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Dominika Czarnecka
munity’s majority. Apart from anything else, monuments as a rule always present
somebody’s vision and interpretation of the past.
In the context of the monuments to the Red Army during the post-war period,
special attention should be paid to the fact that although all Poles observed the
same material representations created in a real physical space, different groups
perceived them as different images. Against this background, the ‘multiple voices’
of the monuments are revealed. There is a peculiar paradox in this, or perhaps
a kind of perversity which finds its reflection both in the title of this article and in
the analysis presented in it.
Constituting and interpreting messages of monumental art depends not only
on those who are empowered to erect monuments but also on those to whom
monuments are to speak. Only in this context, related to the process of permanent
formulating and contesting the category of Otherness and familiarity through the
manipulation of signs and images, does it become clearer why a significant major¬
ity of Poles perceived the figures on the pedestal as the Others instead of Soviet “he¬
roes”. In the context of the reception of monumental art, we can clearly note that
the process of “(...) othering expresses the insight that the Other is never simply
given, never just found or encountered, but made” (Fabian 2000: 208, original em¬
phasis). Those who decide about the possibility to erect monuments do not place
Others on their pedestals but propagate the images of those who for some reason
serve their interests. These images are not, then, images of Others from the point of
view of the monument founders. They may, however, become such images on the
level of the viewers. In this context it is the audience that has decisive influence over
the creation of an image of the familiar or the Other on the pedestal.
The distance between the founder of the monument and the observer of
the finished work of art does not, however, provide a satisfactory answer to the
question of why the same pedestal in the opinion of some elevates the familiar and
in the opinion of others, the Other. The doubts run deeper and force us to wonder
whether the sources of the difference lie, perhaps, in the essence of the materialised
image (in this case, the monument), or perhaps in human activity, and thus in the
ways of looking and seeing. There is no simple answer to this question. The material
representation comprises certain properties and symbols, and, which is more, is
entangled in certain relationships, for instance, spatial. While the properties remain,
as a rule, constant (for example shape, size, texture), the meanings and relations
may change over time.’ It is not the material representations but the images they
carry that undergo disparate interpretations and transformations in the context of
changing socio-political conditions. The images are alive because we make them
7 This corresponds to the premises of Marshall McLuhan’s communication theory, according to which
monuments belong to cool media, forcing the recipient of the message to become highly involved in
decoding their meaning; “(...) cool media require more active participation on the part of the user in
determining the transmitted meaning” (McLuhan 1975: 61).