themselves to building one tower in the new housing estate and intended it for the poorer or lonely. It was supposed to be a clear margin in larger built-up areas. Much more often, however, other extreme solutions were used and large housing estates based entirely on high-rise buildings were built. Only this one example shows that the practical application of the principles of the charter was subject to modifications depending on specific economic, political or psychological conditions. It is yet an undeniable fact that for many residents of modernist housing estates, living in high-rise buildings was the realization of their aspirations.
A study of the circumstances in which the congress on the steam ship was prepared shows that the CIAM environment was only one of many organisations representing architects and urban planners in the first half of the 20th century. It was not decisive and was also contested by some more leftist architects (such as André Lurçat) or artists (such as Karel Teige), for whom even Le Corbusier's proposals had a „bourgeois” character. All foreign designers working in the USSR during the preparation of the Congress abandoned their loyalty to modernism in a situation where the aesthetic preferences of the „working people of cities and villages” became identical the views of Stalin and his immediate circle . For these very reasons the congress was boycotted by the „May's Brigade”. The retreat from the avant-garde in the West and East coincided with the rise of right-wing dictatorships in the West and the change in the form of communism in the USSR. The Second World War period permanently dispersed the internationally of architects, although after the end of the war their ideas gained in importance. The need to quickly rebuild Europe's raids-damaged cities, industrial development and the general economic boom have all contributed to hasty urbanisation processes, in which radical views have become very important. A founding member of the CIAM, André Lurçat, who from 1934 to 1937 worked in the USSR and represented communist views, after the war became one of the most important advisors to the French Ministry of Reconstruction and Urban Development (Ministère de la Reconstruction et de l'Urbanisme). Situations in which advocates of avant-garde modernism took up key positions in urban institutions took place in many European countries, including Poland.
The problems resulting from accelerated development of cities could be solved both by maintaining the continuity of their historical development and by using radical healing measures.  The extremist solutions proposed by the CIAM modernist community had value as an element of theoretical discussions and a projection of the future.  In specific variations, such as the Voisin plan or the Korn and Samuel's plan, they were almost utopian and in the case of Le Corbusier's idea also authoritarian. In social life, however, the inclinations to authoritarianism are probably greater than the willingness to record them in historiography. Adopting political or urban solutions in which the significance of individual freedom is diminished should not be surprising, and totalitarian fantasies are not only a product of individuals or groups, but also an expression of collective will. In mass societies, freedom is less necessary than meeting the demands of everyday life. There are probably many reasons that have influenced the identity of collective aspirations for rational organization of political life and excessive rationality in urban planning.
Urban planners were never only utopians, politicians were never only autocrats, and democratic solutions established in the law prompt to take into account less rational factors in social creation. Urban plans that maintained the continuity of city development and protected its peculiarities developed simultaneously with radically modernist plans, and over time they also gained their doctrinal formulas. The revolutionary manifestos of the 1930s have now found a counterbalance in the conservative doctrines represented by the so-called new urbanism, the writings of Leon Krier and many other neo-traditionalist theorists. However, in relation to the number of new towns still under construction with modernist features, the number of settlements with conservative character is much smaller. They are also not devoid of shortcomings. Considering the current state of urban planning, it should be assumed that a modernist city is not a result of the spirit of modernity, nor of individual or group doctrines, but rather an economically and socially simple solution to the needs of collective life in a civilization saturated with the values of rationalism and the cult of science and technology.

Leon Podsiadly, while teaching sculpture at the Academy of Art and Design in Wroclaw, educated many students, a large number of whom achieved considerable artistic success. The creation of an atmosphere enabling the development of individual talents proved to be an exceptionally apt choice of educational path. The artists of the master’s circle both created great public monuments and expanded the concept of sculpture in unexpected directions.

W filmach gatunku science fiction z II poł. XX i początku XXI w. zawartych zostało wiele wizji przyszłości, które były jednocześnie refleksją nad osiągnięciami i mankamentami współczesności. W latach 60. XX w. w dziełach kinematografii dominował optymizm i wiara w możliwość nigdy nie kończącego się postępu. Przewidywano zanik podziałów politycznych między blokami państw i wspólną eksplorację kosmosu. Scenografowie podejmowali współpracę z naukowcami, która przejawiała się w ukazywaniu kosmicznych konstrukcji dalece przewyższających realne możliwości techniczne. Poczynając od lat 70. XX w. w filmach zaczął narastać pesymizm i przekonanie, że przyszłość przyniesie przede wszystkim nasilenie negatywnych zjawisk teraźniejszości. Obawy przed przyszłością nasycone były wskazaniem na różne możliwe defekty i nierozwiązywalne sprzeczności między nimi. Kiedy zatem pewna część dystopijnych wizji obrazowała zagrożenie wzrostem przestępczości, to inna przedstawia przyszłość jako nasyconą mechanizmami kontroli państwowej i powszechnością inwigilacji. Pokazywane na ekranach lęki wzbudzał także przez rozrost wielkich korporacji, zwłaszcza zaś zyskiwanie przez nie wpływów politycznych czy też pozostawanie poza systemem demokracji. Twórcy filmów przedstawiali też swoje przypuszczenia związane z tworzeniem przez korporacje nowych rodzajów broni, których stosowanie przekraczało aktualne normy prawne. Szczególne zastrzeżenia dotyczyły badań nad bronią biologiczną i możliwością rozprzestrzenienia się śmiercionośnych wirusów. Trwogę wzbudził ponadto rozwój robotyki i badań nad sztuczną inteligencją, której skutkiem musiało być pojawienie się androidów i nieuchronnych napięć w ich relacjach z ludźmi. Osobnym problemem stały się dla filmowców hybrydy będące połączeniem ludzi i części elektronicznych. Podobnie zastanawiał scenarzystów i reżyserów rozwój inżynierii genetycznej, który prowadził do tworzenia zmutowanych osobników ludzkich. Pewna część filmowych dystopii rozważała możliwość upadku systemów demokratycznych i rozwoju w ich miejsce reżimów autorytarnych, często w oparciu o szerokie poparcie społeczne. W obrębie tej odmiany dystopii mieszczą się także filmy przestawiające konsekwencje współczesnego hedonizmu i konsumpcjonizmu. Problemem jest jednak, iż dzieła krytyczne wobec wymienionych zjawisk same bywały reklamami atrakcyjnych produktów.

BOHDAN LACHERT’S ARCHITECTURAL TREATY: SUMMA OF AVANT-GARDE MYTHS OR RECORD OF EXPERIENCES?
Bohdan Lachert’s architectural treaty is a summary of the attitudes manifested in the environment of architects of the avant-garde modernist trend in Poland. In the pre-war period, Lachert belonged to the group of the most outstanding initiators of modern architecture and experts in the theory of modern art. He cultivated his creativity by displaying strong emotional commitment, which he considered a decisive factor in architectural work. In the post-war period, he encountered restrictions in his activities resulting from the doctrine of socialist realism. At the end of the 1950s, he decided to write down his beliefs taking into account contemporary historiography and philosophy. The prepared treaty did not play a major role in the history of Polish architecture due to the small role of independent architectural attitudes in the political system of real socialism. The current publication of the treaty makes it possible to see in it not only a document of two past eras, but also a work that contains elements coinciding with contemporary intellectual trends.

