My Bread and Butter Stuff

Not exactly glamorous but this is the sort of stuff I do to get by.

My Latest Piece in the TES

My latest in the TES.

Archive Article: Architecture Film Festival in Warsaw

Originally published by the now-defunct WiK English Edition, part of Poland’s reputed Wprost publishing house, in June 2007.

Mixing Celluloid and Concrete

When you first think about it, architecture and film seem to be the most unlikely of bedfellows. Though the former is a dynamic process whereby a new structure comes to life through the labour of many, after once being just the brainchild of the designer in his/her studio, the speed at which it works is glacial compared to the frenetic art of moving pictures. Capturing architecture on film would also appear to be fruitless because appreciating it properly is best done in the flesh, not through the medium of a camera.

Yet from June 4 to 6th in Wroclaw and 12th to 14th in Warsaw, an architectural film festival will be held. Organised by the website www.sztuka-architektury.pl, the festival will consist of showing one film a day, followed by a discussion both of what the audience has just seen and also the theme it was presented under. How both of these relate to a Polish context will also be explored, particularly in the light of the recent, high-profile debate that broke out over the tender to choose the architect for the Museum of Modern Art, which will arrive on Warsaw’s plac Defilad in eight to 10 years time.

“Interest in architecture in Poland is increasing but for the most part it remains the preserve of the professionals, and there is not a great deal of coverage on it in the media,” said Krzysztof Soloducha, the owner of www.sztuka-architektury.pl. “In the cultural pages of Gazeta Wyborcza, for instance, the cultural section contains articles on architecture perhaps two or three times a month. We have to raise the profile of architecture and I thought the best way to do this would be via film because it is so accessible and a lot more appealing than listening to specialists talk on the subject.”

The idea is that the themes informing the films will also be largely new to a Polish audience. On the first day, the topic is the ‘Star System’ in modern architecture, where figures such as the UK’s Norman Foster (designer of Warsaw’s Metropolitan office building) have achieved almost global celebrity status. To go with this, those gathered will watch the film ‘Building the Gherkin’, a fly-on-the-wall documentary about the efforts to construct one of the most unusual and controversial buildings to go up in the centre of London in recent memory. Designed by Foster himself, the ‘gherkin’, as it was termed by the media because of its shape, gained immediate notoriety because it was constructed on a site where an IRA bomb had destroyed the building that had previously stood there.

The film, while entertaining enough and providing plenty of precious insights into how buildings get built, is standard fare as far as documentary film-making is concerned, but for Soloducha, the main purpose in showing it is to provoke a debate as to why a Polish Norman Foster – who comes over as a very charismatic man in the film – does not yet exist.

“Sometimes in Poland professional architects complain that they do not get the attention granted writers or film-makers and it is true, they don’t,” said Soluducha. “In other countries architects are major personalites, but in Poland they are not. This is because of the country’s history of being occupied. Traditionally, foreigners have decided how buildings should look in Poland.”

The theme on the second day is ‘Modernism: Its Difficult Legacy’ and in many ways this is the most relevant to the shape that Warsaw has taken on since the end of the Second World War, with a major debate breaking out in the city about whether certain Communist-era buildings should be demolished, despite, arguably, being examples of high-quality, innovative design. Then, there is also the question of how the Polish capital, particularly in the area near the central train station, has become the only city in the region where skyscrapers are the norm. All this certainly dovetails with the person at the centre of the film that will be shown, ‘City of Dreams: the Diary of an Eccentric Architect’, which focuses on one of the pioneers of multi-storey building design, the American Philip Johnson. Unfortunately, the rather indulgent and wearing content of the documentary might leave viewers wondering what the connection between modernism and what they are watching actually is.

However, should a film at any time get the upper hand over the theme (in this case ‘Culture and Architecture’) during the festival then it will probably come on the final day. Entitled ‘My Architect: A Son’s Journey’, the film is the study of a man’s attempts to understand the father he never knew, who died suddenly in old age when he was only 11-years-of-age. What transpires is that the father was a fanatically-driven architect who shunned the responsibilities of family life in pursuit of his desire to create the most beautiful buildings, an undertaking he failed in most of the time, but when he succeeded the results truly were breathtaking. It is when we watch these scenes that we learn that cinema and architecture were in fact made for one another.

