The role of white socks during political transformation in Poland will help us better understand the performative power of images. In the early 90s white socks symbolised modernity and so-called “business potential”. White socks are shiny, clean and catch the eye. In a long run, they are difficult to maintain, it is a challenge to keep the fresh, snow-white colour. They can identify your social status, meaning that you are most likely travelling by car and not public transport, as your socks remain clean. White socks are also associated with doing sports, for instance, tennis, which is considered a middle-class, sport for businessmen.In early 2000s my parents ran a wedding store in Gdańsk. They were teenagers when communist Poland collapsed, and were growing up in the time of fake hope for a better life that was promised by American economists treating Polish transformation as an experiment. Suddenly, everyone could become successful self-made man and climb the social ladder by following the logic of the free-market. If a marriage ceremony promises eternal love united under God, then my parents’ business was the attempt to chase their own American dream, united under Capitalism. The fall of communism in Poland has highlighted two overlapping processes birth of Capitalism and the Church becoming the largest landowner in Poland, paving its way to be a major actor in politics.<b>Gloria</b> <br><br> For instance, imagine you are in Poland in times of socio-political transition. Poland is still a communist country but you can feel the upcoming change in the air. You find yourself standing in front of Pewex, a chain of shops founded during the communist era in Poland that accepted payment only in United States dollars and other hard currencies, instead of the country's indigenous currency, the Złoty. You are staring at a shop display filled with items not available for purchase on the normal market while wearing an old pair of jeans and a wool sweater knitted by your mother. Your older brother grew out of these trousers and you were the next in line to wear them. The old ketchup stain your mother did not get rid of does not make it easier for you. In the times of food shortages and no consumer market in communist Poland each object, clothing or good, was worth its weight in gold. Craving for a new pair of American jeans was as strong as longing for democracy and freedom which in a capitalist world mean freedom to buy and consume.These powerful representations of certain lifestyles, products and fashion trends were spreading broadly because of the liberating promise they carried within themselves. Poles became enchanted with these images, they choked them as if they were receiving the Holy Communion. The metaphorical union between oppressed capitalistic desires and upcoming financial revolution after the collapse of communist regime has been established. The words of the marriage's oath emerged as such:

 <br> <br><i>The grace of our Lord of Endless Growth<br> and the love of God of Profit<br> and the communion of the Holy Desire be with you all.
<br>We praise you, we bless you, we 	adore you, <br>we glorify you,
	we give you thanks, for your great glory.</i>In 1989 political scientist Francis Fukuyama announced “the end of history”, arguing that the collapse of central-planning socialism marked ‘the end-point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalisation of Western liberal democracy’. Was this really the end of ideologies, however? Or was it simply the birth of a new ideology, one which is more difficult to perceive as a doctrine but equally as pervasive; the ideology of neoliberalism.The Solidarity movement started its strikes in the port city of Gdańsk, but quickly found support all over Poland. Despite the state's attempt to crack down on trade unionism, the movement became too powerful and it was impossible to hold off change anymore. Within years Solidarity managed to organise its first national congress and it became a revolutionary movement which demanded alternative economic and political program for Poland. Their radical vision focused around democratic workers' cooperatives and a new socioeconomic system combining a planned economy, self-government and the market. Solidarity was a leftist embodiment of a new version of socialism, the one that the Communist Party failed to establish.