Absurdity and Counterculture: The Orange Alternative in Communist Poland
Of the dissident movements in communist Poland, collective memory only remembers the work of the movement Solidarity and the Catholic Church. What about the people who did not fit into this narrative? The outsiders, the rebels, the artists; what about their story? The Orange Alternative exemplifies the movement of said outsiders; a blend of artistic expression and political defiance. It was a movement made up of “rebellious students, nihilist punks, defiant conservatives, sharp satirists, and the artistic margins…where rebellion is only graffiti, performance art, and loud music” (Kenney, 191). These social outsiders created a movement of mass political theatrics, using their absurd and ridiculous events as a way to protest the communist regime peacefully, all the while rejecting the starkness of Solidarity and the strictness of …show more content…
The regime and other dissidents at the time did not truly understand the deep meaning behind the Orange Alternative’s performances, street art, and the happenings where they would make the regime appear ridiculous. Even though they were not recognized as an inherently political movement by the regime and the Solidarity movement, the Orange Alternative was a clear intersection of the cultural, social, and political spheres in Poland and used these intersections to protest the Communist regime.
Originally the Orange Alternative was called “The New Culture Movement” composed mainly of the University of Wroclaw students and the students of the Fine Arts Academy as an organization meant to advocate for peace and aesthetics (Misztal, 58). Similar to the hippies of the West during the 1960’s and 1970’s, the NCM was a kind of artistic outsider to the sphere of protests. Jokingly called the Orange Alternative by its sister trade union movement in Wroclaw, the leaders decided to let the name stick and create a publication called the Orange Alternative
Of the dissident movements in communist Poland, collective memory only remembers the work of the movement Solidarity and the Catholic Church. What about the people who did not fit into this narrative? The outsiders, the rebels, the artists; what about their story? The Orange Alternative exemplifies the movement of said outsiders; a blend of artistic expression and political defiance. It was a movement made up of “rebellious students, nihilist punks, defiant conservatives, sharp satirists, and the artistic margins…where rebellion is only graffiti, performance art, and loud music” (Kenney, 191). These social outsiders created a movement of mass political theatrics, using their absurd and ridiculous events as a way to protest the communist regime peacefully, all the while rejecting the starkness of Solidarity and the strictness of …show more content…
The regime and other dissidents at the time did not truly understand the deep meaning behind the Orange Alternative’s performances, street art, and the happenings where they would make the regime appear ridiculous. Even though they were not recognized as an inherently political movement by the regime and the Solidarity movement, the Orange Alternative was a clear intersection of the cultural, social, and political spheres in Poland and used these intersections to protest the Communist regime.
Originally the Orange Alternative was called “The New Culture Movement” composed mainly of the University of Wroclaw students and the students of the Fine Arts Academy as an organization meant to advocate for peace and aesthetics (Misztal, 58). Similar to the hippies of the West during the 1960’s and 1970’s, the NCM was a kind of artistic outsider to the sphere of protests. Jokingly called the Orange Alternative by its sister trade union movement in Wroclaw, the leaders decided to let the name stick and create a publication called the Orange Alternative