In the traditional sense, a work of art creates an illustration of the outside world, or of a certain text or doctrine. Sometimes it is considered that such an illustration is not literal, but is an interpretation of what is visible, or an interpretation of a certain literary or ideological message. It can also be assumed that a work of art creates its own visual world, a separate story or a separate philosophical statement. The Parc de La Villette represents the last of these possibilities: it is a philosophical statement that develops the premises derived from poststructuralist philosophies and the philosophy of deconstruction. The uniqueness of its being status, however, is that it does so not only at the level of the theoretical assumptions, but also through its functioning as an active philosophical work. This means that a park is a happening philosophy. Its activity, however, does not refer only to the present tense, but is also an attempt to penetrate the future, all otherness and impossibility. This kind of activity assumes that the work, in a sense, does not yet fully exist, but is also still produced in the processes of its interpretation.
The theoretical foundations of the park included texts by Bernard Tschumi, in which he questioned traditional ways of creating a work of architecture, postulating in return the use of a long series of negations, which were comparable to the crisis of metaphysics characteristic of contemporary philosophy. It is therefore no coincidence that the publication containing Tschumi’s theoretical text on Parc de La Villette was accompanied by an essay by Jacques Derrida developing some of the architect’s concepts. The next step in integrating philosophy into the process of park design was a series of discussions between Peter Eisenman and Derrida, who completely moved the creation of the park into the world of thoughts, without accentuating the need for their realization in the material reality. The main topic of these discussions was the problem of the chôra, which was taken up by later commentators and used to interpret the park as a work in which the philosophy of the beginning is manifested relating to issues of politics, morality and religion. The park was therefore interpreted as a space of invention within the scope of creating new rules of functioning of the community and democracy. Thinking about the political future may, however, exceed the horizon of ordinary expectations. Although philosophical thought is always connected with contemporary problems and metaphysics sometimes intertwines with current politics, yet at the same time the customs of philosophy also include crossing horizons and thinking about absolute otherness and impossibility.
Initially, the chôra, différance, Absolute Otherness (tout autre) and the Impossibile were concepts of pure philosophy of atheistic character, but with the further development of the discussion, more and more theological motifs began to emerge. One of the reasons for this phenomenon was the fact that radical negations of all being, which were contemplated in contemporary philosophy (by Heidegger and Derrida, among others), had previously been manifested in negative and apophatic theologies (by Master Eckhart, among others). Also the category of the “Other”, taken from Emmanuel Levinas, was clearly connected with the thought about God. A further reason for connecting the chôra with the theological thought was the interest in the philosophy of deconstruction expressed by some theologians. Caputo in particular managed to persuade Derrida to participate in discussions on the current status of religion. In the late period of Derrida’s writing, further statements on religious topics appeared. All these reasons led to posing a question about the identity of the chôra and God. Although there were no satisfactory conclusions on this issue, the discussion was also important to create an interpretation of the park as a place of worship.
The chôra, representing, according to Plato, the preoriginal emptiness is the place of every beginning, but it turns out that it is not neutral to the being created in it. The chôra deposits itself in every being as an irremovable beginning that interferes with its stability. The chôra, therefore, forces us into a palintropical movement, but it also turns out to be a pure compulsion, an erring necessity and a fundamental force from which, in the human perception, motifs useful to the individual and to the community are extracted. All definitions of this force, including its anthropomorphisation,
are formulated in such a way that they allow for building private and collective morality upon them. Such definitions are changed depending on variable political situations. It is difficult to determine whether in the processes of changes in the formulation of “God’s names” any essential value is retained, which is not subject to change. The current definitions of
the chôra (God?), which can be found, for example, in the philosophy of Caputo, stress that she is a combination of various and contradictory forces. This characteristic inherits much of Plato’s concept, reminds us of Master Eckhart’s views on Gottheit and, at the same time, is not unfamiliar to Tschumi, whose essays were an apologia of contradictions. The current concept of chôra, transferred into the sphere of politics, is the praise of social diversity and the protection of the difference from the forces of order. In the Parc de La Villette, the future community and democracy were elevated as a system of safe existence of individuals in all their singularity. The park is a temple of a future community in which individual beings have nothing in common.

In the texts that presented the theoretical assumptions of the Parc de La Villette, Bernard Tschumi used a large number of terms that contradicted not only the traditional principles of composing architecture, but also negated the rules of social order and the foundations of Western metaphysics. Tschumi’s statements, which are a continuation of his leftist political fascinations from the May 1968 revolution, as well as his interest in the philosophy of French poststructuralism and his collaboration with Jacques Derrida, prove that terms such as disruption, dissociation, disfunction, disjunctions and dispersion not only referred to architectural problems but also applied to political criticism and the deepest foundations of thinking itself. His collaboration with Derrida manifested itself primarily in the publication La Case Vide: La Villette, 1985, in which the architect’s design drawings and texts explaining his concepts related to the Park de La Villette were accompanied by an extensive essay by Derrida, which included theoretical problems taken up by Tschumi in a philosophical context. Architectural and philosophical issues were also combined during seven discussion meetings organised by Peter Eisenman, invited by Tschumi to collaborate on the design of the Parc de La Villette. Eisenman, who, like Tschumi, invited Derrida to participate in the design of the park and also led to the publication of Chora L Works: Jacques Derrida and Peter Eisenman, in which his ideas were confronted with Derrida’s philosophical text. In this case, Derrida’s essay was not a direct commentary on the architect’s concepts, but rather a reflection on the question of the chôra presented by Plato in Timaeus. During the discussion and in his essay, Derrida pointed out that the chôra is a component of the created world, yet it does not belong to it, but precedes it. The originality of the chôra is so radical that she also precedes all the factors of creating the world, including ideas and the Demiurge. Thus a thesis appeared in the metaphysics of the West that the chôra is a form of active abyss, in relation to which all beings are secondary, both those perfect (as ideas or God) and those created, such as the world, things, people or language. This leads to the conclusion that the chôra does not exist, because all existence is a derivative of the chôra. Nor could the chôra be described, since it is a form of developing a space that is preceded by a lack of space characteristic of the chôra.
Derrida intended the chôra to be an instance with an exceptional degree of transcendentalism, an anti-metaphysical instance, but also an a-theological one. However, this attempt failed, both in the field of secular philosophy and in the field of theology. Derrida’s characteristics of the chôra to strengthen its transcendentalism and negation of metaphysics had to be expressed in a language that immediately produces new concepts and a new metaphysics that reproduces the categories of the beginning, the origin or the foundation known from earlier philosophical traditions. All forms of criticism of metaphysics are also inspired by negative, apophatic and mystical theology. The undermining of many concepts of permanent meaning and the introduction of new concepts of unstable meaning, characteristic of the philosophy of deconstruction, had many features of originality, but it was directed towards problems whose solutions repeat, with the use of new vocabulary, the findings known in culture since Democritus. Thus, if apophatic philosophy can be regarded as deconstruction avant la lettre, then deconstruction itself in its late versions began to take on the features of a new religion.
The exchange of inspiration between theology and deconstruction was manifested in a series of scientific conferences and publications in which Derrida’s philosophical concepts were interpreted within the scope of religious thought. Theological threads began to be found in such concepts of deconstruction as différance or the chôra, while at the same time Derrida himself undertook in his philosophy to study problems such as the Other (L’Autre) or Impossible (Impossible), which belonged to newer theological traditions. As a consequence of the new problems, the deconstruction became closer to the features of a new religion. Philosophy, at least from Kant’s time, has tried to create a system that would take over from religion the tasks of setting moral and political goals. Similarly, Derrida has directed his interest towards the problems of democracy and ethics, which would enable their renewal. Attempts to create a new religion (cleared of old metaphors), a new community or a new democracy bring problems and threats which may be no less troublesome than the previous systems. All promises of freedom carry with them threats, the greater the more they strive for perfection. The renewal of existential orders, sometimes carried out by means of violent changes, is a certain repetitive feature of human cultures. Deep changes, however, do not protect against the return of both old gods and old demons.
Tschumi and Derrida were shaped in their youth by the atmosphere of leftist rebellion against the moral and political limitations of ossified communities and the imperfections of democracy. The ethical theme distinguishes many of their works, including the Parc de La Villette. The opposition to the metaphysical traditions of philosophy and architecture contained in this park was prompted by specific political situations and resulted from bringing political issues to the level of philosophical considerations. Achievements made at the level of pure concepts were then subject to elevation, to a kind of sacralization, which made them religious concepts. The deconstruction reached for the stratus of the new religion especially when it found its followers and began to generate moral obligations. In the new situation, terms such as the chôra, l’autre or the Impossible were absolutized and in relation to them a cult and attitude of adoration emerged. The Parc de La Villtette then gained new post-secular meanings, which allow it to be assigned the function of a Temple of Otherness (L’Autre) and Impossible.

