Ś wietlica Common Room - field research
I have one stronger memory, but yes, other than that, well, I liked it there a lot. I was there often, with my brother who is two years older, so sometimes we also played together. We had a couple of favorite day care workers, who let us do everything, but there was one, a mean, older woman who did not allow me and my brother anything at all... cause we had long hair. I don’t know why some teachers had a terrible problem with it. At that day care center, I don’t know why, they kind of picked on the fact that we had long hair, even though most of the girls looked like us, didn’t they!? And they, I don’t know, told us that “ugh this hair is going into our eyes there, it’s interfering with our normal functioning”, and that “these kids need to cut their hair” (laughter). She was one of those people who clung to our hair, and besides, she also led a reading circle, which is normally a cool idea, only we terribly disliked it with my brother because we were super involved in some fun activity at the moment, and she would say - no no no no, stop, we’re all interrupting there and now, now I’m going to read you a book - and we would sit in a circle, on chairs, and we had to listen to it for an hour, when we just wanted to play. That’s not a good memory for me. The lady was the only one who read.
Today I look at it a little differently because it is also maybe educational... but all in all I don’t know, maybe it should be only volontaryly, or.... maybe she could read and we could play quietly... something like that.
And the strongest memory I remember is how we were playing in the main room and suddenly it turned out that something had happened in the room next door, and it turned out that someone from the older class, I don’t know, from the sixth grade - I don’t remember who it was, it was unconfirmed information - but someone just threw two sparrows cut in half, like, birds, through the window. Cut in half with a knife somehow.
I don’t remember if I saw it or not, the caretakers probably didn’t want us to see it, but someone I saw it there and I remember, tripes showing out. And I don’t know how that person did it, if the sparrows were already dead and he just gobbled it up there or something like that... probably so, because how would he hunt a sparrow? (laughs).... and the caretakers had to mmm... clean up there, and I also remember that someone, someone, in that other room there were also our shoes and.... and in one shoe someone found some yellow plasticine, and we all thought “oh man, that sparrow that peed in that shoe before it died! “(laughs).
Maybe I’m imagining now what it looked like because I don’t remember if I actually was in that room or not.
As for, not about the children themselves, but about this staff, it also stayed with me very much for some reason, this memory, although unfortunately I do not remember too much backstory to it but.... I think there was some performance at school in which I participated or.... something that required some kind of dressing up, that the lady from the common room just gave me. And I was tucked in this other room with this lady and there were a couple of other gentlemen walking around, other girls were also getting their outfits .... And I get dressed up and ... I don’t even remember what this woman said to me but, but I remember that she used the word “titties” towards my child breasts of, and somehow this stayed with me, I remember, at that moment I got out of rhythm - why does she, why does she speaks like that about my body and uses such a strange word? (laughs).
I’m glad I remember it at all, somehow it was so.... completely, weird, some different term for my body in general in that common room, and I remembered. It somehow stayed with me. And I don’t know if it was just due to the fact that I as a child had such a.... rebellious nature. Certainly some first anti-system inclinations were already born in me.... maybe a little has remained until now....
... but certainly it was rather negative memories with this common room. Certainly in general with that school because of the discipline of the music school, but also about that day care center, I spent a lot of time there - I usually left the day care center last because my parents were working a lot at that time, and indeed there were a lot of different kids, that came in - and left, they were just waiting for classes, and I actually waited, waited and waited, waited, for my parents, that maybe actually, maybe I have such a bad memory of that because .... I associate it with some boredom, maybe some frustration with being there at all.
It’s hard for me to pinpoint the reason why I remember that day care center so badly, but I think that, in addition to the various events I mentioned earlier, it certainly had some great influence, but.... it seems to me that the very obligatory nature of this day care center could also have been, I imagine that it could have been frustrating. I think that there was indeed not as much fun there as it could have been, which is a little sad, bad.
Certainly, it was a positive thing - because it didn’t happen often, but it did happen sometimes - to watch movies, it however was.... there was simply this excuse to sit like this, with these other children on this floor and it was such, it was a bit liberating, it wasn’t some formalized cinema just somewhere reclining on the floor and somehow this viewing format I remember was very pleasant. I remember that the view from the window was somehow, I remember the view very well, you could see the birch trees and such a small walkway, through which you had to cross to enter the school because, as I said, the common room was not far from the entrance to the school so you could see those people going in and out of there...this view from the window stayed with me very much.
