Corbu’s boars
Jacek Wajszczak
1
2
end
1
Bois profond et sauvage. Des bruits d’insectes, d’oiseaux et d’autres animaux se font entendre. Au bout de quelques instants, un âne sort de la forêt.
​
Il arrive avec un vendeur de prospectus : des nouvelles en papier et des histoires pour tout le monde : meurtres et folies, hagiographies, chansons d'amour, calendriers et prophéties.
​
Ils vont de porte en porte, de ferme en ferme. Leurs chemins sont sinueux comme le corps d'un serpent, comme la piste d'un serpent.
​
L’une des prédictions était la dessin d'un héros bien bâti, et de l’autre côté, les yeux humains sur la boîte à grille.
Deep, wild wood. The sound of insects, birds and other animals plays around. After a few moments, a donkey emerges from the forest.
He comes with a vendor of leaflets – of paper news and stories for everyone – murders and madness, hagiographies, love songs, calendars and prophecies.
They go from door to door, from farm to farm. Their paths are sinuous as a serpent’s body, as a serpent’s track.
One of the prophecies is a picture of a well-built hero. On the other side, human eyes on a grid-box.
*
​
A few years later, Le Corbusier requests that the winding paths of the city be changed to straight lines. He argues: ‘A man walks straight because he has a goal; he knows where he is going. He has decided to go somewhere and walks straight there. A donkey wanders, wandering around absent-mindedly, completely without a clue, walking in zigzags, avoiding stones, avoiding hills and looking for shade; he wants to tire himself out as little as possible.’
Corbu knows that he is not the first to come up with the idea of straight boulevards, but he wants to implement it on an absolute scale. Soon, in the name of the capitalist order, the straight line becomes a way of acting and being present in the world. The lines separate the rich and the poor, the bushes and the estates, old inhabitants and newcomers.
*
​
One day, a wild boar appeared in my neighbourhood. This is not a village or the suburbs. The estate was built in the 1970s/80s, near one of the most snobbish districts of Warsaw. It’s intended for teachers, engineers, doctors and other middle-class residents. It is not a suburb, but it is located close to a forest and an old river bed. During the day it is a recreational areaand at night, it is home to fireflies, deer, elk and wild boars.
The coming of the boar was a crossing of the boundary between the animal environment and human civilisation. It initiated a whole range of human behaviours: admiration, fear, taking photos, joking, reporting to the police, setting dogs on it, giving it food.
So, what will happen next? This is a story about relations woven by beings and architecture, about change. Yesterday, I saw little boars, one of them was white with black patches. Was Corbu thinking about these new residents?
Jacek Wajszczak (he/his) is a multidisciplinary artist with an ethnographic background. He researches the performative dimensions of drawing, grassroots practice, and landscape paths. In his work, he employs a range of media, including film, photography, black ink, cooking and walking. Jacek is a recipient of a scholarship from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage in Poland and the winner of the first prize for best scenario at the International Ethnographic Film Festival in Zlatna, Romania. In recent years, he worked at the POLIN Museum and the State Ethnographic Museum in Warsaw, and he is now starting his independent projects. He can be found online at https://cargocollective.com/wajszczak
Meet the author: Jacek Wajszczak
an interview conducted by Otherwise graphic editor Letizia Bonanno