Tschumi believes that the quality of architecture depends on the theoretical factor it contains. Such a view led to the creation of architecture that would achieve visibility and comprehensibility only after its interpretation. On his way to creating such an architecture he took on a purely philosophical reflection on the basic building block of architecture, which is space. In 1975, he wrote an essay entitled Questions of Space, in which he included several dozen questions about the nature of space. The questions he formulated could be regarded as analogous to the situation in the philosophy of the time, in which the interest in questioning the most obvious forms of understanding the world and intellectual categories increased. The research on space is an area common to many fields of natural sciences, humanities and artistic creation, but it also deals with other problems, such as issues of experience. The concept of space-time continuum proposed by Hermann Minkowski drew attention to the identity of time and space with the events taking place. Probably regardless of the postulates of physicists commenting on Einstein’s discoveries, also in philosophy it increased the importance of the concept of the event which became dominant in Heidegger’s latest work Contributions of Philosophy. Of the event. Furthermore, Tschumi’s reflections on space entered into relation with the problem of experience, which aroused the interest of a group of French philosophers trying to assimilate Georges Bataille’s concept of “inner experience”. Both Tschumi and Derrida referred to Bataille because his views could be used not only to modify the concept of the subject, but also to change the understanding of what constitutes the area of architecture. The discussion on experience has led to the recognition that the subject is not sovereign, but actually a form of what is on their outside. Such insights make it possible to treat the area of the Parc de La Villette as existing mainly when it is organised by its users. The decisive features of the Park are its assumptions, according to which it is a variety of active void that leads to agreeing new social relations with it. The park does not force to participate in already existing moral or political communities, but tries to move into an unknown future in which the scope of free functioning of individuals will be increased. Doubts about the principles of functioning of the individual self and its discovery as a whole composed of non-coherent parts, as well as its dependence on its own depth full of disordered forces, influenced the understanding of architecture as a set of contradictions whose source is a fundamental void anticipating the empty phenomenal space. The use of this phenomenal void in architecture, as well as the rejection of the whole and unity, had a specific political purpose and drew its inspiration from political analyses. In the Parc de La Villette, metaphysics and politics were brought closer together because the philosophy of void was used to create new conditions for community action. It can be argued that the source of this philosophy was the perception of errors in existing societies dependent on the shortcomings of traditional metaphysics. Spacing (espacement) was one of the key terms in Derrida’s philosophy, which was also combined with the concepts of différance and chôra. The study of the nature of space, especially its transition from the level of pure possibility to the level of sensual phenomenon, also contributes to understanding how well designed space can have an impact on its audience. This explanation is based on Tschumi’s assumption that the space of the Parc de La Villette contradicts the integrating approaches and instead exposes contradictions, but it does so in a way that combines incompatible properties into a single piece of architecture.
The specificity of such integration is similar to the invention of a musical phrase, which is an ideological message: moral and political. Such a thesis may raise doubts, however, if both the clearly adopted assumptions and those deduced from the work allow for their logically ordered presentation then to a limited extent it may be assumed that the work has achieved a connection between a specific philosophy of space and its practical application. Derrida combined the problem of spatiality with the problem of transcendental imagination in Kant’s philosophy, who in the first version of Critique of Pure Reason assumed that pure imagination precedes the appearance of time and space, even in their transcendental forms. The imagination in such a situation can be described as a factor activating time and space, which indicates what function is played by movement in this activity. This leads us to recognize that the ultra originary source of pure forms of sensual intuition is movement, which in early Greek philosophy was identified with void and its lack of resistance to phenomena
occurring in it. Derrida’s philosophy in search of a certain super-transcendental source of time and space pointed to différance which, like void or the chôra, does not have material features or even any other form of being. Différance is the primary cause of the disruption of motionlessness and the introduction of activity into motionless time and space, thus its activity can be described as spacing (espacement). Derrida’s discoveries in this respect are not entirely original, because Hegel already pointed out when examining the present that it is primarily a differential relation (differente Beziehung), which, being seemingly neutral, influences the present with supernatural force and makes it unidentifiable with itself. Differente Beziehung must similarly influence the originary space, negating its initial character by multiplying its divisions and expanding its boundaries. Différance acts by revealing contradictions wherever there is apparent undifferentiation. Tschumi, composing the Parc de La Villette as a variety of void and a set of incompatible layers, followed the rules of différance
or the chôra: he made void visible together with its saturation with contradictions. If space can be considered to be the result of the activity of difference, such activity has a certain regularity, which influences the behaviour of its observers. Differences or contradictions fall into a certain rhythm, which can be considered a manifestation of transcendent order. The problem is that what can be considered the source of such order, namely the logos or God, is partly disorder and error. According to descriptions contained in Timaeus, the world is a combination of forces that drive to order with forces of erroneous necessity that resounds in every order and forces it to return to disorder. Derrida denied the possibility of understanding différance as a theological value, even if it were a negative or apophatic theology, but no categorical denial could be perfect. The assumption that différance or the chôra are not endowed with any substance properties cannot deny their activity, and thus a certain force. Already since Democritus, philosophy has multiplied the names of such a force and the contradictory variety of its manifestations, never forgetting also the necessity for reason to withdraw from the possibility of giving its correct characteristics. Such a withdrawal may be interpreted as an expression of respect and, in certain situations, as a cult of the force that precedes reasonableness. The Parc de La Villette, which is an artistic divagation about the contradictions and forces behind them, can be considered as a place of their sublimation, and therefore as a variation of the temple of what differs from order and disorder.