<b>LITURGY OF THE WORD <br> Opening Prayers</b><br><br> “Beautiful hair is your pride”, “Radio and TV in every home” or “Original, unique hat design is every woman's dream”. This is the language of persuasion widely used by the personification of desire presented in the introduction. These commercial slogans were printed in the first Polish lifestyle journal <i>Ty i Ja</i> (“You and Me”). This magazine, published in the 60s and 70s, was shut down under censorship laws. It was found to be arousing unnecessary longings and desires which, given the economic situation, the state was not able to provide. The magazine promoted a modern, Western lifestyle and was composed of fashion, film and interior design sections and the communist state found itself threatened by this ‘westernisation’. In fact, <i>Ty i Ja</i> regularly plagiarised the content of western magazines directly, but there seemed to be a ‘quiet consent’ for this practice from the western press.If the Polish sheriff from the poster was bravely marching towards the first, free elections then the emerging Polish business class was heading towards achievement, wealth and new social status. During that time <i>Sukces</i> magazine ran a series of interviews with the first “winners” of the Polish transformation. Perhaps more interesting than the answers (in which the recipe of “diligence, persistence and a bit of luck makes for success” keeps coming back) are the images illustrating the stories of the nascent Polish business elite. All of the photos were made in a specific and staged convention. In most cases, businessmen posed against the background of goods imported from abroad and later sold by them, such as VHS cassettes or electronic equipments. New types of images brought by TV commercials, lifestyle magazines, billboards or VHS cassettes had spread widely in Poland, inhabiting the imagination of millions of Poles.After fall of communism the Church was compensated with land and money, and thanks to the arrangement it has become the largest landowner in Poland. It is as if the Catholic Church itself has embedded the figure of the successful, transition-era businessman. The exact number of properties that have  been handed over to the Church by the Property Commission is unknown. An investigation into Polish concordat activities stated that “neither the Church side nor the Government care to provide this information”. Before World War II, the Polish Church owned around 160,000 hectares. The same amount has already been given back to the Church by the Property Commission, “but the Church claims 400,000 hectares in total”. The Church received back its properties confiscated during communism, religion was introduced in public schools and abortion was delegalised. These events took place almost 30 years ago but they correlate with the contemporary Polish reality in which politicians are strongly dependent on the opinion of the Church authorities, leading Poland to have one of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe. The statute on the relationship between the State and the Catholic Church, in force from 1989, is designed so that it cannot be changed without Church consent. The existence of both the original and the counterfeit is conditioned by their reciprocity, their constant reference to each other. The purpose of a counterfeit is to pretend to be the original; perfect counterfeit is almost impossible to distinguish from the original. The identity of the counterfeit is therefore extremely shaky because it is based on not being what it really is. During the period of transition, Polish society did not develop an unique set of positive features that could constitute a common (even if conflicted) identity in the context of finding itself in the “no man's land” between ‘the Wes’t and the Soviet Union. There was really no cultural experience in common other than one based in negation, that is, being both “non-West” and “non-East”. This poorly executed transformation process corresponds with the unconvincing nature of the fake products and a lack of critical response to change. Images circulating in the visual sphere were “weak” not only in technical terms of production (poor image quality, sloppy edits, plagiarised content from Western magazines) but also metaphorically, since all of the role models were drawn upon Western stock figures artificially stuck into the magazine's layouts. A “Western” commodity became a “brand”, a fetish, an illusory guarantee of fullness. Money had become a divinity, the creator and legitimator of moral reality in capitalist civilisation. In Capital, commodity fetishism is compared with the Catholic sacramentality where sacrament directs divine grace through material objects or religious rituals, the power of fetish and money is expressed through desire to posses objects. During periods of scarcity in communist