I think the positive was how you managed to get into a group, a big breaktrough for me was having a vthis kind of doll, a very specific model of doll. When I had it was such a feeling of “yes, I impressed someone, that yes, it was very positive” (laughs), it was almost a rat race and I don’t know if it was because there were so many kids, because that’s how you had to get somewhere to stand out or something, I don’t know, but it was really positive, when you were invited to the first sleepover, it was also very, it was almost like being invited to some ball, I remember it was such an honor and it was exciting always, that first invitation to someone’s house... and it was always done rather in such a secretive way, so that other friends would not hear, so that they wouldn’t be jealous or something, it was such a moment of choosing.
I remember that at that time I also liked to experiment with clothes and maybe somewhere this rebelliousness, some need for expression, I have the impression that in the day care center there was certainly no place to do any expression of my own, maybe there were drawings or something, but I remember that I certainly somehow lacked it, lacked my medium, let’s say. I certainly experimented somewhere with clothes and in general with my hairstyle sometimes (laughs), my parents were very angry (laughs).
I try to precise it all up in my head. Later when I was already when living in W. there was this common room... I remember that when we had these classes where they could not squeeze in any math or you know anything useful because the teachers were busy they kicked us out there and in the middle school one has such age, 13-1516, when everyone is so... a little ... and we there I think it was the only time that we talked to each other, yes.... there were breaks but it was more like: the guys stuck with each other, the girls stuck with each other and there, in the common room, it was a little looser....
...and I just remember that we played foosball and there was one smaller girl who, she was such a Catholic believer and had this cross necklace so, I’m not sure whether they laughed at her... not really because it, they knew her - they were since elementary school with each other, most of this class, so they already knew each other well, so it was also such a more close-knit group - but I just remember that, that....
... she, we were just playing foosball and so we were talking about things, and she started... I don’t know if it was some kind of conversation, anyway she opened up so suddenly - I don’t think she got a phone call then, I don’t remember it - that she her father is sick and that she doesn’t know what’s going to happen to him. And I remember that it was just that, you know, in general such a first - I think my great-grandmother died earlier - it was the first experience of such young people having close relatives dying. Because for someone in old age it’s not so surprising and yet here is some disease I don’t remember what it was, and how he is getting worse and she is just in such a suspension. And I remember that there was crying and hugging in a circle I remember that. There was A., that’s what I remember most.
The community center in my village appeared probably when I was about 10 years old and I went there, with breaks, until I was 13-14 years old. But it was a little different from the one in the city, because it was not an after-school day care center, but a separate building in the village, and the kids just came there after classes in the evenings to play together. Earlier, when there was no such community center, we used to meet at the bus stop (laughs), and then, when the EU started subsidizing various projects and investing heavily in villages, such an institution appeared in my village. It was a our cultural center, something like that.
In general, there was such a time period when everywhere in Poland started appearing these posters saying “subsidized by the Union” (laughs) and before that my village was so post-PGR(state collective farm). Do you know what a PGR is? And everything was so old and all of a sudden when these things appeared they didn’t fit into this rural order at all, it was something like from another world. My village wasclose to the farm, my parents used to commute to the PGR for work but we were kind of just outside of it. To be honest, I do not know exactly, I know that my parents took care of cows, but whether there were other animals there I do not know. Near K., by the sea. It was an interesting region because these are also reclaimed lands just like Wroclaw. All of our houses in the countryside are German and later on communism made it into a PGR. To be honest, it wasn’t until I was in college that I realized what it meant that something was German, because in our country it was such a natural thing that everything that was old was German, and it was only later that the weight of it reached me.
It was such an ugly building such a “dachshund”, so flat, and it was already there, it wasn’t built to be a village hall, and I remember that my parents, when they were young, they used to go there just to party, it was then called a club. It was wall to wall with the fire station. And later the club was turned into a store, by the way my mother used to work there, and only later when the store closed down did they make a village hall there.
To the left was the kitchen, to the right was a room where there were various games, a printer, a photocopier and a computer, because those were still the times when you didn’t have those things at home, so you could use them there, and then you went straight through the corridor, On the left there were bathrooms, and straight ahead there was a larger room with such a slight rise, a bit like a stage, and there were old armchairs like in the cinema, which could be set up differently if there was a play, for example, and a few tables, and there you could play something or sometimes we did parties there.
