The Polish idea in new media art: cultivation in the face of marginalization: An educational proposal

Abstract

The article contrasts examples of dominant contemporary critical art, exemplified by works by Artur Żmijewski and Klementyna Stępniewska, with affirmative artistic practices oriented toward the Polish idea, which is often accessible only through its margins. These margins are foregrounded through artistic devices that evoke a “thrill of transcendence”: surrealist and dreamlike grotesque, the clash of conventions, the surprising use of overlooked and marginal objects, the aesthetics of camp, and drastic representations of death. This intensive cultivation of the margins of the Polish idea, set against the epistemically dominant discourse of critical art, can be observed in selected works by Lech Majewski, Jakub Różalski, Jakub Woynarowski, Ada “Adu” Karczmarczyk, and Wojciech Korkuć. This contemporary affirmative art, using new media and digital techniques, was presented as a form of digital patriotism in a series of lessons and on a website created as part of the project Metaphysicality and Polishness in Art of the First Two Decades of the Twenty‑First Century.