Heaps and shafts – a meeting promoting the 56th issue of HERITO

June 30, 2025, 18.00
Panoramic Hall (5th floor) 

We invite you to a meeting promoting the 56th issue of “Herito: Post-mining” with the participation of researcher Marta Tomczok and cultural activist Adam Kowalski. It will be led by Bartosz Sadulski, the new editor-in-chief of the magazine.

Reflecting the fundamental transformations undergone in recent decades by the mining industry, a pillar of the 19th-century industrial revolution and 20th-century modernization, the latest issue of Herito. Particularly engaging for us are the above-ground remnants of mining, the mining legacy, often described as “troublesome”.

Our awareness of the ecological and social effects of industrial mining and the use of mineral resources is changing, but at the same time we are stuck in uncertainty about the future. In the issue and during the meeting, we will look together with Marta Tomczok and Adam Kowalski at the material and architectural traces of mining history in Poland. We will consider how to evaluate, protect and tame them. After all, not all places like Krzemionki or Tarnowskie Góry can be drawn into the UNESCO World Heritage List.

The 56th issue of “Herito” is the first issue published by the new editor-in-chief, Bartosz Sadulski. He was previously secretary and managing editor of the magazine. He replaced Prof. Jacek Purchla, who for 15 years was editor-in-chief of the magazine published by the International Cultural Centre in Cracow.

Prof. Dr. Marta Tomczok – researcher, author of books and articles on the Holocaust. She works at the Institute of Literary Studies at the University of Silesia. Among her research interests are non-anthropocentric accounts of charcoal in culture and its environmental history, as well as the impact of new methodologies on the study of the Holocaust and other genocides, critical reflection on aesthetics considered past (postmodernism) and new animism. She is editor-in-chief of the annual “Narrations of the Shoah”.

Adam Kowalski – cultural manager, interpreter and heritage advisor, graduate of the University of Silesia, founder of the TuRuda Association. He was artistic director and originator of the Festival of New Scenography and the Jerzy Moskal Scenographic Award, deputy of the Regional Institute of Culture in Katowice, deputy director of the Silesian Museum and director of the Museum of Metallurgy in Chorzow. He coordinates the project to adapt the former blast furnace of the Huta Pokój in Ruda Śląska into a new tourist attraction and Transformation Center.  

Bartosz Sadulski – writer and editor, author of three volumes of poetry, as well as the novels “Szesnaście na Bourbon” and “Rzeszot,” for which he received the Kościelski Prize, and was nominated for the “Nike” Literary Award and the Conrad Prize. In addition to “Herito” he is a regular contributor to the “Dwutygodnik” portal. He is a scholarship holder of the “Young Poland” program in the literature category (2019). He lives in Nowa Huta.