Sometime after I first arrived in Krakow, I was wandering around the Market Square, just taking in the atmosphere of my new surroundings. I came across an outdoor exhibition called Nowa Europa (New Europe). I stopped to take a closer look, at these images which taught me a greal deal about my new home, and how it feels about itself and its neighbours. The exhibition subverts the hopeful but trite "New Europe" slogan bandied around by the EU, evoking the "accession states" as bringers of a rejuvenation for Europe or rather to their counterparts - "old Europe", marketing enlargement as an injecton of youthful dynamism into a creaky, stale old structure that was in desperate need of a new lease of life. These are the motifs which come to mind, or at least to my mind, when I hear the words "New Europe". Hope. Novelty. Youth. Dynamism. Growth. Future.
Łukasz Trzciński paints - or rather photographs - a very different kind of picture. His is no shiny, brand "New Europe" brimming with potential and enthusiasm for the future.
It is a most revealing auto-portrait of Poland and its mother-region, Eastern Europe. And while depicting neighbouring countries in unflattering lights could be regarded as petty vindictiveness, this charge cannot be levelled at Trzciński, since he includes his own nation in the statement he is making, including Poland as a member sharing in the intangible melancholy of the whole region.
Out of all the aspects of Poland which could have been showcased, Trzciński chooses Nowa Huta steelworks, the old soviet symbol and flagship town which embodied the socialist Utopia. Now a sad, grey, impoverished and isolated district of the city, striking in its wide empty streets lined with identical square grey blocs. But I won't elaborate further, as my own visit to Nowa Huta and subsequent impressions will be the object of a later post.
And Poland is not the only country that is represented by an uneasy subject matter. Empty shops in Bulgaria, bunkers in Albania, unspeakable architecture in Slovakia, and the alienated, marginalised Russian minority in Estonia, are all put in the spotlight as the selected theme to represent their host nations.
It is as if they've taken something about each country that is dislocated, ugly, broken. As if these objects, places, people speak for their countries, forming a broader narrative of discontent that engulfs half a continent.
My initial reaction was to regard it as a manifestation of the typical "East-european" impulse for self-deprecation and pessimism. A typically bleak and sombre outlook on themselves and their region which smacked uncomfortably of martyrdom. For even if P
oland paints itself in such unflattering shades, masochistically putting its most desolate and difficult face forward for all to see, it is not a country without nationalism or patriotism. Only it is not the self-celebrating, narcissistic patriotism as seen in a country like Turkey, for example. The Poles do not go in for that kind of self-glorification, perhaps because they already know the cost. Perhaps because they would be able to see through themselves. Or maybe - it is just not in their nature. I don't think Poland's vision of itself is entirely without an element of martyrdom. There is a kind of ubiquotous bitterness that permeates culture and conversations, a sense of feeling repeatedly wronged or betrayed, the "God's playground" vision of Poland as one of my lecturers so frequently puts it, and an accompanying futility, that rapidly becomes a little heavy and a little tiresome.
However, this exhibition is illustrative of a more complex phenomenon in the Polish quest to define its own identity. It is that strange combination of nostalgia and pain. A fundamental, deep-rooted dualism that I first became aware of when listening to some young Romanians speaking about their mixed feelings with regard to the legacy of communism. It was an experience which struck me profoundly, and helped me understand something important about the mindset of those who inhabit the other end of my own continent, which I would otherwise have remained completely oblivious to. The ongoing internal and collective wrestling with the intractable paradox of a deep and intense anger about communism for the destruction it wrought and the oppression it led to, and yet a recurring nostalgia for those aspects of life which were better "back then".
These pictures are indicative at once of a country that feels lost and is groping for an identity in the void left by a powerful, dark presence which used to rule every aspect of life and has now abandoned them, as well as something which is profoundly defining of their identity. Disillusion that life has not improved as much as could have been hoped for. A sense of resignation that nothing really changes, that one form of oppression merely succeeds another. And this I believe goes a long way to explain the tricky question of Polish euro-skepticism and non-participation. It is the reason why "New Europe" is such a strange way to speak about this place, these countries, and their peoples who have undergone such trials, and who in many ways are so world-weary as to seem and feel a thousand years older than "old Europe".
