Olga Drenda will present her book about the visual everyday during the perestroika years in Poland.
In her book, published by Garage in collaboration with Ad Marginem Press, Olga Drenda scrupulously describes the everyday and urban cultures of the hauntologic Poland, aiming to avoid any illusory generalizations. Amazingly enough, these seemingly fragmented bits of text scrutinizing furniture and toy design, street fashion and mass culture (the design of books, video and audio cassettes, periodicals, etc.) gradually evolve into a consistent and all-encompassing life story of a philistine from ‘Polish Poland’: where and how did they live? what were their hobbies? what did they read, watch, and listen to? Many readers will probably find this story extremely reminiscent of their own Soviet past. And still, it is very different.
“Hopefully, whenever I described people and things, I managed to fill the blank spaces and refine the hastily written stories about a period which allegedly has been largely, but yet not entirely, forgotten.” – Olga Drenda.
Olga Drenda’s visit to Russia is supported by Polish Institute in Moscow.