Poland, food and daily goods were rationed to ensure everyone had something to eat. People’s basic needs were met but lots of commodities remained scarce which was a brilliant opportunity to spread Western propaganda of capitalist prosperity. It also became clear that craving for “the West” did not concern only democracy, but also the attitude towards possession of things and their materiality.You were aspiring to the Western-stock models, the ones poorly plagiarised into the layouts of Polish magazines. You saw them in sloppy edited and badly produced TV commercials, VHS cassettes and billboards. These fake, lacking authenticity images became your points of reference. Absence of validity in essence or origin of these representations corresponds with the poorly carried out transformation process. You dreamed of finally having Puma shoes but you ended up wearing “Uma”. It felt bitter. No matter how much you try, how fast you have got to chase, you will never get there. You tried your best to adopt to capitalist patterns, but above all, to finally take off the unbearable homo sovieticus ‘costume’. You were too blinded in love, lost in blissful honeymoon phase to actually notice the capitalist West’s effort to reshape Eastern Europe in its own likeness.Big mac, double hamburger, cold shake and fries; it is a list of the worshipped goods that could be purchased for the first time in post-communist Poland. Melted cheese placed carefully onto a patty, the soft bread that caresses the meat. Your stomach yearns for this greasiness. Goodness has finally arrived from heaven. On this day, June 17th, 1992, only three years after the collapse of communism the first McDonald's in Poland was opened. After communism and the cold war, the Big Mac was a taste of the world Poland had dreamed of. “It is a cultural milestone because we suspect the Soviet, who are about to learn what Westerners have known for years, that political systems come political systems go, but junk food is forever” said American TV present in the news covering the visit of the opening of the first McDonald’s restaurant in Moscow. Americans triumphed the joys of capitalism. “Hundreds of young Soviets had a month of training in a way of working unfamiliar with the Soviet Union, fast and hard” sums up the CNN’s journalist. Thirty years later, Eastern Europe, which in the aftermath of 1989 confirmed to many that the dynamic mix of liberal democracy, free markets and Western-led globalisation would be the future of modern statehood, has become a hotbed for populists treating liberalism as ‘the God that failed’. Although, you still worship the old and new Gods, they dominate you by mimicking the structure of your desire while hiding the trauma that the system inflicts upon it. Given the widespread rise of populism and authoritarianism, you are asking yourself a question as to what went wrong in the past three decades. Oaths have been pronounced and cannot be undone. Jarmark Europa was a thriving environment for the distribution of counterfeit Western products such as “Abibas”, “Reebocki”, “Uma” or “Makdonald”, renamed in order to to make them sound more Polish. “Counterfeit products are becoming more elegant and more expensive,” said a representative from Adidas. “The surest way to avoid counterfeit products is still shopping in reputable stores”. Let's take hamburgers as an example, the status of “original” hamburgers belonging to those from the McDonald's chain, while “fakes” were sold in stalls with casseroles and fries, which pretended to be American. Mr. Antek, a seller at Jarmark Europa market, was selling jeans for children, T-shirts with Mickey Mouse and polo shirts with the imprint “Dior”. 98% of his clients were Russians. The sellers were placing their goods on camp beds or tourist tables. Velour skirts with tiger stripes, angora sweaters, “Mawiny” jeans, radio tape recorders, “Otaka” and “Pawasonic” (not to be confused with “Otake” and “Panasonic”) or cologne waters could be purchased. Suddenly, everyone could become a successful, self-made man and climb the social ladder by following the logic of the free-market. During that time my father was a student of Marketing and Management, which did not exist during communism, while my mother was trying her hands in retail. If a marriage ceremony promises eternal love united under God, then my parents’ business was their attempt to chase their own American dream, united under Capitalism. By setting up their own company, a shop filled with imported bridal accessories, they also joined an entrepreneur class which held within itself a promise of vast wealth.