The Shadow of God in the Garden of the Philosopher. The Parc de La Villette in Paris in the context of philosophy of chôra
In the period from the Antiquity to the Renaissance, the dialogue Timaeus was the most frequently commented work of Plato. At present, the most frequently discussed is the issue of the chôra included in it, which aroused fascination among philosophers, researchers of rhetoric, religion, feminism, and moreover, architecture. The work on the chôra also influenced the development of the interpretation of the Parc de La Villette, among which the topics related to the beginning and the change were highlighted. In early uses of the word “chôra” in Greek, as in Homer’s XVIII book of Iliad, it meant both dancing and a place to dance. On this occasion, it can be seen that it is not possible to determine which phenomenon took precedence in the creation of the name. It cannot be denied, however, that the word concerned a specific movement, as if circular and returning to an indefinable beginning. Despite the gaining more and more general meanings, the word chôra has retained its connection with the dance of people on the threshing floor, the dance of bees (choros melton) or the dance of stars (choros astron). In Timaeus, the chôra is a space filled with movement with an effect similar to shaking the sieve to husk the grain: it separates similar elements from the dissimilar ones. The juxtaposition of the Parc de La Villette and the chôra already at this stage leads to the suggestion that the park was treated by the architect as a place of dynamic changes leading to the establishment of new social solutions. In his statements, the architect confirmed that the park was to be a space of new politics and ethics. The book by Julia Kristeva La Révolution du langage poétique contributed to the spread of the belief that works of art can play a role as factors of political revolution. In this work, the author put forward the thesis that the chôra is a kind of space, the character of which has a destructive influence on attempts to conclude language games. The chôra gives beginning to words, but at the same time, by leaving a trace of this beginning it forces us to renew their meanings. The chôra understood in this way, turns out to be an irremovable beginning, to which one has to return all the time. Kristeva found manifestations of the chôra’s activity in avant-garde French poetry, to which she attributed the role of a mediator between criticism of metaphysics and aspirations for social change. The chôra, violating the language, introduces some voids into it, as if traces of the abyss, which direct the consciousness towards understanding the necessity of political changes. The Parc de La Villette was to pursue similar objectives in the city space. In his essays, Bernard Tschumi considered the problems of creating spaces that would give rise to a radical democracy. The proposed rebellious spaces should have the characteristics of a void, in which contradictory forces would occur as forms of pure activity. The means of achieving this goal was to concentrate contradictions and make them visible. The Parc de La Villette was supposed to collect differences as indelible and at the same time by showing them it was supposed to raise awareness of the social world as a conglomerate of differences. Saturation of the space of the park with subversive values results from the character of this space suppressed in the consciousness, as well as from the social diversity which has not been taken into account so far.
The main contradictions contained in space relate to the division that exists between its presentation as a mental problem and a sensual one. The park was the deliberate creation of a place that transcends such a division and creates a separate space for negotiation between architectural theories and its practical applications. The purpose of the park was to become a place of future events, which would not hide their conflicting character coming from diversity of both space and society. The method of composition usually aimed at achieving a harmonious whole has been replaced by Tschumi with a system of juxtapositions of non-coherent elements or those resulting from variations and transformations. Tschumi did not seek direct influence on politics in the Parc de La Villette, but made room for thinking about the possibilities of the future. He introduced problems rather than showed solutions to them. The task of the park was to put the principles of architecture into a kind of vibration that would inspire users to participate in the new community.

The Shadow of God in the Garden of the Philosopher. Parc de La Villette in Paris in the context of contemporary philosophical concerns. Part I

Bernard Tschumi’s project of the Parc de La Villette could have won the competition and was implemented thanks to the political atmosphere that accompanied the victory of the left-wing candidate in the French presidential elections in 1981. François Mitterand’s revision of the political programme and the replacement of radical reforms with the construction of prestigious architectural objects and urban assumptions in the French capital gave Tschumi a unique opportunity to realize ideas that polemicized with traditional forms of social life, questioned the basic principles of architecture and included architectural work in the philosophical disputes over the issues of metaphysics. Tschumi’s theoretical assumptions put forward during the design of the Parc de La Villette highlighted the questions of conflict between the main components of the project and suggested that the intensification of differences was analogous to Derrida’s creation of the concept of différance. It was this philosopher who in a special commentary to Derrida’s project also introduced the concept of maintenant, which aimed at demonstrating that the architect’s polemical inclinations remain in a hidden balance with his inclinations to affirmation of architectural principles. During the discussion between Derrida and Peter Eisenman, who was to take part in the design of the Parisian park, the concept of the chôra was also put forward, which in the course of the debate led to an additional confusion of architectural and philosophical problems.

CEZARY WAS (University of Wroclaw) / The Tannhäuser Gate. Architecture in science fiction films of the second half of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century as a component of utopian and dystopian projections of the future

The films of science fiction genre from the second half of the 20th and early 21st century contained many visions of the future, which were at the same time a reflection on the achievements and deficiencies of modern times. In 1960s, cinematographic works were dominated by optimism and faith in the possibility of never-ending progress. The disappearance of political divisions between the blocs of states and the joint exploration of the cosmos was foreseen. The designers undertook cooperation with scientists, which manifested itself in showing cosmic constructions far exceeding the real technical capabilities. Starting from the 1970s, pessimism and the belief that the future will bring, above all, the intensification of negative phenomena of the present began to grow in films. Fears of the future were connected with indicating various possible defects and insoluble contradictions between them. When, therefore, some dystopian visions illustrated the threat of increase in crime, others depicted the future as saturated with state control mechanisms and the prevalence of surveillance. The fears shown on the screens were also aroused by the growth of large corporations, especially by their gaining political influence or staying outside the system of democracy. The authors of the films also presented their suspicions related to the creation of new types of weapons by corporations, the use of which might breach the current legal norms. Particular objections concerned research on biological weapons and the possible spread of lethal viruses. The development of robotics and research into artificial intelligence, which must have resulted in the appearance of androids and inevitable tensions in their relations with humans, also triggered fear. Another problem for film-makers has become hybrids that are a combination of people and electronic parts. Scriptwriters and directors likewise considered the development of genetic engineering, which led
to the creation of mutant human beings. A number of film dystopias contemplated the possibility of the collapse of democratic systems and the development of authoritarian regimes in their place, often based on broad public support. This kind of dystopia also includes films presenting the consequences of contemporary hedonism and consumerism. The problem is, however, that works critical of these phenomena were themselves advertisements for attractive products.

