COURAGE

connecting collections

Krzysztof Skiba, ‘Komisariat naszym domem. Pomarańczowa historia’, Warsaw: Narodowe Centrum Kultury, 2015.
Tomasz Sikorski, Marcin Rutkiewicz, 'Graffiti w Polsce 1940-2010', Warsaw: carta blanca, 2011.

The book gives voice to musicians like Robert Brylewski (bands Brygada Kryzys, Izrael, Armia), Tomasz Lipiński (Brygada Kryzys, Tilt) or Paweł „Kelner” Rozwadowski (Deuter, Izrael), but also Paweł „Konjo” Konnak from the Gdansk artistic group TotArt or the organizer of the Jarocin festival Walter Chełstowski. Jarosz also managed to reach former authorities like Jerzy Urban (press secretary of Polish government in 1981-1989) or Aleksander Kwaśniewski (back then a Minister for Youth and an editor the youth magazine Sztandar Młodych, later a president of Poland).

Ha! Art., the publishing house form Krakow, describes the project in a following way: „« Generation» (…) presents a new imaginarium of the Polish popular culture in the 1980s (…) The new pantheon clears the field of culture from the mastodons like bands Perfect, Lombard, TSA, Turbo etc. [mainstream rock groups of the 1980s.].”

In the book one can also find a timeline of the most important events of the 1980s which influenced the punk scene, as well as detailed description of photographs. Jarosz’s text is included both in Polish and English version.

Csapody felt that it was not enough simply to research and document acts and fates of individuals who refused to perform compulsory military service. He sought to make the decisions and fates of these individuals familiar to wider audiences, as well. He began shooting the film with great enthusiasm but without any financial support or filmmaking experience. His technical supporter was cameraman László Pesty. Almost all of the raw material, including interviews and discussions, was preserved in the collection.

The informative file on the creator of The Club of the Free Kings, Puiu Apostolescu, contains five photographs of two badges made of wood. They were carved by Apostolescu and sent to his friend, Eugen Mircea, in Târgoviște. The insignia were confiscated by the Dâmbovița county branch of the Securitate on the occasion of a search at Eugen Mircea’s home. The badges were one of the distinctive elements of a member of The Club of the Free Kings. They were supposed not only to differentiate the Free Kings from their peers but also to underline the hippy character of the group. Thus, on one side, the badges contained the name of the group, and the word “hippy.” The word “free” is written twice in the combination, with “The Free Kings” and “The Free Club.”On the reverse, the badges are individualised, as they contain the English nicknames of Eugen Mircea (Christ) and Puiu Apostolescu (O’Brien McHarrison) as a way of stressing their friendship and membership of the group (ACNSAS I 3032, ff. 128–132).