A city half existing and half abandoned, a city lost and half recovered – this is what Adam Zagajewski wrote of present-day Lviv. It is also the pars pro toto of the syndrome of the Central European city – not belonging fully to anyone, either to those who live there or those who lost it. And how many other names could we insert in place of Lviv? Of cities still as tangled as the mythical Gordian knot? Yet there will be no Alexander along, adds Peter Krečič, and we must start untangling it patiently ourselves.
Ľubomír Lipták, Bogdan Bogdanović, Husein Oručević, Peter Krečič, Żanna Komar, Artur D. Liskowacki write on cities still insufficiently thought through – from Bosnia to Ukraine, from Trieste to Szczecin.
More over Jacek Purchla talks about the city as a laboratory of change and about the modernising revolution initiated in Polish cities by the rivalry for the title of European Capital of Culture 2016. Martina Lehmannová talks us around the villa of Dušan Jurkovič – a Central European example of a “house for an art lover” and a new museum on the cultural map of Brno. Martin Pollack, Éva Forgács, Magdalena Bystrzak, Magdalena Petryna share their impressions of new Ukrainian and Central European books, and exhibitions in Krakow and Bratislava. Wojciech Wilczyk on photographic images of Upper Silesian towns and the post-industrial architecture of the region.