Holy Place – Sacred Space – Area of Transcendence. Transformations of the concept of cult sites in the 20th century
In the concept of space devoted to places of religious worship in the 20th century there were changes that lowered the rank of the oldest traditions. In addition to understanding a space in which a temple was erected as a “holy place”, the concepts of “sacred space” and “area of transcendence” emerged.
The most enduring custom of locating a sanctuary was linked to the necessity of commemorating a place of a direct manifestation of a divine being, as described in the Book of Genesis (Genesis 28: 16–19), where the Patriarch Jacob dedicated a stone that became the instrument of God’s revelation and made it the prototype temple. A similar custom was also characteristic of pagan religions, but already in the fourth century it was incorporated into the Christian rite. The practice of shaping a building as a place directly connected with a holy being was also consolidated by the rule, characteristic of the beginning of the Christian architecture, of consecrating a temple only after placing the remains of the saints in it. In Christianity of the West, the rejection of the concept of the sanctity of a church building was rare, but it became evident in the architecture of Protestant denominations. In the Catholic and Orthodox trends, the aspirations to emphasize the holiness of a cult building were manifested by separating it from the secular space and by distinguishing it with artistic forms and symbols.
As regards the places of worship in the second half of the 20th century, the term “sacral architecture” and sometimes also “sacral space” became popular. It should be noted, however, that the concept of sacredness comes from religious studies and presupposes the functioning of sacrum as the universal holiness that precedes the divinity of a particular religion. The concept of sacrum has gained enormous importance in the 20th century, although it was inconsistent with the theological foundations of Christianity. The consequence of the search for the holiness over specific religious denominations was to reduce it to the essential or primordial values. It brought such an understanding closer to the aspirations characteristic of the art of avant-garde modernism. It can be said that any tendencies of the architecture of radical modernism, based on the simplification
of forms, especially their geometrisation or archaization, are particularly suitable for the creation of religious settings for cult sites, where the inclinations with regard to the conception of sacrum dominated the Christian content. A prominent example of such situation is the chapel built by Mies van der Rohe at the Illinois Institute of Technology
campus in Chicago.
Some of the church buildings of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, built for the needs of Christian churches in the West, express the reflection that the essence of human existence is the constant pursuit of transgressing the intellectual or spiritual status quo. Within this concept, transcendence was not understood as a divine being, but as a process of transgression directed at infinity and giving a sense and a value to an individual’s life. In this situation, the architecture erected for the needs of particular denominations and created by religiously indifferent designers became a space that reminds about other human destiny than merely rational. In objects of this kind it was shown that pure efficiency does not exhaust the most important modalities of human existence. The ideological content of the concept of transcendence was not in line with the traditional message of the Christian religion, but when they were enabled to find their expression in new church buildings, they included their seemingly religiously indifferent followers in the long chain of searchers of the final dimensions of human fate.

The city as a space of wild democracy. Visual manifestations of contemporary forms of identity in the urban space

Right-wing and conservative tendencies permeating currently many countries in Europe and North America are a kind of counter-revolution against the ideas that formed the foundations of the development of the Western world over the last 50–70 years. One of the reasons for this is the lack of description of values, which – sometimes spontaneously – create awareness of inhabitants of present-day cities. The article is an attempt to describe unusual and intangible characteristics of life in a city, in a community and in a state, which has lost its contours. A particular attention has been devoted to the phenomenon of formation and manifestation of transitional forms of identity focusing on resistance to current social problems.

Zusammenfassung
Die politischen Inhalte der Breslauer Denkmäler im 19. Jh.