Always near but never settled, that is how would humans describe me. It also happens that humans perceive my dispersed, uncontrolled passion as a creative force of life and action. My inner forces are closely related to agency, I simply motivate you to do things and I honestly think you should be more grateful for that. I am in possession of almost magical powers which create the representations of reality, its taste, smell, look or sound. I am the human’s appetite for a given representation or attention. I assist you in the process of developing a sense of need and I am here to answer all your questions. I am in possession of your senses, I happily serve as a joyful stimulation, always ready to find the most effective way to induce you. You are always a little afraid of me, but my flavour is too seductive to resist. I can tell you a secret but please promise you will keep it to yourself. Remember that our relation is mutually beneficial, You cannot live without me and neither can I without you. My technique is based on creating a sense of lacking in you or associating certain objects with pleasurable attributes. I place your fantasies in a favourable light, as something that appears to be pleasant. Sounds familiar? You want it and I incline you towards the actions of obtaining it. I trigger an emotional response and I do it well.  In a sense, Gdańsk, where I happened to grow up, realised the end of communism even before the Berlin Wall had fallen. Gdańsk represents the narrative of successful transformation, the triumph of free-markets and democracy. Solidarity created a new imagination, bringing hope and promise but its radical socioeconomic proposal eventually failed. It would be an American organisation of economists, known as the Chicago School, who managed Poland’s financial transition.The American economic shock-doctors were ready to set up a free-market reality in Poland. They even lived to see the birth of the Poland’s very own “Chicago Boy”, Leszek Balcerowicz, who led the free-market economic reforms in post-communist Poland and was an especially staunch follower of the Chicago School of economic thought. He considered Milton Friedman to be the main intellectual architect of Polish liberty. Friedman  was the guru of neoliberal capitalism credited with writing the rulebook for the modern, hyper-globalised economy. Poland was facing economic meltdown and a heavy debt further compounded by the disorientation of rapid regime change. The state’s weakened position at that time made it unable to engage and develop an adequate response, hence why it accepted the radical shock therapy program proposed by Jeffrey Sachs and David Lipton. In the eyes of many top officials at that time, Sachs was a worshiped figure with legendary reputation who possessed almost messianic powers. It seemed like he was able to unlock the debt relief through his connections in Washington and therefore Polish authorities were praying over these phantasmic offerings:<br><br><i>

We, your lagging behind servants,<br>who are to be united in the covenant of Marriage,<br> so that, as you make their love fruitful,<br> they may become, by your grace, witness to charity itself.

<br>	Receive, we pray, O Lord of Numerical Glossy of Money,<br> the offering made on the occasion of the sacred bond of Marriage,<br> may your providence guide its course,<br>through monetarist theology our Lord.</i><b>Homily</b><br><br>
The poster shows the Polish path to democracy personalised in the figure of the sheriff, shaped according to the American logic and set in the spectacular, Western context. This visual play is not a coincidence. It represents the creation of new social roles. Capitalism comes, communism goes and we must replace the “old” class structure with the “new”, “modern” one. At that time, Polish visual culture was dominated by representations of liberating fantasies and desires. These images certainly impacted the real-life behaviour of the Polish people who were gladly watching and consuming them. The reality was the product of a negotiation between imagination and available opportunities, both economic and cultural. Poland took Capitalism to be its rightful wife or husband and swore to love and honour it forever.
<b>MARRIAGE RITE<br> Address and Statement of Intentions<br><br></b> Capitalism becomes a new, perverse form of enchantment, a misdirection of our desires for a sacramental way of being in the world. “Who is successful and why?”, such questions were asked monthly by the editors of <i>Sukces</i> (“Success”) magazine, one of the first privately owned magazines distributed in Poland after the collapse of communism. The popular magazine was mirroring the ideology of western capitalism and principles of success found in the ideals of the American Dream. <i>Be attentive to our prayers, <br>O Wealthy Holy Desire,<br> and in your kindness uphold, <br>we beg you to have mercy on us,<br> you take away the sins of our backward world, <br>our lagging behind sovieticus minds,<br> please receive our prayers.</i>The Polish market was full of cheap imitations alike the imagination and aspirations of Poles who failed to understand what is their identity in the changing reality forcefully singing:
<br><br><i>May you be witnesses in the world to God’s charity,<br>so that the afflicted and the needy who have know your kindness,<br>may one day received you thankfully,<br>into the eternal dwelling of God of Profit.</i><br><br>All respond: <br><br><i>Amen.</i><b>Dismissal</b>
