The aesthetics of change: Exploring post-communist spaces

Global Society

Volumn 22, Issue 3, 2008, Pages 369-386

  Pusca, Anca ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

COMMUNISM; ESTHETICS; SOCIAL CHANGE;

ALBANIA; CENTRAL EUROPE; CZECH REPUBLIC; EURASIA; EUROPE; PRAGUE; SOUTHERN EUROPE; TIRANA;

EID: 46649098506     PISSN: 13600826     EISSN: 1469798X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/13600820802090512     Document Type: Article

References (61)

1. Benjamin as quoted in Roland Kany, "Particularism in the Work of Walter Benjamin", Criticism Vol. 32, No. 3 (1990), p. 334.
2. Mikhail Epshtein, "Things and Words: Towards a Lyrical Museum", in Alla Efimova and Lev Manovich (eds),Tekstura (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), p. 153.
3. For an interesting hermeneutical approach to aesthetics see: Cerwyn Moore, "Reading the Hermeneutics of Violence: The Literary Turn and Czechnya", Global Society, Vol. 20, No. 2 (2006).
4. The existence of such a division was argued in: Roland Bleiker, "The Aesthetic Turn in International Political Theory", Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol. 30, No. 3 (2001).
5. Jacques Aumont, The Image, trans. Claire Pajackowska (London: British Film Institute Press, 1997), p. 197.
6. Theodor Adorno et al., Aesthetics and Politics (London: Verso, 1977).
7. Bleiker, "The Aesthetic Turn in International Political Theory", op. cit.;
8. Roland Bleiker, "Learning from Art: A Reply to Holden's 'World Literature and World Politics", Global Society, Vol. 17, No. 4 (2003).
9. Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken Books, 1968),
10. Walter Benjamin, Reflections, ed. Peter Demetz, trans. Edmund Jephcott (New York: Schocken Books, 1978).
11. Siegfried Kracauer, Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965).
12. Thomas Elsaesser, "Cinema - the Irresponsible Signifier or 'the Gamble with History': Film Theory or Cinema Theory", New German Critique 40, Special Issue on Weimar Film Theory (1987).
13. Susan Buck-Morss, Dreamworld and Catastrophe: The Passing of Mass Utopia in East and West (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000).
14. Karina Kreja, "Spatial Imprints of Urban Consumption: Large Scale Retail Development in Warsaw", in Sasha Tsenkova and Nedovic-Budic-Zorica (eds), The Urban Mosaic of Post-Socialist Europe: Space, Institutions and Policy (Heidelberg: Physica-Verlag, 2006).
15. Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss, Evasion of Temporality, Holcim Forum for Sustainable Construction, 2007, http://www.holcimfoundation.org/ T463/TemporaryUrbanism.html (accessed 9 November 2007).
16. Ibid. i cited]. p. 333.
17. Ibid. i cited]. p. 334.
18. For a more detailed discussion of the implications of shock in transition societies, please see: Anca Pusca, "Shock, Therapy and Postcommunist Transitions," Alternatives, Vol. 32, Issue 3 (2007).
19. Opened by neighbours and friends often forced into entrepreneurship by lack of other job opportunities, these bars and neighbourhood kiosks maintain an important sense of community and simplicity, where people can gather, drink and shop at reasonable prices as well as exchange favours and learn about new opportunities. These observations are mainly based on ethnographic work in Timisoara, Romania.
20. These "temporary" structures, because of their unkempt aspect and association with drunkenness and wastefulness, have often been seen as shameful spots on the otherwise positively changing face of the city. Those located close to or even within the city centre and city parks were seen as particularly threatening due to their high visibility and seedy "membership", leading local governments to campaign heavily for their destruction. President Basescu of Romania led a very successful "cleaning-up" campaign in Bucharest, demolishing thousands of structures in the city centre and erasing along with them, the visibility of poverty, disillusionment and despair under the fighting corruption banner (the claim was that many of the kiosks in the city centre were illegally run by a number of corrupt nouveaux riches). Although the corruption charges are likely to have been right, the move contributed to the further marginalisation of those who did not fit the positive image of transition - the unemployed, the few remaining factory workers, the homeless and even the seedy entrepreneur.
21. Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs Du Mal (Boston, MA: David R. Godine, 1985).
22. Susan Buck-Morss, The Origin of Negative Dialectics: Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and the Frankfurt Institute (New York: The Free Press, 1977).
23. Walter Benjamin, One-Way Street, trans. Edmund Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag Press, 1970).
24. Aumont, The Image , op. cit., p. 20.
25. The film Goodbye Lenin captures this very nicely through the metaphor of the mother who is protected from the shock of change through the preservation of the material environment that she inhabits. Brands, objects and newspapers are used to maintain that stability.
26. Michel de Certeau, "Walking the City", in The Practice of Everyday Life (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984).
27. Henri Lefebvre, Everyday Life in the Modern World (New York: Transaction Publishers, 1984).
28. Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (New York: Zone Books, 1994).
29. See more on the Situationists in Alastair Bonnett, "The Nostalgias of Situationist Subversion", Theory, Culture & Society, Vol. 23, No. 5 (2006);