Günter Grundmann hat einmal geschrieben: "Im weitesten Sinne gefaßt wird der Begriff "Denkmal" von der staatlichen Denkmalpflege gebraucht, im engsten Sinne von den Friedhofsverwaltungen". Am häufigsten bezeichnet das Wort "Denkmal" solche Kunstwerke, die zur Verehrung einer Person oder Erinnerung an ein historisches Eregnis an öffentlichen Orten aufgestellt wurden. Der Brauch der Errichtung solcher Denkmäler erhielt seit Mitte des 18. Jh. eine besondere Bedeutung.
In Breslau war die erste Erscheinung dessen eine ungefär 1788 aufgestellte Säule mit einer Figur König Friedrich Wilhelms II. Den Befehl zur Errichtung dieses Denkmals im gerade am Rande von Breslau eröffneten Scheitniger Park gab ein preußischer General, der damalige Kommandnt der Breslauer Festung, Fürst F.L. von Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen. Obwohl der fürstliche Landschaftspark auch zahlreiche ander Zierstücke enthielt, bestimmten doch die den Spaziergängen gleich ab dem Eingang begleitenden Büsten der preußischen Machthaber und ihrer herausragenden Führer die äußere Wirkung. Dem monumentalsten Charakter unter den Verzierungen des Parkes hatte eben jene Säule mit der Statue des damals gerade herrschenden Monarchen. Die damalige Meinung, Friedrich Wilhelm II. sei der "Schlichter Europas", war warscheinlich der Grund dafür, daß man den König mit einem zusammengerollten Dokument in der rechten Hand darstellte. Dieses Bild erfüllte eine hervorragende Funktion während des königlichen Besuchs in Breslau, dem eine dem drohenden Krieg vorbeugende Konferenz in Reichenbach vorausgegangen war. Friedrich Wilhelm II. war vom 11. August bis 25. September 1790 Gast des Fürsten in Scheitnig und nahm an den Feierlichkeiten teil, in denen die Erhaltung des Friedens gepriesen wurde.
Ein weiteres Zeichen für das Ende einer Epoche, in der meist mit Attributen der Vergänglichkeit im endlichen Leben ausgestattete Objekte ausschließlich in Kirchen und auf Friedhöfen aufgestellt worden waren, war das Denkmal des Generals F.B. von Tauentzien, des Festungskommandanten und Gouverners von Breslau. Das Denkmal wurde im Jahr 1795 zwischen zwei Bastionen am Bestattungsort des Generals errichtet, es läßt sich jedoch nicht als typisches Grabmal einordnen. Das Grabmal Tauentziens war nicht nur frei von den Attributen christlicher Gräber, sonder propagierte darüberhinaus grundsätzlich andere Werte: Eine kriegerische Tapferkeit, die vor Brutalität nicht zurückschreckt und einen erreichten Erfolg im Dienste der Staatsraison.
Bei einem Denkmal, das den Monarchen darstellt und von einem Mitglied der Königsfamilie gestiftet worden ist, wird die Rolle des Volkes auf die eines Beobachters reduziert. Der Gegenpol einer solchen Situation wäre ein Denkmal, bei dem das repräsentierte Volk selber die Rolle des Stifters einnähme und der Monarch zum alleinnigen Betrachter würde. So ein Denkmal ist nie entstanden, auch wenn unter den Breslauer Denkmälern ein Werk ist, das aus öffentlichen Beiträgen finaziert wurde und fast einen Volkshelden darstellt. Bei diesem Dokument aus einer Zeit, in der Wille des Königs und der seines Volkes identisch waren, handelt es sich um das Denkmal des Feldmarschalls G.L. von Blücher. Die erste zu seiner Errichtung berufene Kommision setzte sich ausschließlich aus dem Bürgern zusammen, also aus dem Teil der preußischen Gesellschaft, der besonders auf die vom Monarchen im Mai 1815 versprochenen liberalen und demokratischen Reformen hoffte. Der König fühlte sich zwar nach Sieg über Napoleon nicht mehr verpflichtet, seine Versprechen zu halten, die Bürgerschaft aber vergaß nicht, daß dieser Sieg nur möglich gewesen war, weil man die Gesellschaft mit der Aussischt auf Reformen aktiviert hatte.
Mit dem Zusammenschluß liberal und demokratisch eingestellter Teile der Bürgerschaft anläßchlisch einer Denkmalsaufstellung haben wir es auch bei der am 27. Juni 1847 auf dem Breslauer Ring eingeweihten Statue Friedrichs des Großen zu tun. Den Vorschlag zu ihrer Errichtung machte im April 1839 der Breslauer Kaufmann J.W. Oelsner, der Vertreter aller Stände der Provinz zur Zusamanarbeit einlud. Auf diese Weise fanden sich neben Fürst Hatzfeld unter Mitgliedern des Denkmalkomitees auch Personen, die später eine wichtige Rolle in der Oposition der Vormärzeit spielen sollten. Die konservativen Elemente der Stadt, die in Friedrich ausschließlich eine Verkörperung des monarchischen Gedankens sahen, wollten, daß das Denkmal ihn in idealisierender Weise zeige, am besten auf einer Säule und in altertümlicher Kleidung. Die Mehrheit jedoch verlangte eine Darstellung Friedrichs in Übereinstimmung mit der Überlieferung. Ein König in einem alten Frack und faltigen Schuhen war für sie ein Symbol der Bescheidenheit, der Sparsamkeit und des Fleißes. Indem man im Denkmal diese den Bürgern so nahen Werte verarbeitete, machte man aus den Denkmal Friedrichs des Großen auch ein Denkmal derer, die es aufgestellt hatten. Mit anderen Worten: Dieses Denkmal, das in einer Zeit der Zuspitzung des oppositionellen Klimas in Breslau aufgestellt wurde, war ein Denkmal der bürgerlichen Tugenden und ihrer ideologischen Grundlage, nämlich des Verstandes. Im Geheim wurde es damit auch zum Aufruf gegen die  weitere Erhaltung der Monarchie auf irrationalem Fundament.
Im Reaktion auf die Statuen Blüchers und Friedrichs II. entstand schon im Jahr 1847 eine vornehmlich vom Adel und von höhren Beamten getragene Initiative zur Errichtung eines Denkmals für Friedrichs Wilhelm III. Die revolutionären Ereignisse unterbrachen die Arbeiten am Denkmal für einige Jahre. Als man die Idee des Denkmals 1852 wiedr aufgriff, geschah das im Klima der Reaktion auf die Ereignisse der Märzrevolution. In der Darstellung auf einem elegant trabenden Pferd, gekleidet in eine Generalsuniform und mit vielen kleinen Einzelheiten versehen, wirkt der König genauso irreal wie ein Segelschiff, das aus einem Sturm ohne einziges gerissenes Tau wieder hervorkommt. In Übereinstimmung mit den Idealen Friedrich Wilhelms III. und seiner Nachfolger wird die Monarchie hier als unumschränkt herrschend und in ihren Rechten unantastbar dargestellt.
Die politischen Inhalte der Denkmäler Kaiser Wilhelms I. und des Fürsten Bismarck  laßen sich besser nachvollziehen, wenn man in Betracht zieht, daß von diesen Denkmäler über 600 ähnliche Exemplare gebaut wurden. Diese Zahl und die allgemeine Ähnlichkeit der Stücke weisen auf ihre intergrierende Funktion im Kaiserreich hin. Aus Denkmälern lassen sich aber auch - wie aus keinemanderen Dokument jener Zeiten - noch andere Inhalte herauslesen. Beim Denkmal des Kaisers wird zum Beispiel deutlich, daß die Regierenden einer Epoche, in der man sich immer wiedr auf das Volk berief, zu eben diesem Volk ein nur sehr begrenztes Vertrauen besaßen. Das Volk, das in der Sockelparie des Denkmals durch einige Soldaten im Relief repräsentiert ist, stellt in keinster Weise ein dem Kaiser auch nur annähernd ebenbürtiges Element dar. Welches also ist die Quelle der Macht des Staates und des Kaisers, wenn nicht das Volk ? An die Rechtfertigung der Macht durch die Gnade Gottes glaubte damals wohl nicht  einmal mehr der Kaiser selbst. Diese Quelle aber ist - wie im Relief zu sehen  ist - der Mythos der Germania. Also weder das Volk noch Gott, sondern der sich in der Geschichte erfüllende Mythos stellt die Basis des wiedrauferstandenen Reiches. Diese Verankerung des Staates in vorchristlichen Werten erlaubte darüberhinaus,  sich ohne inneren Widerspruch den Gedanken der Stärke und der  Staatsraison anheimzugeben.
Für eben diese Ideale steht das Denkmal Bismarcks. Der Reichskanzler verkörpert jene Stärke, die als politisches Werkzeug und unentbehrliche Eigenschaft des Staates betrachtet wird. Die steife und blockartige Wirkung des Denkmals  aber entrücken ihn der Wirklichkeit und lassen ihn wie eine mythische  Gestalt  erscheinen. Diese Berufung auf den Mythos ist auch der Grund dafür, daß Bismarck mit der Zeit alle Merkmale genommen werden, an denen man ihn erkenen könnte und die Ehrung seiner Person durch eher turmartige Denkmäler oder Statuen, die ihn als Hermann oder Roland präsentieren, vollzogen wird.
Sogar das Denkmal mit der sympatischen Darstellung Eichendorffs bezog seinen Sinn aus der Welt der Politik. Diesen Sinn formulierte der Vorsitzende des geschäftsführenden  Ausschusses des Denkmalkomitees Geheimer Regierungsrat Prof. Dr. Foerster während der Denkmalsenthüllung am 27. Juni 1911. In seiner Einweihungsrede beschrieb er Eichendorff in erster Linie als Dichter des Vaterlandes und der Heimat, der - als es nötig war - sofort in die Lützower Freicorps eintrat, um seine Worte mit Taten zu füllen. "Nach der Niederwerfung des Bedrückers" aber widmete er sich dem Dienst in der preußischen Verwaltung und schrieb in der Zeit abseits seiner eigentlichen Aufgaben Gedichte. Diese Statue, die die Ära der Denkmäler des 19. Jh. abschließt, stand im Scheitniger Park nicht weit von der Säule mit Friedrich Wilhelm II. Ihr Sockel ist neben der Säule heute das einzige erhaltene Zeugnis dieser an Denkmälern so reichen Epoche.

Lem’s visions of impossible worlds versus contemporary anti-metaphysical trends in philosophy

An anti-metaphysical approach in philosophy, as understood by Stefan Sarnowski, was born at the same time as philosophy and metaphysics and means questioning all principles and sources of sense or an objection to trials of finding the foundation of truth. The usual adoption of such attitude comes from extending knowledge, but maybe it can give something more, what if crossing beyond the existing world is just its creation?
At the beginning of his artistic activity Lem engaged in polemics with the system of rules in a rather amusing and off-hand manner, also he was never likely to abandon easily his faith in the reason, nevertheless with the passing years he was more and more prone to believe that
a man is a “fierce ape”, the world is a chaos and logic, geometry or mathematics are the areas of almost literary fiction. He could not have been sure of this, though, since certainty stopped being attainable. Although he did not want that he became a postmodernist. As many other thinkers of his time he suffered from modernist optimism and in accordance with trends of the changing world and the rules of biology he eventually became an insufferable grumpy old man. It was not as interesting any more as then when he had hesitated, awaken his doubts, accidentally revealed contradictions and plunged into ambiguity. But only the whole Lem, both the earlier one and the later one, paints the picture of problems, which are as old as human thought and which stay undetermined forever. With highest difficulty it needs to be acknowledged that even the most extreme and mutually excluding ideas have their foundation in rich argumentation which evokes respect. It is equally difficult to accept that, what after the intellectual storms of the second half of the 20th century is presently the basis for thought
is wobbling between two sides of dialectic discourse, never even to aspire to a state of certainty.