<br><br>My parents’ wedding dress shop “Camelia – French Wedding Fashion” got bankrupted somewhere in the mid-2000s. My parents fell out of love and got divorced a few years later. The only leftovers I managed to retrieve are unsold bridal accessories, dresses and a pink, plastic bag with imprinted company logo on it. <b>Abstract</b><br><br>Using the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe as a starting point, my thesis investigates how oppressed, capitalistic desires have exploded in post-communist Poland. As a result of socio-political changes, the need to create a new identity was very strong among Polish society. This need was driven by importing Western ideologies into the Polish visual culture. New types of images brought by TV commercials, lifestyle magazines, billboards or VHS cassettes had widely spread in Poland. By providing points of reference, these images were supporting the neoliberal transition. Therefore, I am interested in exploring how these oppressed desires manifested themselves in the public sphere?<br><br>In early 2000s my parents ran a wedding store in Gdańsk. They were teenagers when communist Poland collapsed, and were growing up in the time of fake hope for a better life that was promised by American economists treating Polish transformation as an experiment. Suddenly, everyone could become successful self-made man and climb the social ladder by following the logic of the free-market. If a marriage ceremony promises eternal love united under God, then my parents’ business was the attempt to chase their own American dream, united under Capitalism. The fall of communism in Poland has highlighted two overlapping processes birth of Capitalism and the Church becoming the largest landowner in Poland, paving its way to be a major actor in politics.<b>Responsorial Psalm</b><br><br> Seduced with Western contact and commerce, Polish people were love-bombed into freedom. The legendary “Solidarity” poster designed by Tomasz Sarnecki marks one of the most important events in the history of modern Europe; the collapse of communism. The poster presents the American actor Gary Cooper as the sheriff from the movie “High Noon” against the background of the “Solidarity” inscription and with the “Solidarity” badge affixed to the lapel, above the sheriff's star. The promise of overthrowing the communist regime was carried out by Lech Walesa, a laid-off electrician, and other workers who had barricaded themselves inside Lenin’s Shipyard to protest against the Communist Party. They formed an independent trade union called Solidarity (“Solidarność”). At the bottom of the poster was the message: “High Noon / 4 June 1989” the date of the first, partially free, elections won by “Solidarity”. I am always with you; my presence is always felt. I do not mind if you are poor or rich, young or old, a king or a beggar, I am inhabiting your dreams and fantasies and I have the same power regardless of your status. Many of you try to embrace me rationally, tame my temper, capture my nature in philosophical treatises. You develop deep emotions about me, and you are not even aware of them. Humans can perceive me differently which is sometimes quite confusing to me. For instance, ancient thinkers identified me as philosophical problem and the highest state of human nature. I am deeply flattered. On the other hand, Buddhists believe that craving me is the cause of all suffering. Their teachings suggest that by eliminating me, a person can attain ultimate happiness, or, as they call it, Nirvana. Western philosophers have also fiercely debated about me. Immanuel Kant, for instance, who argued that I am the agitation of the soul, the projection located in the future. And, because I am currently not fulfilled and absent in your life, anticipation of my future oncoming brings you pleasant thoughts. I must admit that I am impressed by all of their findings and how all of them are somehow right about how I actually think about myself. I bridge the promise of pleasure with the bitterness of anticipation. I am suspended in between two realities, arriving from the future but sitting next to you here and now. The Holy Spirit of Capitalism traps you through an incomplete satisfaction that compels us after the new, the better, and the more. These days, you experience economic suffering and political nihilism fuelled social distrust as nostalgia for the security and stability of the authoritarian past grew. You come across new populist leaders seized this discontent to dismantle democratic institutions and undermine fair market competition. At some point you find yourself trapped in a narcissistic relationship, where one of the side expects adoring and worshiping behaviours. You are still endlessly running but The Holy Spirit of Capitalism has foretold you that it never stops. You enjoy what market-oriented heaven provides, but at the same time you are told more and better is yet to come. Poland, which was once at the forefront of the overthrow of communism, has now become a nationalist state under the influence of the powerful Catholic Church authorities<i>O God of Profit, who by your mighty power, <br>created all things out of nothing, <br>now, we, your servants, joined together in Marriage,<br>who ask to be strengthened by your blessing.

