PROJECT / CITYUTOPICO
AUTHOR / DARIUSZ PROLEJKO
Cityutopico is an independent project about contemporary reality and the moments when it ceases to feel self-evident. I am interested in situations where what is familiar and ordinary slips free of routine, social roles, the logic of consumption and established rituals — revealing a reality beyond the functions and meanings we usually assign to it.
I find these shifts above all in contemporary Japanese fiction, which explores everyday life, social roles, the city and the individual’s relationship with surrounding systems in a particularly distinctive way. In photography, I look for a similar effect: I isolate architecture, space and matter from their ordinary context. Function recedes, leaving form, scale, rhythm and atmosphere.
READINGS
The writing on books published in Cityutopico is a selection from the broader literary project Transparent Blue, devoted to contemporary Japanese fiction. Shortened versions appear here; the full reviews and complete archive can be found at transparentblue.pl.
The starting point is the belief that a good book is more than a story. I therefore do not summarise the plot or structure a text around a simple judgement. I am interested in the mechanism of the book: the way it organises reality, constructs relationships between the individual, society and the surrounding environment, and reveals tensions hidden beneath the surface of the narrative.
I focus primarily on books of literary significance — often award-winning, particularly recipients of the Akutagawa Prize — but also on titles that remain little known or unpublished in Poland. Each text is organised around a single tension that seems to me the most important. The aim is not to retell the book, but to enter the point at which the book begins to think.
CITY is the visual part of the project. It is a collection of photographs made during my travels through the hyper-dense Asian metropolises of Tokyo, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Singapore and Beijing. I am interested in moments when architecture, light, vegetation and space cease to function merely as a backdrop for human activity and begin to operate as autonomous forms.
Cityutopico presents a world that is cool, precise and monumental, at times disturbingly self-contained. Halls, bridges, domes, passageways and urban zones are documented here not for their function, but for their form, scale, rhythm and atmosphere.
Three series — Structures, Zones and Flora — organise this material. Structures focuses on architecture and construction, Zones on transitional spaces and places of suspension, and Flora on the relationship between organic matter and the urban environment.
B SIDE leads into J-jazz as another way of describing reality. I am interested in its rhythm, improvisation, recurring motifs and the tension between order and chaos — qualities similar to the way literature can construct an image of the city and everyday life.
Cityutopico is an independent project about contemporary reality and the moments when it ceases to feel self-evident. I am interested in situations where what is familiar and ordinary slips free of routine, social roles, the logic of consumption and established rituals — revealing a reality beyond the functions and meanings we usually assign to it.
I find these shifts above all in contemporary Japanese fiction, which explores everyday life, social roles, the city and the individual’s relationship with surrounding systems in a particularly distinctive way. In photography, I look for a similar effect: I isolate architecture, space and matter from their ordinary context. Function recedes, leaving form, scale, rhythm and atmosphere.
READINGS
The writing on books published in Cityutopico is a selection from the broader literary project Transparent Blue, devoted to contemporary Japanese fiction. Shortened versions appear here; the full reviews and complete archive can be found at transparentblue.pl.
The starting point is the belief that a good book is more than a story. I therefore do not summarise the plot or structure a text around a simple judgement. I am interested in the mechanism of the book: the way it organises reality, constructs relationships between the individual, society and the surrounding environment, and reveals tensions hidden beneath the surface of the narrative.
I focus primarily on books of literary significance — often award-winning, particularly recipients of the Akutagawa Prize — but also on titles that remain little known or unpublished in Poland. Each text is organised around a single tension that seems to me the most important. The aim is not to retell the book, but to enter the point at which the book begins to think.
CITY is the visual part of the project. It is a collection of photographs made during my travels through the hyper-dense Asian metropolises of Tokyo, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Singapore and Beijing. I am interested in moments when architecture, light, vegetation and space cease to function merely as a backdrop for human activity and begin to operate as autonomous forms.
Cityutopico presents a world that is cool, precise and monumental, at times disturbingly self-contained. Halls, bridges, domes, passageways and urban zones are documented here not for their function, but for their form, scale, rhythm and atmosphere.
Three series — Structures, Zones and Flora — organise this material. Structures focuses on architecture and construction, Zones on transitional spaces and places of suspension, and Flora on the relationship between organic matter and the urban environment.
B SIDE leads into J-jazz as another way of describing reality. I am interested in its rhythm, improvisation, recurring motifs and the tension between order and chaos — qualities similar to the way literature can construct an image of the city and everyday life.