Stone Heads: for the project Breslau 1938

Stone Heads: for the project Breslau 1938, part of Considering Silesia.

Thirty phone drawings of a carved stone bust over a doorway at 10 Klemensa Janickiego, Wrocław, Lower Silesia, Poland, via Google Street View, using #sketchbookapp — a digital drawing app for mobile devices.

I first took a screenshot of the source image from Google Street View a year ago (31 July 2024) and in this year, between other tasks, have managed to create thirty phone drawings from it. At first I was just fascinated by the image of the dark, not yet cleaned, stone, and in managing to find such a detailed, straight-on image of the architectural bust on Street View — usually the Google car doesn’t manage it, or it is too far away to give sufficient resolution.

I continued drawing these because they were fun to do. I enjoyed playing with the qualities of line, but became fascinated by the fact that each time I drew it I both saw the image differently and explored the process of drawing it differently, all the while keeping the same ‘brush’ type, size, opacity, colour, etc. yet seeing how differently each drawing turned out — and how the drawings develop over time.

During May 2020 I created a series of drawings based on online images of the Hotel Monopol, Wrocław, after seeing photos of Hitler making a speech from a specially built balcony for the 1938 Breslau Turn und Sportfest, an extravaganza of Nazi propaganda with the city’s architecture as the ‘stage set’ much destroyed during the 1945 “Festung Breslau” and still in the process of being restored or recreated.

Since then I’ve been thinking about the continuing propaganda value of the architectural features overlooking the route of the 1938 parade. A photograph of the old Town Hall from 25 February 2022 with the Ukrainian flag projected on its façade (so just as the Russian invasion was happening), a large crowd beneath, showed the significance the architecture still holds.

The idea is to ‘map’ the route of the 1938 Deutsches Turn und Sportfest parade staged in what was then Breslau, Germany, and is now Wrocław, Poland, through views of the architecture, meant to be viewed as a collection like stills from a film or snap shots from a photo album of the event (though my views of what remains or what is recreated are gained via contemporary ‘open source’ media such as Google Maps, websites and social media) as might have been seen by a witness or participant/mitlaufer of the Festzug. The stone head is above an old post office entrance along one of the parade routes.

“Considering Silesia” is my 20+ year exploration through the lens of accessible digital media to my mother’s birthplace (displaced in 1945), the once German, now Polish, Lower Silesia, its landscapes, architecture and people, propagandas, repeating histories, and guilt at losing language and heritage, documenting my responses through drawing and painting, both digital and analogue. 

“Considering Silesia observes the context of our evolving relationship with the internet, which increasingly enables us to virtually “visit” parts of the world and connect with strangers without leaving home. Despite having never visited his mother’s homeland, Lower Silesia, Mik’s work documents the landscape and architecture of the region through images, video footage and maps found online.” 

Rachel Graves, Visual Arts Officer, Attenborough Arts Centre, University of Leicester