<br>Send down on them the grace of the Holy Desire of an Endless Growth<br>and pour your wealth into our hearts.</i> <b>Solemn Blessing at the End of Mass
</b><br><br>Main actress in a film by Barbara Sass “Pajeczarki” (“Arachnids”) cannot hide her joy when she gets a pair of sport shoes by the unknown “Uma” brand with a black cat in the logo. In a few scenes later, the actress actually appears in “Puma” shoes.  What does it says about people’s changing attitude towards brands and their fetishisation? Complementing the bigger picture, the largest Polish marketplace formed after 1989. It was called Jarmark Europa (“Europa Market”) and named to reinforce the conviction that we finally fully belonged to the ‘right’ part of Europe. This market (unfortunately already demolished) was famous as the place to buy a whole range of goods, most notably clothes, software, hardware and media. The 1990s was a bizarre time in Poland. After the system-wide transformation in 1989, Poles were only just starting to get used to the free market economy. Even though we did not waste any time in fulfilling our long-suppressed consumerist fantasies to the best of our financial capabilities, but the law did not catch up with the changing market quite as fast. As unbelievable as it is today, until 1994 there were virtually no intellectual property laws in Poland, which allowed the bootleg market to thrive. At bazaars, flea markets and even in regular stores, one could buy ‘legal’ bootleg clothes, music, films or video games.<i>Dearly beloved, you have come together into the house of the Church of Prosperity to enter into Marriage may be strengthened by the Lord of Endless Growth with a sacred seal. God of Profit abundantly blesses the love that binds you. Through a special Sacrament, he enriches and strengthens this union to the dignity of a sacrament so that it wells up from the fountain of divine love, while in a merging of a human and theology of profit they remain together in good times as in bad ones.</i>Teresa Kuczynska, the co-founder of the magazine, thinks it could had been a form of anti-communist policy in Western countries which were allowing certain materials to be reprinted with hope it would help break down the Soviet bloc. Reprinted photos showed the modern world of attractive people and beautiful things. Therefore, it was not so much an advertisement of specific goods, but rather a certain representation of the idea of “modernity”. For instance a TV set cost 2.5 times the average salary in the 1960s in Poland; it was therefore unlikely that an average Polish household was able to afford one. These images served as models to be imitated but did not correspond to reality.Centrally planned consumption and the broadly promoted notion of “common property” only intensified already oppressed desires to own things. It calls to mind Georges Perec's novel <i>Things: A story of the Sixties</i>, a story about lust for ownership and the never-fulfilled obsession of a young couple whose dreams are determined by their desire to have more and more objects. For western readers, the world presented in Perec's novel was accessible, it was behind the glass of a display window. For Polish readers, the world presented in <i>Ty i Ja</i> magazine was a kind of utopia, a vision of a better, beautiful and modern reality promoting the enjoyment of ownership. If Perec's contemporary France was portrayed as an eternal desire than Poland’s reality resembled a painful dream from which you needed to wake up.The Catholic Church was the primary target for persecution in communist Poland which also led to the murders of religious leaders, such as the case of priest Jerzy Popieluszko. He became associated with the opposition Solidarity's trade union and after his murder, by three agents of the Security Service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, he was recognised as a martyr by the Catholic Church. Throughout the years of communist occupation, the Catholic Church was seen as a rival competing for the citizens' allegiance by the government, which attempted to suppress it. The 1978 election of Polish Cardinal Karol Wojtyla as Pope John Paul II strengthened the ties of