Visual negotiation of identity and settlement of Poles in the so-called Recovered Territories: East Side Story by Anne Peschken and Marek Pisarsky

Abstract

This text is an analysis of a series of pinhole photographs, by Anne Peschken and Marek Pisarsky (Urban Art), entitled East Side Story I (Myślibórz). Photo research on migration and arrival stories, 2019 on-going. The main thesis is that these photographs are a model example of images which, while addressing the theme of migration in the representational layer, also activate the processual and migratory nature of visual forms themselves. In order to substantiate this thesis, the East Side Story project is examined in the following contexts: critical border (art) studies; H. Belting’s anthropology of the image; memory studies; re-enactment; the blurriness of images made with a pinhole camera; A. Berleant’s re-thinking aesthetics and the notion of aesthetic embodiment. Reflecting on the tension between history, memory, identity and politics and activating the critical potential of borderscaping, Peschken and Pisarsky transform the landscape of the Polish-German borderland into an anachronistic narrative agent. The photographs from the East Side Story series are thus transgenerational corpographies of memory, showing that migration is a key and inalienable element of Polish history.