Part of it was renovated but part of it was still in such an old style.. of these centers such.... old official paint, such dirty brown such yellow such hideous and it was all such paint such glossy probably oily, so that it would wash off easily, I guess that was the point. So it was awful, and it smelled a little like in such poor schools, such.... strong detergent.... a little musty maybe.... somehow.
And when it comes to sounds: I associate the common room mostly with sounds because we played music there. And I remember that for me it was shocking because I had already started to attend middle school and then high school and I kind of associated this village with kind of.... nice, like I’ve known these people forever but it’s still my silly village. And music I only started listening for real outside of the village. And I remember how shocking it was for me that when I went to the community center, the music that I heard in the city was playing there, and those people somehow broke the barrier. And I remember there was all this limp bizkit, linkin park, guano apes, that kind of stuff. I never listened to hip-hop until I was in my 30s, but I actually have the lyrics of some of the songs in my head - recently on vacation at a concert of Sokol, he’s such a legend of Polish hip-hop, and he played his new songs and his completely old ones from some lineup that I didn’t know, and it turned out that I know them by heart (laughs) from that very village of mine. These were the kind of pieces that everyone knew, so it was cool.
When I think of the community center, the symbol that comes to my mind is the key. (laughs) The key was very important for the community center, and not everyone could get it, so you had to go to the mayor’s wife, who took care of the community center, and get the key from her, and she only gave the key to people she trusted, so in order to open the community center, you had to pick someone to go there (laughs) - you go! - and he was later the one responsible for closing it so that nothing got damaged there, etc. So I remember that there was always this whole fuss with this key and - who goes today, and - why can’t you? - because she saw me smoking a cigarette! - or something like that, (laughs) so it was so important.
It seems to me that from my memories it was just so different. Because we played at home, at each other’s place, we already knew all our games (laughs), all our books, and the community center got this external budget and it was so strange for us that something is.... is not ours and is for us.... and that there were all these games about which - I remember when the first time I played Memory at the community center. Memory are such squares that you have to find two of the same kind, a very popular game (laughs), now there are so many of them, and I remember that it was so new for me and that I liked it very much, so we played this Memory a lot.
And I also remember such a party, but parties (discos) always had in them there, and people came that I did not like, etc. - because if there was a disco in right! Even nowadays when you go to some club, more or less every club has total gathering. So there was always so much wondering - do I want to go? - do always depended on who was there, so we had this mix-up of music, etc.,. very had very polite children and also total troubled ones (laughs)?! So it was ...
them such.... such a conflict that on the one hand there was a lot of bad music the countryside well you did not invite only your friends, but everyone came, a certain atmosphere and some specific people come. And there it was such a do I want to see these people? - will I have fun there? And the whole evening very strange, not even only musical but also even when it comes to drugs... we
Some time ago I was reading “The Children of Bullerbyn” to my daughter, and this village of mine is so very very lovely.... and I thought to myself that, all in all, I could write such my “Bullerbyn” with its stories, but then I started to remember them and.... and they are always nice at the beginning (laughs), and when you get to a certain point there is always either....
For example, my cousin always greeted our friend with the words “W. what’s up with your whore aunt?” (laughs). Because this woman was actually going to work as a prostitute in Germany, as if everyone knew about it and it was.... (laughs) but it was just like that, well everyone giggled and no one sort of made a big deal out of it, because just.... everything that happens is normal, no, in children. Like, everything that happens next door is normal, so it was normal no! And a lot of such things were, now when I think about it, in such a context, how old I could be then, and I realize, I was as old as my child is now! I’m fucking terrified (laughs).
Drawing. And that’s where I started drawing. I, of course, had a phase as a child, for dinosaurs and for spiders, which I still kind of work with today. There is one story that is great. Because I was a favorite of the director, Mrs. T., who was in charge, because in addition to art classes there were various things, in the sense that there was, for example, a fancy dress ball on the occasion of Carnival and a Christmas meeting, because it was so strange, in the sense that you climbed down the stairs, there was a kind of, there was a sofa, there was a kind of anteroom, and on the left there were art classes, on the right there was a larger room where there were rhythmic activities, dancing, rather moving, but I didn’t go there. And usually also older people took part in these dance classes, and there behind this room was such, such passages, with such two holes, such gaps, and there was the seat of Mrs. T. who was this supposed director. What’s funny, she smoked cigarettes there all the time in front of the kids, like, everyone smoked. It was the early 90s and everyone smoked there, I remember going in, for example, and smelling cigarettes and there was smoke, and the kids were in it (laughs). I exhaled passively as a child, it’s possible that’s why I smoke (laughs), I don’t know.