Archive Article: The Polish Reggae Enigma: Maleo Reggae Rockers

Originally published by the now-defunct WiK English Edition, part of Poland’s reputed Wprost publishing house, in August 2006

The Polish Reggae Enigma: Maleo Reggae Rockers

‘Polish’and ‘Reggae’, the two words do not exactly trip off the tongue when uttered in the same breath. Yet the languid sounds born in Jamaica have a home in this country that has deeper roots than most people might think.

Maleo Reggae Rockers (MRR) are fronted by a veteran of the Polish rock scene who has also been garlanded with a number of awards since he picked up a guitar in 1983. Darek Malejonek, vocalist, songwriter and guitarist of the ten-piece outfit, has been playing and singing with assorted punk, grunge and reggae bands since the days of Communism and he still looks and talks like a man who has fire in his belly. When WiK: English Edition met him he was just back from the Polish ‘Woodstock’ festival and was sporting a scar on his forehead caused when his onstage revelry brought it into heavy contact with his microphone.

Of all the genres of protest music reggae has often been the most curious because it does not rant and rave like others, such as punk for instance. Just as long as you can get past the Jamaican accent the tunes often have you nodding in agreement as well as in rhythm. Maleo Reggae Rockers sing in Polish and, refreshingly, without the cod West Indian vocals that some of their contemporaries adopt. They maintain that their vibe is perfectly consistent with the anti-colonialist stance of traditional reggaeists.

“Poland has a very complicated history,” Malejdonek said. “And when I see what is happening in Lebanon right now I can put myself in the victims’ shoes because of it. When you think of the Warsaw Uprising and all the people who died you can see that there is something in common [between the two situations].”

Interestingly, given his outlook on current affairs, one of Malejdonek’s first bands was called ‘Izrael’, a name he admits would not go down too well in some quarters given events in the Middle East at the moment.

The huge popularity of home-grown reggae bands in Poland is at first glance a major oddity. A country not exactly noted for being a multi-ethnic melting pot – the usual grounds for music from the Caribbean gaining a foothold in a European culture – Poland nonetheless continues to spawn a steady flow of groups who swear by the legacy left by Bob Marley and co. With the apparent boost in confidence currently enjoyed by far-right groups in Poland, the reggae scene can act as a powerful counter-weight in favour of tolerance and internationalism.

But you have to go back to the mid-80s, says Malejonek, in order to come up with an explanation as to why Poland has given birth to so many groups knocking out the booming bass-lines and staccato chords beloved of the dread-locked contingent.

“When we listened to Bob Marley singing about Babylon, slavery and oppression it had strong resonance for us living under the Communist regime,” he said. “Just as with punk, reggae was a popular type of rebel music and a lot of musicians, including myself, played in both types of band at the same time. And now we are seeing another explosion in reggae’s popularity in Poland.”

The grip that hip hop has maintained on the imagination of the nation’s youth has led to some groups dabbling in the recent cross-dressing that genre has indulged in with the reggae-tinged styles of raga and dancehall, Malejonek says.

The upshot of that means Polish reggae has more tempo in its veins than used to be the case, with Maleo Reggae Rockers embracing the new wave as enthusiastically as any. Though some say they can only take reggae in small doses because of its alleged repetitiveness, MRR pump out a sound throbbing with energy and with the gruff vocals of Malejonek leading them can whip up an audience into a frenzy in no time. The spectacle at a MRR gig is unique, with fans waving home-made banners and dancing uninhibitedly, with little attention paid to self-image or rhythm. The ‘cool’ associated with the home of reggae, Jamaica, seems largely absent, but no matter. The passion for the music is clearly insatiable and is why the words ‘Polish’ and ‘Reggae’, in the end, collocate easily.

Poland and Euro 2012: A Nation Renewed

 Poland and Euro 2012: A Nation Renewed 

Just over six years ago, while living and working in Warsaw, I wrote a piece for a local English language magazine about the plight of one of the Polish capital’s most eye-catching features. The ‘Russian Market’ was the name many ex-pats had given to an astonishing gathering of different nationalities in what was, and largely still is, an almost uniformly white, Catholic city and country. The Armenians, Vietnamese, Africans, Middle Eastern and Ukrainian vendors who plied their trade in clothing, CDs, DVDs and occasionally Nazi and Soviet era memorabilia were doing so at the disused national stadium, ‘Stadion Dziesiecioleca’ (the 10^th Anniversary stadium), which opened in 1955 (ten years after the Communist regime had come to power in Poland) but had ceased to function as an arena by the 1980s.