CEZARY WAS (Museum of Architecture in Wrocław) / The traditions of the ancient drama as a structure of Mark Ravenhill’s piece Shopping and Fucking

Beside plays of Sarah Kane and Anthony Neilson, performances based on the texts of Mark Ravenhill, especially on his first big play Shopping and Fucking from 1996, are regarded in the contemporary theatre as extremely distinct representations of problems of feelings of alienation and axiological emptiness of residents of big cities. Not denying this opinion it should be noted, however, that despite appearances created, among others, through the use of vulgar language expressions and references to the social situation in the UK after a period of extreme liberalism during the rule of Margaret Thatcher (1979–1990), the drama of Ravenhill in a wide range refers both to issues of substance and basic formal patterns of the ancient drama. Comparison of individual scenes of the piece with the knowledge of the Greek drama clearly indicates that a proper understanding of the author’s presentation is only possible in the context of historical research on the classical traditions of stage works.
Excessive exposure in the piece of the British author issues of sexuality reminds about the sources of the Greek drama inherent in songs and poems in honour of Dionysus. Disgusting scenes of vomiting, murders and mutual instruct aim at shaking the recipient, but also at arousing the feelings of compassion for people who find themselves in a situation of a culpable or non-culpable misfortune. Such function of art would therefore be consistent with Aristotle’s definition of tragedy, which assumed that it is a “representation of action […], which by way of pity and fear leads to the purification of those feelings”. Vicissitudes of characters of the performance start from a wanton conduct of one of them, go through a set of situations in which they defend themselves against the effects of errors resulting from their personal vices, and finally end almost happily. Such a scheme for a comedy also belongs to those described by Aristotle in his Poetics. In addition, any reference to the role of money and describing them as parent for the fate of a man, despite appearances of reflecting the condition of the contemporary world, were also a problem for poets of the ancient Greece. In the end, the thread, running through the entire play, of unceremoniously presented homosexual intercourses (along with a number of their perversions) can as well find its pattern in the Greek art of the Archaic and Hellenistic period.

Praktykowanie teorii. Koncepty wczesnych prac Daniela Libeskinda jako wzorce realnej architektury

Treści wczesnych prac Libeskinda, w tym zwłaszcza idee zawarte w cyklach rysunków pod nazwą Micromegas: The Architecture of End Space (1979) i Chamber Works: Architectural Meditations on the Themes from Heraclitus (1983) oraz trzy maszyny określone jako Three Lessons in Architecture (1985) w decydujący sposób wpłynęły na wszystkie późniejsze realizacje architekta. Prace te w dużym zakresie zmieniły zasady oddzielania teorii od praktyki budowlanej, w tym także odgraniczania architektury od literatury czy filozofii.
Już Micromegas były polemiką z traktowaniem rysunku architektonicznego wyłącznie jako utylitarnego narzędzia w procesie stwarzania budowli i postawiły na uczynienie z tej techniki pełnoprawnej postaci realnej architektury. Chamber Works w jeszcze większym stopniu niż prace z serii Micromegas akcentowały samodzielność rysunku i jego odrębność od wszelkiej rzeczywistości czy zewnętrznych źródeł treści. Maszyny połączone w Three Lessons in Architecture streszczały dokonania dawnych epok historii sztuki budowania. Reading Machine opowiadała o rzemieślniczych początkach, Memory Machine o intelektualizmie okresu nowożytnego, Writing Machine zaś o współczesnym okresie mechanizacji pamięci i kreacji. Zadaniem maszyn była metafizyczna refleksja nad głównymi założeniami i mitami architektury, a zarazem przeniesienie tej refleksji na poziom doświadczenia zmysłowego. W berlińskim Jüdisches Museum wymyślone liternictwo architektoniczne połączyło się z narracją na temat zagłady żydowskich mieszkańców miasta. Libeskind wykreował nie tyle budowlę, ile literacką relację o zbrodni przełamującej historię ludzkości.

Treści wczesnych prac Libeskinda, w tym zwłaszcza idee zawarte w cyklach rysunków pod nazwą Micromegas: The Architecture of End Space (1979) i Chamber Works: Architectural Meditations on the Themes from Heraclitus (1983) oraz trzy maszyny określone jako Three Lessons in Architecture (1985), w decydujący sposób wpłynęły na wszystkie późniejsze realizacje architekta. Prace te w dużym zakresie zmieniły zasady rozdzielania teorii od praktyki budowlanej, w tym także oddzielania architektury od literatury czy filozofii.
Już „Micromegas” były polemiką z traktowaniem rysunku architektonicznego wyłącznie jako utylitarnego narzędzia w procesie stwarzania budowli i postawiły na uczynienie z rysunku pełnoprawnej postaci realnej architektury. Umożliwiały także refleksję nad intuicyjnymi źródłami form i podtrzymanie znaczenia wyobraźni w jej materializacjach architektonicznych. W badaniach zawartych w „Micromegas” wstępne akty wyobrażania sobie budowli ujawniały swą architektoniczną strukturę, przecząc podejrzeniom o nieracjonalność fantazjowania, zaś z kolei materializacja aktów imaginacji okazywała się nie być wyzbyta mrocznych i poetyckich właściwości.
„Chamber Works” w jeszcze większym stopniu, niż prace z serii „Micromegas”, akcentowały samodzielność rysunku i jego odrębność od wszelkiej rzeczywistości czy zewnętrznych źródeł treści. Skłaniały do ich interpretowania i nasycania sensami, ale jednocześnie takiemu podejściu stawiały poważny opór. Nadawały się nie tyle do egzegezy zakodowanych w nich treści, co raczej eksplorowały obszary nieznanego jako źródła przyszłych treści. Nie były całkowicie ahistoryczne i asymboliczne, lecz przeszłość zastosowanych linii aktualizowały jako opowieść o egzystencji konkretnego artysty.
Maszyny połączone w „Three Lessons in Architecture” streszczały dokonania dawnych epok historii sztuki budowania. „Reading Machine” opowiadała o rzemieślniczych początkach, „Memory Machine” o intelektualizmie okresu nowożytnego, zaś „Writing Machine” o współczesnych czasach mechanizacji pamięci i kreacji. Zadaniem maszyn była metafizyczna refleksja nad głównymi założeniami i mitami architektury i jednocześnie przeniesienie tej refleksji na poziom zmysłowego doświadczenia. Mechanizmy Libeskinda czyniły metafizykę widoczną, naruszając tradycyjną separację idei od ich materializacji.
Jednoczenie treści i ich oznakowań uwidoczniło się także w berlińskim Jüdisches Museum, w którym wymyślone liternictwo i słownictwo połączyły się z narracją na temat zagłady żydowskich mieszkańców miasta. Architekt wykreował nie tyle budowlę, co literacką relację o zbrodni przełamującej całą historię ludzkości. Wykorzystał w tym celu szereg inspiracji, w tym także muzycznych i filozoficznych, które odebrały budowli część jej materialności i przeniosły jej istnienie w nierzeczywisty świat odniesień i skojarzeń. Muzeum stało się w ten sposób maszyną do interpretacji, krążenia po regionach pamięci, ale także konstytuowania się w nieznanym i jeszcze nieistniejącym.

