The past couple of days have been something else, and somewhat unexpected; upon arriving to Krakow to meet a friend of my girlfriend’s family, we were taken on a walk through the streets of Krakow at night and came across the beginnings of a protest against the government for plans to make the judges answer only to the right-wing, nationalist, conservative, Christian party that rules the country currently, which would potentially devastate the country, demolish the justice system and also risk Poland being kicked out of the EU by violating European law. I fully support the protests, despite not being Polish myself, my girlfriend is however and it is important to her and I also believe that judges should be allowed to make fair judgements without political interference and in any way that could allow guilty people walk free, so I am glad that we were taken to this protest, however, it was made slightly awkward by the fact that I still had my suitcase at this point, it was definitely a spontaneous affair.
As well as attending the protest, we finally got to go to the Krakow Poster Gallery which I had been hoping to go to since arriving in Poland, when I arrived I must admit that I thought the place looked quite small, that did not however affect the sheer volume of posters that was inside. I was left stunned and amazed walking through that small building, seeing posters from all different generations and commercial avenues such as film, tv, theatre, music festivals, food, gigs and so much more. I could have spent so long in there staring and taking photos of all the posters that interested me, but as I said, the place was quite small and there was a few people inside so I felt quite awkward standing there and taking photos, I only managed to get a few of the ones that really stood out to me. It was so nice seeing so many different styles of art and it gave me a plethora of ideas of how I could layout my final poster design at the end of the print project. Being in such polluted cities and seeing first hand the effect that it is having on peoples’ lives has also given me ideas of what my design is going to depict. I’ve been doing my research on which industries contribute the most to pollution and one of the high flyers is the meat industry… now, at the time of writing I do still eat meat but I’ve cut back a lot and I have been thinking for a while that I want to give it up, I just knew that I had no chance of doing that over a Polish Christmas (there’s loads of meat and fish and barley a vegetarian option in sight) but I still feel as if I could take a swing at the meat industry this project, I may be vegetarian by the end of this trip.
One of the posters that really stood out to me, especially as inspiration for this project was a one that said, ‘Hunting in Poland’ and depicted what I assume is a deer standing over the body of a hunter with its’ hoof on his chest. I couldn’t help but laugh a little at the sight of this, the role reversal is just spectacular, and I find it really refreshing to see something like this in a country where hunting is rather common and animal culls have happened numerous times in the past. My interpretation of the poster could be wrong but to me it is saying that the animals rule and not those that hunt them, that the hunters become the hunted and to be honest, that’s just karma.
Castle Chickenstein 