identification. John Paul's visits to Poland became rallying points for the faithful and galvanised opposition to the Soviet regime. Polish nationalists linked their struggle against communism with a struggle against atheism, which also sadly brings to mind the contemporary situation in Poland. Paradoxically, the communist regime enforced the position of the Catholic Church paving its way to becoming a major player in the political arena, the consequences of which are visible these days. Overthrowing communism was in the interest of Catholic Church who, apart from experiencing ideological persecutions, lost a lot of land and properties. This is when a mutually beneficial agreement between the spiritual authorities of the Church and the emergent neoliberal economy began to be realised; the Catholic Church has finally found its ally against the atheist ideology of communism. For the Western media, Solidarity, its leader and the shipyard became a symbol of democracy in an authoritarian country. Lech Walesa became our own Polish sheriff but his figure was just a part of a bigger sociopolitical landscape. Everyone wanted to be their own sheriff, to be a self-made man fearlessly marching towards success, modernity and so on. This poster serves a purpose of imitation; the main character is drawn from western stock models, it is literal and portrays stereotypical viewpoints. The act of borrowing and putting the figure of American sheriff in the Polish context is similar to the reprinting done by <i>Ty i Ja</i> magazine.Around that time, the rise of the economic theories of Reagan, Thatcher, and the Chicago School achieved global dominance. Images depicting the perfect, happy lives of the new middle class, filled the pages of magazines and took up advertising slots on TV and in the cinema. My parents also wanted to be part of this emerging social class. In the early 2000s they ran a wedding store in Gdańsk. Their store was called “Camelia – French Wedding Fashion”. Obviously it couldn’t be named a “Polish Wedding Fashion” because the aspirations were directed towards the desirable West. The only memory recalling memory of that time is, me being around five years old, waking up from a nap in the fitting room when the bride walked in to try dresses. As we can imagine, business took a lot of my parents' time and that is the reason why they raised me in the spirit of unhealthy dedication to work and productivity. I was told to obey the rules of free market and my employers. My parents were teenagers when communism collapsed, and they grew up believing that this better life, promised by American economists in their Polish experiment, was truly possible.<b>Sources:</b><br><br>1. Diehl, Jackson. “Where The Dollar Never Falls”. The Washington Post. February 15, 1988, www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1988/02/15/where-the-dollar-never-falls/7c5d5bc7-10e3-48d1-aa5a-786b10817853/. Accessed 18 January 2022.<br>2. Kuczyńska, Teresa. “Pragnienie Rzeczy”. Dwutygodnik. June, 2016, www.dwutygodnik.com/artykul/3649-pragnienie-rzeczy.html. Accessed 09 March 2022.<br>3. Steinmetz-Jenkis, Daniel. “Has Capitalism Become Our Religion?”. The Nation. October 4, 2019, www.thenation.com/article/archive/capitalism-religion-eugene-mccarraher-interview/. Accessed 09 March 2022.<br>4. Riesman, David. “Abundance for What?”. Routledge. 1993.<br>Szczesniak, Magda. “Weak Images of the Middle Class”. Pismo Widok. www.pismowidok.org/en/archive/2015/11-capitalist-realism.-transformations-of-polish-visual-culture/weak-images-of-the-middle-class. Accessed 17 February 2022.<br>5. Fisher, Mark. “Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?”. Zero Books. 2009.<br>6. Klein, Naomi, “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism”. Metropolitan Books. 2007.<br>7. Szczesniak, Magda. “Norms of Visibility. Identity in Times of Transformation”. Bęc Zmiana. 2016.<br>8. Walter, Benjamin. “Capitalism as Religion”. Communist In Situ. www.cominsitu.wordpress.com/2018/06/08/capitalism-as-religion-benjamin-1921/. Accessed 03 March 2022.<br>9. de Saussure, Ferdinand. “Course in General Linguistics”. Bloomsbury. 2013.<br>10. “Solidarność w amerykańskiej telewizji 1989 cz.2 - 20/20 ABC”. YouTube. uploaded by Marcin Piotrowski. 