THE PARADOX OF TRANSFORMATION

by Alessandra Knowles

By organising in Cracow in 1992 the European Cultural Month, the International Cultural Centre (ICC) played a very important role in Cracow becoming one of the nine European Cities of Culture of the year 2000. What made you take up this challenge?

I strongly believe in Cracow and I belong to the generation which experienced the so called “splendid isolation”. The paradox of Cracow before the collapse of Communism was that we were in Europe, indeed in a wonderful European setting, but fully isolated. The freedom we gained in 1989-90 brought with it a very rapid change and the mission of ICC is to encourage this change to take place also with regard to the international dialogue on culture. I believe Cracow can play an important role in this sense, not just as a heritage city but also as place of enormous intellectual, artistic and creative potential which was frozen for the decades after the second World War. Cracow belongs to the network of those cities which are complex, diversified and sophisticated and the challenge of creating a bridge between the monuments, the physical fabric of the city and its human potential is certainly worth taking up.

Cracow seems to have always held a very special position, thanks to its cultural richness, enjoying a certain degree of autonomy throughout its history. Why and how?

It’s true. One should stress first that Cracow has its golden era behind it, and this may be an advantage. It reached the zenith of its development in the 16th century and after that faced very severe decline and provicialisation. It is one of the few large metropolitan city of Central Eastern Europe which is not fulfilling any important political and administrative function. One can speak about the frozen city, about pollution, ecological disasters and the many negative impacts of real socialism, yet Cracow was always different also because it was not a capital. It would have been impossible to have such a margin of freedom in East Berlin,Warsaw, Prague or in Budapest. Cracow was the city of artists, the city of intellectuals, the city where the special position of the Cardinal of Cracow, Karol Woytila, acted as a kind of umbrella for many free thinkers. Already in the 50’s it produced such expressions as Tadeusz Kantor’s theatre, the so called Cracow group of contemporary painting, the Zielony Balonik (Little Green Balloon) cabaret, and jazz music which was forbidden in the Stalinist era. Later, at the beginning of the 60’s Cracow was invaded by many Hungarian intellectuals and artists who were coming to Cracow for freedom: everything is relative and from the perspective of Budapest after 1956 Cracow was a kind of island where one could easily discuss the problems of Informal Art, of Existential Philosophy and of many other issues that by the official communist propaganda were labelled as bourgeois and reactionary.

Now, after the events of 1989 Cracow is having to face the impact of liberalisation also in terms of pressure of the market economy on the development of the city. How do you propose to find a balance between economic growth and the preservation of cultural identity?

This is second task of the ICC, to look for a new approach to heritage. Isn’t it a paradox that in the time of communism in the framework of a stagnant economy of a system that was based on a permanent control of everybody and everything it was much easier to protect it? Poverty can be a great conservator. Since 1989-90 we have undergone rapid development and, of course, transformations bring conflicts, as Rynek G¬ówny, the main square of our city, clearly testifies: advertisements are the first symptom of capitalism, as are the innumerable restaurants replacing the economy of shortages and empty shops. It is real revolution and one should look for new instruments. We should speak about the management of change, the management of potential, a kind of a sustainable development based on an daily compromise between the challenges of the future and the basic principles of heritage protection. It is not just a matter of balance, it is a matter of human awareness. It touches on issues of identity, of globalisation, the natural conflict between tradition and modernity, between local and universal values, but it also touches on the problem of money, of form and function of our monuments.

In the light of the objectives of the ICC both in terms of development of the city and consolidation of Cracow’s international role, do you feel the Cracow 2000 European City of Culture event has achieved what you hoped it would?

It’s a philosophical question because one should first define what the aim of the European city of culture should be. For me, as the deputy mayor who in September-October 1990 was struggling for the European Cultural Month, I’m afraid that this year was treated in quite a narrow way, addressing mainly a local audience rather than an international one. I would have rather followed the experience of such places as Glasgow and Antwerp where this event was used as an opportunity not only to promote the city and change its image, but also to create new infrastructures. To a certain extent I feel we missed this chance, yet I still hope that in the not very distant future Cracow will have managed to develop an image of a truly international festival venue.