Summation of the last meeting before summer

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The last before summer meeting from the series "Kultura 2.0" ("Culture 2.0") was of a conclusive nature - there were no films or live music, but a discussion about the varied ways of understanding culture, about different coexisting cultures, and about the methods of financing and supporting them.

One of the points of departure was data from the Research Institute ARC Rynek i Opinia's report, from which it emerges that our country's ‘poorly' with culture. But this research ignored new forms of participation in culture related to the use of digital media. So our guests - the anthropologist Wojciech Burszta, the PWA head Michał Merczyński, Grzesiek Lewandowski from the club Chłodna 25 and the journalist Bartek Chaciński - were debating the internet influence on the models of cultural function.

One of the topics of the discussion centred on ways of thinking about different spheres of culture - outside the divisions of high and low culture. Wojciech Burszta proposed to differentiate "the culture of institutions" from the culture mediated by technology. The second is a much more private culture - so it's difficult to be researched, based on a private selection of contents, its own canon and a rhythm of participation. In turn Michał Merczyński was talking about the institutional culture and independent culture of projects. Finally Bartek Chaciński proposed a division of active and passive culture - financing institutions funding mainly the latter

Bartek Chaciński - when asked about the recognition of new culture by the media - said that "Przekrój" should have a section designated to "internet" next to the sections "music" or "film". Although according to him the cultural phenomena are the most interesting before they are noticed by traditional media. Chaciński proposed to talk about new and old culture. The "high" culture is mainly "old" - it gained the appropriate terminology, it became describable, and consequently accepted. Meanwhile new culture is still unnamed.

An interesting dialog arose between Michał Merczyński, who runs a large public institution and Grzesiek Lewandowski, who meets public officials on a local level, where money is often spent accidentally, and qualifications of functionaries are not satisfying. Michał Merczyński was saying that slowly the officials' thinking is changing and that they want to finance independent cultural projects more often. He was also pointing the possibility of involving the new media in the sphere of institutional culture - the national audiovisual archive on the internet could be an example. But still at the moment digitalisation of culture in Poland is done in a primitive way - it needs to be replaced with "factory production".

During the discussion the topic of a lack of cultural strategy in Poland also appeared. It seemed that the cultural strategy is replaced by the political "cultural politic". Grzegorz Lewandowski described a similar lack of strategy on the local level in the city of Warsaw, branding Warsaw culture as a ‘culture of transformation' - constantly reacting at old processes of change (after the war, after 89' etc.). Considering the lack of strategy in the cultural management in Poland, according to Bartek Chaciński, a cultural organisation is brought down to calculating the year's plans and spending money accordingly, this way ignoring the projects' quality.

Mirek Makowski, also present, was talking about the internet as a power which eliminates the division between high and low culture - but at the same time the cultural institutions support this division. Roman Pawłowski added one more division - between public culture and the cultural industry creating pop culture. He pointed at the importance of defining the public mission in the sphere of culture, which would finance from the budget only public culture - because commercial culture will finance itself. Pawłowski noticed though, that - and this is a paradox - Warsaw avant-garde culture is created by private, commercial places, such as the club Chłodna or Krystyna Janda's Theatre.

Throughout the discussion I slightly missed references to web culture in its clear form: private, independent, nesting "under the radar" of media, institutions or researchers. Mirek Makowski pointed at this sphere protesting against the "socialist" approach, which implies that any cultural activity has to be financed. It seems that this sphere of culture - entitled by us "kultura 2.0" ("culture 2.0") - is dealing very well without grants or media attention. But, as Bartek Chaciński noticed, sometimes web culture also needs patronage. The shape of this patronage is a matter, which would be worth bringing up at a future meeting.

Alek Tarkowski