HERITO, No. 42-43: Invisible Places

Overlooked, erased, inconspicuous places. Reading cities and landscapes in their most compelling versions. A unique, double issue for the 30th anniversary of the International Cultural Centre.

Invisibility is not an empty concept or a neat rhetorical device alluding to Italo Calvino’s famous novel. It is a vital experience of Central Europeans, the product of ancient and modern limites, borders and curtains that make the geography of Central Europe half-imagined. This special anniversary issue is an attempt to create a Central European atlas that will contain the “invisible” in its metaphorical entirety: ruins and utopias, dreams that have fallen into decay, places that were deserted, abandoned, and forgotten. From the “Pompeii” at the confluence of the Odra and the Warta, to the basin of the Dniester and Boh. From the Transcarpathian salt ponds to the mining region of Røros. It leads to the Balkan lakes cut by the borders, to Sclavonia, which is shrinking, and on to the Vilnius chestnut trees and the silver rocks of Balchik. To Kozienice, Dukla, Benkovac and Fužine in Ljubljana.

Among authors who revealed their invisible places are: Lucian Boia, Krzysztof Czyżewski, Lászlo F. Földényi, Drago Jančar, Kapka Kassabova, Andrij Lubka, Gunhild Nyaas, Beata K. Nykiel, Kristina Sabaliauskaitė, Jarek Szubrycht, Robert Traba, Wojciech Wilczyk, Michał Wiśniewski, Goran Vojnović.