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Photographs evoke emotions, they affect us. They are what inspires us to think. Intellect and reflection always come after the image, right after the affect. What kind of experience, what  kind of memory are formed by photographs? What constitutes their narrative layer?

The defeat of the Polish state in September 1939 opened a tragic chapter in Krakow's history. The fate of the city was decided in Berlin – it was designated as the capital of the General Government and the power was handed over to Hans Frank. Krakow was to become a model German city, colonised and Germanised, which translated into the terror for the Polish population.

The  Mature for Art  cycle is an offer for those who have a free morning and want to broaden their knowledge of culture and art. The meeting program includes thematic lectures by an art historian followed by a discussion.

A cardboard box with old newspapers, letters, labels or photos bought at a flea market in it. This is a short description of the content of one of the many "time capsules" that Andy Warhol left behind. His project, Time Capsules (Time Capsules) , which started after 1974 and lasted until 1987, is a unique collector's endeavor, the result of which is a collection of over 600 cardboard boxes tightly filled with scraps of everyday life and Warhol's artistic activities.

Enthusiasm related to the development of modern visual culture: cinema, popular illustrated press and photographic experiments under the sign of "das neue Sehen" had already been critically complemented in the 1920s in comments about the increasing "photoinflation". A specific response to this situation was the collection and processing by artists of ready-made images, from a collection of "found materials" (Album Hannah Höch), using them in the mode of ironic and mocking paraphrases, to politically engaged photomontage (John Heartfield).

With the collapse of the Habsburg monarchy, the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria also disappeared from the maps of the world. The memory of the complex and multidimensional history of this almost mythical land has survived, despite the passage of time, and in later years also in spite of the efforts of the occupation authorities or, after World War II, the policies of the Polish People's Republic and the Soviet Union.

As every year, the International Cultural Centre opened its doors to Cracovians during the unique Night of Museums in Krakow. We invited you to the gallery for the newly opened exhibition  More than Bauhaus. German photography between the wars and Polish parallels . Virtual accompanying events complemented the traditional sightseeing.

No other land but today’s Poland was an area of a great spatial experiment in the creation of the German "Lebensraum " . The ICC brand new book provides—for the first time—the most complete overview of the architectural heritage left there behind by the Third Reich. Its complexity will be discussed among Professors Christian Fuhrmeister (ZI, Munich), Jacek Purchla (ICC, Kraków), and Dr. Magdalena Łanuszka (ICC, Kraków).

Belarus is much closer to us than it seems at first glance, not only because of its common history. But perhaps we do not know so little about any other of our neighbors. In Poland, Belarusians remain a mystery, although we have been cheering for their democratic insurgency for many months.

The lecture will discuss the activities of Max Ernst – an artist associated with both Surrealism and Dadaism. The starting point for the April lecture will be an exhibition devoted to his work by  Max Ernst. An Ornithologist's dreams , presented at the ICC Gallery in 2016.

It is difficult to imagine the shape of today's visual culture without the ways of seeing developed by photographers from the era of Weimar Germany.

Poles are fascinated by Georgia. However, we still know little how much good there is today in the cooperation between Poles and Georgians. During the meeting in the  At a distance  series, prof. Radosław Karasiewicz-Szczypiorski, archaeologist, Dr. Piotr Rypson, art historian, and Lech Kończak, director of the Polish Institute in Tbilisi, talked about it in an interview with Katarzyna Fortuna.

The Bauhaus was opened in 1919 in Weimar as a state school for artists and craftsmen. Until its seat in Berlin was closed in 1933 by the National Socialists, the school managed to become a symbol of progress and modernity. As the following decades have shown, its influence has gone far beyond the time limit of the first half of the 20th century and the borders of Germany.

The exhibition  Lviv, 24th June 1937.City, architecture, modernism  was presented at the ICC Gallery at the turn of 2017 and 2018. Its subject matter will be a pretext to discuss the transformations of the architectural landscape of Polish cities and to search for an answer to the question of how it changed along with the political and economic transformation after 1989, and later with Poland's accession to the European Union.