Finding and losing a place. Łódź underground towards experience of everyday life of a city

Abstract

The Łódź underground had emerged from the punk aesthetic, yet it absorbed successive genres surprisingly quickly: hardcore, industrial, later also, among others, techno and rave. It utilized diverse forms of expression: most of all sound, but also projections, site-specific actions, graphic design or fashion. The article, drawing from the memories and output of several most important participants of the movement, poses the question, in what way the underground so easily absorbed new genres and aesthetic patterns on the one hand, while on the other – it remained so strongly separate. The separation is revealed in the tension between experiencing new, experimenting musical and aesthetic trends, and the overwhelming everyday life of the post-industrial city. This tension was the reason why the underground movement was so intensely performative in its character, in which new knowledge and new inspirations were mostly created in action.