I just, “draws nicely” (laughs), “talented”, “draws nicely”, I was screwed of course, we still made with plasticine, it’s plasticine glued. Such reliefs, like bas-reliefs. I had a phase with drawing these spiders. And I drew a tarantula on A4, such that it filled the entire space, and Mrs. T. liked the tarantula so much that she hung it up here, and framed it. And Mrs. T. had a daughter J. and a son, I don’t remember his name, and this son he was much older, in the sense that he probably studied in S. at the naval academy, and started sailing on a ship, and this son once took this drawing of mine because he liked it so much that he took this drawing on a ship, this spider, this tarantula, and apparently this drawing of mine sailed all over Africa, and then he gave it to someone as a gift. And this drawing is somewhere in Africa.
Because there was such a motif, as far as my and Mrs. T.’s relationship is concerned, that at some point when I was already older as I was 15-16 years old, with my friend I started going to theater classes, to such M.. In the city, completely elsewhere, then I stopped going a little. And this Mrs. T. with this M. knew each other and disliked each other very much, from time immemorial. Because they did some terrible things to each other. Well, and when Mrs. T. found out that I was at M.’s she got a little offended. And I even once remember that, on the bus.... she was so reproachful that I met her and I said that I go to M. for theater classes and she was like, that I’m wasting myself, that I have such a good hand, I draw so beautifully that I shouldn’t waste my energy at all. I felt the tension.
Then when I was a little older, like 12-13 years old, it’s such a moment of entering this teenage time, and there was some older group of these guys and girls that smoked cigarettes... I was already stressed, they were sitting here, at this entrance. It was you know, that bad youth.
It seems to me that, this was the first place where, apart from my family, I as a child had social interactions, my social skills were formed. That various people came there, what’s interesting now I don’t remember too much about the people who sat at that table because I was so focused in drawing, I didn’t pay much attention. I remember more some faces in the corridor, in that big hall, but as I sat and drew - I know that I also happened to come alone because I had such a need - but.... well, there I was closed in this world of my own (laughs), during these art classes, but in other rooms I had some first interactions and relationships - you had to talk with children, with people, you competed maybe in some way. They competed for the eye of the headmistress no? Certainly.
I also remembered that I used to go there, because there was a blackboard, the green kind, and this Mrs. E. - I didn’t like her in general because she was kind of imposing, she drew something for example.... and always some kind of princess, such pretty things (and I preferred the ugly ones, with some spiders) and we didn’t get along at all. And she was so ... bossy. What’s interesting is that later, years later, it came out that this Mrs. E. (M. and E they hated each other.) ... M. later told me that T. from the old days, that they had an argument,that they were communists, in communist Poland. That Mrs. E. and T., that is, the headmistress, and the art teacher, that they were communists, in favor of the People’s Republic. And M. was like in the opposition right!?
Well, that she drew and ordered to draw, or that the children asked - and chalk drew - “the lady will draw a princess” - and she drew such, so stiffly. Something from a fairy tale. Such a terrible thing. Or she would draw children on a piece of paper and make them color, I also hated coloring it was kind of silly. Boring, that you have a pattern and you have to color it.
At school it’s a little different, because in the common room there was more freedom somehow, freedom. I think this is the most important no? I know that later also my mother had a spat with Mrs. T. because she said something about my brother. My brother also went to the common room but somehow less so.
Thank you for the cooperation of the anonymized interviewees and to the visited spaces:
Świetlica Ogrodowa w ROD Bielniki (Poznań)
Młodzieżowy Dom Kultury nr 3 w Poznaniu
Ośrodek Kultury Wierzbak Spółdzielni Mieszkaniowej Jeżyce w Poznaniu
Świetlicą ogrodową. W ROD im. J. Chociszewskiego w Poznaniu
Świetlica wiejska w Kępie (Gmina Szamotuły)
Świetlica wiejska w Gowarzewie (Gmina Kleszczewo)
Świetlica wiejska w Wysogotowie (Gmina Tarnowo Podgórne)
Realized with funds from the City of Poznań within the framework of the Creative Scholarship of the City of Poznań/ Zrealizowano ze środków Miasta Poznania w ramach Stypendium Twórczego Miasta Poznania
Cristina Ferreira-Szwarc