CEZARY WĄS/ From perversion to deconstruction. Bernard Tschumi’s architecture
– part 3
Among numerous philosophical strategies of deconstruction most frequently
used was questioning the practice of strong opposition of two reasons. In many
cases Bernard Tschumi’s writings consider functioning of the conflict juxtaposition
of the ideas of structure and ornament or theory and practice in history
of architecture. Violation of traditional relations between terms of this kind,
both old and modern, raised Jacques Derrida’s objections, when he was induced
for the first time to co-operate with architects’ milieu. During this long lasting
thought exchange the philosopher eventually acknowledged Bernard Tschumi’s
arguments for reasoning the encroachment of architecture’s fundamental rules.
Deconstruction applied in architecture was not a simple transposition or analogy
of practices that had been applied by philosophy of deconstruction. We may
even say that consideration of architectural terms became an important formula
of deconstruction. Architecture understood in philosophical way became something
beyond the practice and theory of its own discipline, a sort of metaphysics
of both philosophy and architecture.
The deliberate encroachment of the simple division of architecture into theory
and practice for the first time was a clear aim for Tschumi in his drawings and
texts entitled Manhattan Transcripts. The contents of this series of works was
a record of characteristic features of this borough of New York City in such a way
that not only objects were the subject of the record but also relations between objects,
people and events. The record was about to take into consideration a conflict
character of elements of this representation and at the same time to avoid
applying to them the rule of Mimetism. The record became a form of reflection
over the very record by an increased control over the ways of representation. Architecture
which was considered in the MT was not directed to fulfill the needs
of inhabitation or production, it was rather related with hitherto usually marginalised
liminal situations: building ostentatiously big monuments, religious
cult, war etc. Architecture operating in such relations focused the attention also
on the included in it continuous tendency to overpass its own restrictions, the
role of violence as its not recognised factor, or the meaning of excess and shock
in its operation.
Architecture moving from reason towards madness became even more visible
in the design of Parisian park de la Villette, whose pavilions were defined as
folies (in French it means both small park buildings and follies). The Parc was
supposed to be on the one hand a reflection of traditional society disintegration
while on the other it questioned basic rules of producing a work of architecture.
The traditional rules of designing, based on ordering up, were replaced with the
strategies of dysfunction and dissociation. In Tschumi’s opinion methods of this
kind may be equivalent of what Derrida named différance. Instead of aiming at
mergence, any diversity, games or variations were strengthen.
Tschumi’s texts, in which he explained his attitude, were completed by Derrida’s extent statement entitled Point de folie – Maintenant l’architecture. Derrida’s
article is the most significant of all his statements on architecture as a form of
thinking and activity. According to the philosopher, architecture should divide
space (in French defined as espacement), what enables both thinking and action
– it arranges the space of an event. Tschumi’s buildings, defined as folies, in an
essential way destabilise any created order, and at the same time they refresh it.
Derrida’s statement suggests that architecture may become both metaphor of an
order merging a language or a society but also a metaphor of inner forces which
deconstruct and reconstruct it. Therefore architecture is at the same time a construction,
a deconstruction and a reconstruction. Parc de la Villette stands out
in this system with its attempt to step beyond the scheme of an easy repetition
and its heading for chances of achieving more radical otherness.

In 1985–1986 a series of seven disputes between Jacques Derrida and Peter Eisenman took place. The pretext for them were the designs concerning Parc de la Villette in Paris. The situation of many months of collaboration between a notable philosopher of the second half of the 20th c. and an architect that already had a huge theoretical oeuvre, ended up with a publication of a large volume entitled Chora L Works, and it became at the same time a vast study area for historians of contemporary architecture and philosophers. Derrida’s contribution to concept works were his considerations over the idea of chôra, the properties related to this concept were about to be reflected in shapes of the park. Therefore, Chora L Works became an example of the abilities of contemporary art, both in its capability of translation from philosophical ideas to artistic forms and its resistance to tradition of representing in architecture some phenomena and values originating outside this discipline. In the final period of their collaboration both interlocutors started to polemicise with each other more decidedly, what became a separate part of their thought exchange. The exchange of letters between Derrida and Eisenman at the turn of 1989 ended up the period of their direct contacts, nevertheless, at this time precisely a large group of experts in issues of deconstruction joined the discussion and extended the revealed in the former dispute problems into more than ten years of further considerations and publications. Except for a long text by Jeffrey Kipnis, who had participated in the meetings of the philosopher and the architect, there appeared also comments of researchers of artistic theories (K. Michael Hays, Thomas Patin), philosophers (Andrew Benjamin), and even experts in Greek literature (Maria Theodorou or Ann Bergren). Following these debates a contemporary reflection on architecture has saturated with indeed numerous concepts originating in philosophy of deconstruction.

A collection of nine letters from the Catholic theologian Romano Guardini to his friend Fr. Josef Weiger was published in 1927. In Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's library of several hundred items, it was a book that he used to formulate the basic principles of his own architecture. The aim of the paper is to present the content of Guardini's book and its influence on the views and work of Mies van der Rohe. The architect's insightful monographs, especially the book by Fritz Neumeyer, accurately document the relationship between the theologian's statements and attempts to adapt them to the theory of architecture. The more recent analysis of these relationships presented in the article leads to the conclusion that Mies van der Rohe set himself the task of finding a pure spirit in the world of pure abstractions. His creative involvement was a form of contemplating and developing forces which, although contained in nature or technology, can also be considered transcendent.

Pomniki występowały w kulturach starożytnego Bliskiego Wschodu w różnorodnych formach i funkcjach. Nawet w najstarszych kulturach znajdowały zastosowanie monumenty o formach figuralnych (jak posągi), w postaci obrobionych geometrycznie kamieni (jak stele, obeliski czy piramidy), ale także jako dzieła architektury (jak tzw. twierdza Sargona). Funkcje, jakie spełniały dzieła pomnikowe, były wielorakie, bowiem upamiętnianiu czy uwiecznianiu, zatem funkcjom podstawowym, towarzyszyły funkcje kształtowania zbiorowego wyobrażenia o początku pewnego okresu historycznego, wskazywania na pochodzenie władzy czy podsumowywania długotrwałych doświadczeń prawnych. Niektóre formy i motywy ikonograficzne jeszcze z okresu predynastycznego Egiptu utrwaliły się w późniejszych epokach, następnie przeniesione zostały do sztuki europejskiej i przetrwały tam aż do końca czasów nowożytnych.

Projekt Parcu de La Villette autorstwa Bernarda Tschumiego wygrał w konkursie i został zrealizowany dzięki atmosferze politycznej, jaka towarzyszyła zwycięstwu lewicowego kandydata w wyborach prezydenckich we Francji w roku 1981. Korekta programu politycznego Françoisa Mitteranda i zastąpienie radykalnych reform budowaniem prestiżowych obiektów architektonicznych i założeń urbanistycznych w stolicy Francji dało Tschumiemu unikatową szansę na urzeczywistnienie pomysłów, które polemizowały z tradycyjnymi formami życia społecznego, kwestionowały podstawowe zasady architektury i włączały dzieło architektury w obręb filozoficznych sporów wokół zagadnień metafizyki. Teoretyczne założenia Tschumiego wysunięte podczas projektowania Parcu de La Villette wydobywały zagadnienia konfliktowości głównych składników projektu i sugerowały, iż nasilanie różnic jest analogiczne do wykreowanego przez Derridę pojęcia différance. Ten właśnie filozof w specjalnym komentarzu do projektu Derridy wprowadził ponadto pojęcie maintenant, które miało na celu wykazanie, że polemiczne skłonności architekta pozostają w skrywanej przez niego równowadze z inklinacjami do afirmacji zasad architektury. Podczas dyskusji między Derridą a Peterem Eisenmanem, który miał mieć udział w projektowaniu paryskiego parku, wysunięto ponadto pojęcie chôra, które w trakcie debaty doprowadziło do dodatkowego wymieszania problemów architektury i filozofii.