Prof. Dr habil. Ania Malinowska (University of Silesia). Venue: Ernst-Lohmeyer-Platz 3, Room 2.06, admission free; in Polish with translation

The lecture is dedicated to the concept of "imaginative geographies" - i.e. those ideas of space and place that act as mediators between cultural narratives and geographical understanding. The term, coined by Edward Said, describes how places create stories and how stories in turn shape places and thus characterise our geographical and cultural identities. The story The Island for the Lost, which is set on the island of Wolin near the legendary Galgenberg, serves as an example. The text, written in the style of magical realism, appeared in the volume Dispatches from the Institute of Incoherent Geography and represents an attempt to reconstruct a geographical identity in literature that is not determined by borders, but by memory, myth and imagination. Wolin appears here as a mythical island of lost identities, where reality merges with fantasy and memory. The project is set in the context of the activities of the Institute of Incoherent Geographies, an informal collective inspired by the fictional "Institute of Incoherent Geography" from Georges Méliès' film The Impossible Voyage (1904). Similar to this film, in which eccentric explorers undertake an absurd journey to the sun, contemporary texts of the Institute explore the limits of knowledge, mapping and imagination and deconstruct traditional concepts of territory in the context of globalisation. The lecture shows how alternative geographical identities beyond national borders can be narrated through literary narration and a poetics of space.

Dr habil. Ania Malinowska, Prof. UŚ is a writer, curator and researcher specialising in the fields of robotic cultures, emotional semiotics and new media art.