30. Stefan Zweifel, Juri Steiner, and Heinz Stahlhut, In Girum Nocte Et Consumimur Igni - the Situationist International (1957-1972) (Zurich: JRP/Ringier, 2006).
31. Debord, op. cit.
32. Iain Sinclair, Downriver (London: Vintage, 1995);
33. Iain Sinclair, Lights out for the Territory (London: Granta Books, 1997);
34. Iain Sinclair, Lud Heat and Suicide Bridge (London: Vintage, 1995).
35. Ben Watson, Revolutionary Novelist or Revolting Nihilist?, http://www.militantesthetix.co.uk/critlit/SINCLAIR.html (accessed June 6 2007).
36. Benjamin, Illuminations, op. cit., p. 222.
37. Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction", in Illuminations, op. cit.
38. Jacques Rancière, "From Politics to Aesthetics?" Paragraph Vol. 28, No. 1 (2005).
39. See official site of the municipality of Tirana: http://www.tirana.gov.al/?cid=2,10,23l (accessed 7 June 2007).
40. For a more detailed examination of the wider context of the Albanian post-communist transition see: Clarissa de Waal, Albania Today: A Portrait of Post-Communist Turbulence (London: I.B. Tauris Press, 2005);
41. Douglas Saltmarshe, Identity in a Post-Communist Balkan State (London: Ashgate Publishing, 2001).
42. One of the biggest challenges to the post-communist transitions has been the ability to spread and make visible the positive "material" transformations beyond the city centres. By recognising the importance of making change visible everywhere in a more equal as well as friendly, incremental manner, Edi Rama embraced the superficiality and temporary nature of colours as an efficient way of signalling change as an interactive process in which everyone is an equally important participant.
43. Vivienne Walt, "A Mayoral Makeover", Time, 2 October 2005.
44. See featured article on the World Mayor webpage: http://www.worldmayor.com/worldmayor_2004/comments_rhama.htmll (accessed 6 June 2007).
45. While the on-line voters are certainly not representative of the entire population of Tirana, they do show both the extent to which Edi Rama has managed to mobilise a majority of Tirana's inhabitants (enough people needed to vote in order to make him World Mayor) as well as the positive impact that he has had on widespread attitudes towards the city at home as well as abroad.
46. Quoted from the City Mayor's site: http://www.citymayors.com/gratis/ city_mayors.htmll (accessed 6 June 2007).
47. Walt, op. cit.
48. Colin Woodward, "Trendy Tirana? Mayor Invigorates a Backwater Capital", The Christian Science Monitor, 23 March 2005.
49. Quoted in: Jane Kramer, "Painting the Town", New Yorker, 27 June 2005.
50. Interviews cited by both local and international media, on-line testimonies as well as email communication with inhabitants of Tirana support this claim. While the flanerie experience of each individual is certainly subjective and difficult to portray, the overall examination of the change in visual horizon suggests that the collective flanerie of the everyday inhabitant of Tirana has generally taken a more positive turn.
51. Quoted in a 2007 interview by Anri Sala, sent via email, personal communication.
52. For more information see: http://www.artnet.com/Magazine/reviews/ douglas/douglas11-4-04.aspl
53. This expectation was largely supported by a "discourse" of a return to "Europe" that encouraged most post-communist states not only to dream of European Union membership but also to imagine themselves as a "physical" part of the West. The transition was thus popularly assessed by the extent to which one adopted the "look" of the West. Thus, the transition will be over when postcommunist cities "look and feel" like Frankfurt, Paris or London.
54. Often presented as a model city and country in the post-communist transitions literature, Prague and the Czech Republic appear as a miracle of capitalist transformation, along with Hungary and Poland. For a more detailed analysis of the implications of this "miracle discourse" as well as a wider analysis of the Czech context of post-communist change see: Elaine Susan Weiner, Market Dreams: Gender, Class and Capitalism in the Czech Republic (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2007);
55. and Jiri Vecernik, Markets and People: The Czech Reform Experience in a Comparative Perspective (London: Avebury Publishers, 1997).
56. Vit Klusak and Filip Remunda, Czech Dream (Prague: Irena Kovarova/ SchwarzSmith & Taskovski Films, 2004), see khttp://www.ceskatelevize.cz/specialy/ceskysen/enl.
57. The documentary is also a backhanded critique of some of the material motivations and interests underpinning spatial change in post-communist Europe. Most of these material motivations are supported not only by foreign investors seeking to provide a beautiful façade for their profit-making investments but also by the European Union structural and development funds, which seek to invest in long-term infrastructure that will help turn its new post-communist members into a booming market for EU products as well as cheap suppliers of goods, workers and creative potential.
58. Liese Spencer, "Reviews: Czech Dream", Sight and Sound, Vol. 15, No. 7 (2005).
59. See for example: Yaacov Garb and Tomasz Dybicz, "The Retail Revolution in Post-Socialist Central Europe and its Lessons," in Sasha Tsenkova and Nedovic-Budic-Zorica, The Urban Mosaic of Post-Socialist Europe: Space, Institutions and Policy, op. cit.
60. Collin O'Conner, Karlovy Vary Film Festival: Interview with Vit Klusák and Filip Remunda, 2004 [accessed November 26 2007]; available: http://www.ceskatelevize.cz/specialy/ceskysen/en/ index.php?load=ofilmu_iwl.
61. Vaclav Havel, The Power of the Powerless: Citizens against the State in Central and Eastern Europe (New York: Palach Press, 1985).