It was an incredible sight, all those garment stalls crammed almost on top of one another at the bottom of the stadium, the wares being hawked by the Armenians and Vietnamese. Up at the top above the empty stands, overgrown pitch and forlorn-looking goalposts, young Africans would approach you and try to flog discs with a whisper in your ear as they passed by. The odd Ukrainian could be seen selling SS uniforms and medals, which one told me were perfectly genuine having been seized during World War II when the Nazis were being driven from the USSR.

On Friday June 8^th that very site will host the opening match of EURO 2012 between Poland and Greece, with nearly 60,000 people in attendance.

To call the change dramatic is a huge understatement, something the UK media, with its reports of racism at Poland’s football stadia and its own, frankly, prejudiced views on both Polish culture and that of co-host Ukraine has largely failed to acknowledge. The new national stadium has been built according to the highest standards, its design inspired by existing state-of-the-art venues in Western Europe and elsewhere.

It will also be the scene of potentially the most electric match in Group A, when Poland face Russia on June 12^th. There is also the irony to consider that the stadium was once referred to as the ‘Russian Market’, though even in 2006, that had ceased to be an accurate label. The visa regime Poland introduced for Russian citizens in 1998 had put a stop to coach loads from cities from all over Russia arriving in the early hours, spilling out traders in their scores to set up stalls at the bazaar. Rumours abounded as to the merchandise on offer at the market, with Kalashnikov rifles among the possible purchases, it was said.

This time round the visitors from the Big Bear will also be coming to be Poland in controversial circumstances. The Russian squad is being accommodated at the Hotel Bristol right in the centre of Warsaw, just down the road from the presidential palace, which has been a magnet for nationalist demonstrators since the plane crash near the Russian city of Smolensk in April 2010. This saw then-president Lech Kaczynski and numerous other luminaries lose their lives, with a significant minority of Poles believing the tragedy was the result of a Moscow-inspired conspiracy. Many of these are set to congregate before the palace to protest just two days before the game between the two neighbours, whose relations have historically been fraught in any case.

As a result, the Polish authorities have suggested that the Russians change hotel to avoid the discomfort that might well be caused by demonstrators cursing their names but the latter have declined the invitation, saying they have faith in their hosts’ ability to safeguard their security.

Yet on match day itself the tension might be ratcheted up another few notches as the Russian national side’s supporters’ club has said it intends marching through Warsaw just before the referee blows his whistle for the game to begin. Some in the Polish capital have expressed concern that their guests might be doing this provocatively, though the visiting fans have reassured them that June 12^th is a national holiday in Russia and their coming together on the city’s streets will simply be an attempt to mark the occasion. We shall see, and hope nothing kicks off before kick-off.

In general, EURO 2012 promises to leave an ingrained legacy in Poland once the tournament has come to an end. All the stadia that have either been re-built or constructed anew in time for the championship will be put to full use in the years to come, mostly by local clubs in the Ekstraklasa, with the exception of the venue in Warsaw.

The future looks promising for Polish football, as a result, but though the local fans can be very passionate they are also an anxious lot who tend to downplay their team’s chances as militantly as they support it. Qualifying as hosts and having to play nothing but friendlies for the past two years, they are also an unknown force, pretty much, though the core three Bundesliga-winning Borussia Dortmund players: Lukasz Piszczek, Jakub Blaszczykowski and Robert Lewandowski should make opposing sides sit up and take notice.

Back in 2006, not long after I had traipsed around the ‘Russian Market’, Poland fielded a team at the World Cup in Germany. As with the preceding tournament in 2002, the showing was a failure, mitigated, very slightly, by the fact that two ‘Poles’ - Lukasz Podolski and Miroslav Klose - had appeared in the far more successful German side. Both are in the EURO 2012 squad for Germany, as they were in EURO 2008 when two Podolski goals largely put paid to Poland’s chances of advancement from the group stages. The ‘German’ was evidently emotional after netting against his country of birth. There’ll be more than tears if he does it again.

