Urszula Zajaczkowska: “In the human-free space, the wind moves inhibited only by plants or rocks” (online)

In the human-free space, the wind moves inhibited only by plants or rocks. The wind carries spores, seeds as well as plant compounds so it is part of the construction process of the space. There is also movement underground. Water moves through tiny crevices according to the action of gravity and the relief of the land, its basins. All this is subject to transformations of energy, typical of the actions of the living world to suppress entropy phenomena. How can architecture be an element that fits into the processes of coexistence that have been going on for billions of years? In my short lecture, I will talk about a city full of buildings made of artificial rocks, about water drainage, about the trees that grow there and why for every single one is hard to live there? Is there an architecture that does not interfere with natural phenomena and why is there not?

Urszula Zajączkowska – poet, botanist and video artist. As a botanist (and an Associated Professor at Warsaw University of Life Sciences – SGGW), she researches the anatomy, biomechanics, aerodynamics and movement of plants. She has also graduated from the Film and Television Academy of Warsaw, and creates short films. Her first volume of poetry entitled Atomy was published by Zeszyty Poetyckie in 2014. It earned her a nomination for the Silesius 2015 Wrocław Poetry Award in the “debut of the year” category and a distinction of the 11th National Literary Competition “Złoty Środek Poezji” 2015 for the best debut volume of 2014. In 2017, she published a second collection entitled Minimum. At that time, she was awarded the Kościelski Award, and was nominated for the Wrocław Poetry Award Silesius 2018 (book of the year), as well as for the Orpheus – K.I. Gałczyński Poetry Award 2018. In 2019, she published an essay collection Patyki, badyle, for which she received the Gdynia 2020 Literary Award. Very recently, her new poetry volume Piach has been published by the Wrocław-based publishing house Warstwy (2020).

The lecture will be followed by a discussion with Małgorzata Kuciewicz and Simone De Iacobis (Centrala).

Online event, registration required: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwrcOGrrDIiH9RbClKv1IcmdddCek-9ZUHP

Supported by the Polish Institute in Prague