Guest Blogger: Mary Rochford on the Olympic Torch Tour

Mary Rochford on the Olympic Torch Tour: 

Flaming Madness

The country is in the grip of hysteria surrounding the Olympics and this is being whipped up during the travels of the flame. Since arriving in Cornwall on the May 18th, people from the communities along the route have turned out to wave Union Jacks, scream, jump for joy and generally behave like morons at the sight of persons, clad in white, carrying aloft a brass-coloured flaming torch. Well, okay, it’s not always flaming – it’s extinguished frequently by the elements or gremlins or some such phenomenon. But do not fear; the torch never leaves home without backup, it is soon relit and continues on its way, uphill and down dale, across the merry shires of this green and pleasant land.

I wonder if the people who line the route are aware that touring the Olympic Flame was introduced (in the modern Olympics) by the Nazis for the 1936 games in Berlin. I wonder if, being aware, the knowledge is in any way unsettling; if they gave a toss.

 ‘Ordinary people’ and celebrities have been privileged with carrying the flame. When it arrived in Taunton the rapper, will.i.am, assured a television interviewer that such goings on had been a significant part of his childhood [he grew up in Los Angeles] and that he had always wanted to be part of it.  Should I have been surprised that an African-American was not only not freaked out by the image of people dressed in white, carrying flaming torches, but wanted to join them? Normally I would say yes, but hey, in the mad frenzy that is Olympic mania all I can say is, whatever lights your torch!  

At this point I think it meet to confess that I am not a great fan of the Olympics. To be frank, I abhor the madness of sport. After long and careful consideration I have come to the conclusion that my attitude towards the competitive was born of the fact that I was the fourth child of a family of eight. Consequently, for the first ten years of my life I never won anything – not even a game of Snakes and Ladders. In the absence of more worthy opponents (their friends) my two older brothers forced my sister and I into an unhappy quartet where they chose the board games, the card games, the sports and, time after time, beat us so comprehensively that they inflicted, in my case, deep psychological damage.  I could, of course, have inflicted the same pain and humiliation on my younger siblings, but by the time the realisation of this possibility dawned, I had claimed the moral high ground and had embraced the idea that all competitive pursuit, with its attendant manic and addictive behaviour, was for the intellectually challenged. Yes, I was a rather precocious child, or to put it another way, a bit of a freak. Unlike most children who were considered normal, I loved doing exams. I adored the quiet and privacy of the written exam. Away from the shouting, hectoring and sneering of my brothers, alone with a blank sheet, a pen and the question paper, I had time to relax, to think, to consider, to give myself up to the challenge of the task in hand.  Happy days for a geeky kid!

Back to the progress of the Olympic Flame. The Olympic Committee, headed by Lord Coe sold the idea of touring the flame as a way in which the entire nation, regardless of income could participate in the Olympic Games. Isn’t that nice? The cynics who thought that the Olympics were only for the toffs who could afford to travel to London and pay the (usually) exorbitant entrance fees, have been shamed.  Without exception, the people of the towns and villages along the route have fallen for the myth of participation and have flocked to join in the party.  

The burning question is why?

Why in the name of all that is sane and rational should the citizens of a country, brought to the brink of economic ruin by its politicians and bankers and whose jobs, homes and essential services are under threat because of the austerity package foisted on them by the Con/Dem[olition] squad, allow themselves to become part of this expensive, ludicrous circus?  Have we lost all sense of reality? Have our priorities become so tarnished by a celebrity culture which glorifies the superficial and trivial, that we are willing to lend ourselves to displays of such mindless banality without a blush of embarrassment? 

The crowds of ecstatic spectators along the route would lead us to the unhappy conclusion that, for the time being, a sizeable proportion of the people of Britain is willing to be distracted from the misery that has befallen many and which awaits many more, at least while the sun shines. Those who are not so easily distracted can only look on in wonderment and trepidation. How, if so many are so easily mollified will we force our politicians to abandon the policies which will destroy the NHS, schooling, essential services and benefits for all vulnerable people? The government will be happy that there is a summer choc-a-bloc with sport ahead which will keep the millions distracted. But when the summer ends and the recession continues to bite there will be a reckoning. The cheering multitudes might do well to remember Shakespeare’s words as he warns,  

“These violent delights have violent ends

 And in their triumph die, like fire and powder

Which, as they kiss, consume.”

Mary Rochford was born and grew up in Dublin. She has spent most of her adult life in Birmingham, England, where she read English and History at the University of Birmingham. She obtained a Masters in Literary Studies at Birmingham City University and has worked as a lecturer in further education. Her collection of short stories, Gilded Shadows, was long-listed for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award and won the Birmingham City Library Readers' Book for Birmingham Award.

Her website is here.