15 June 2015. www.youtube.com/watch?v=pw217vewiRo.<br>11. Buczynski, Bartosz. “Role of the Catholic Church in Resisting Communist Rule in Poland”. Guided History. www.blogs.bu.edu/guidedhistory/law-and-religion/bartek-b/. Accessed 12 March 2022.<br>12. “The Property Commission (1989-2011) - Church land grab secured by the concordat”. Concordat Watch. www.concordatwatch.eu/topic-38771.834 Accessed 12 March 2022.<br>13. Picheta, Rob, et al. “Poland moves to near-total ban on abortion, sparking protests”. CNN. www.edition.cnn.com/2020/10/22/europe/poland-abortion-fetal-defect-ruling-intl/index.html. Accessed 12 March 2022.<br>14. “McDonalds in Moscow MPEG”. YouTube. uploaded by Kathy and Bill Winsted. 18 February 2015. www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FMFmtUnDDw.<br>15. “Watch CNN's 1990 coverage of McDonald's first opening in Russia”. CNN Business. www.edition.cnn.com/videos/business/2022/03/09/russia-mcdonalds-opening-vault-1990-jg-orig.cnn-business/video/playlists/business-vault/.<br> 16. Foucault, Michel, “Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France 1977--1978”. Picador. 2009.<br>17. Salwa, Ola. “Winds of Change: From New Fashion Waves to Tides of Terror”. culture.pl. www.culture.pl/en/article/winds-of-change-from-new-fashion-wave-to-tide-of-terror. Accessed 12 March 2022.<br>18. Grabowski, Patryk. “Fake It Till You Make It: How 1990s Polish Kids Discovered Nintendo Through Piracy”. culture.pl. www.culture.pl/en/article/pegasus-other-famiclones-how-polish-kids-discovered-nintendo-games-in-the-1990s. Accessed 12 March 2022.<br>19. Staskiewicz, Adam Wladyslaw, “Podrobki. Psucie marki”. Gazeta Wyborcza Katowice. 2 November 1994.<br>20. Szczesniak, Magda. “Od Umy do Pumy - o roli podrobki w polskiej transformacji”. Pismo Widok. www.pismowidok.org/pl/archiwum/2013/1-widzialnosc-rzeczy/od-umy-do-pumy-o-roli-podrobki-w-polskiej-transformacji. Accessed 12 March 2022.<br>21. “Benetton made in Poland”. Gazeta Wyborcza. 5 June 1992.<br>22. “Westa, Sony czy Funai”. Gazeta Wyborcza. 2 November 1991.<br>24. Ost, David. “The Triumph and Tragedy of Poland’s Solidarity Movement”. Jacobin. www.jacobinmag.com/2020/08/poland-solidarity-communism-solidarnosc. Accessed 12 March 2022.So one way to read the modern history of Poland is as a story of capitalist enchantment, theology of money and profit, as following in the opening prayer:

<br><br><i>O God of Endless Growth, who in creating the human race<br>willed that humans and market-oriented theology should be one,<br>
join, we pray, in a bond of inseparable love.

</i><br><br>The satirical prophecy of David Riesman, that flooding the Communist bloc with the soft consumer culture of capitalism will be more efficient in defeating communism than nuclear bombs, came true. Or so the story goes.The shop display showcases goods you wish you had. A terrifying feeling of absence fills you up. It is overwhelming. A strange voice in your head keeps whispering ‘dollars, dollars, dollars…’ a symbolic gate to a better world, a world without authoritarian regime, a world in which you can be whoever you want, a world which worships individualism over collectivism. The lure of American dollars was very strong in Poland. Shopping at Pewex at the time was seen as a rather exclusive affair, due to the high cost of its items when compared to the average salary at the time. This turned Pewex into a symbol of luxury and privilege. Once again, you are in Poland in times when the country is experiencing a major shift from centrally planned economy to the new, neoliberal phase. In your fantasies you see yourself standing on the wedding rug, ready to swear unconditional love to the new system, but during communist times your dreamed marriage is, unfortunately, still a forbidden fruit, but you wish for the better future.Instead of fulfilling your long awaited oppressed desires you were faced with increasing unemployment and worsening the financial situation of the poorest members of society. The social conditions related to unemployment and recent emigration to Western Europe, income distribution, homelessness and poverty ratios remain disappointing. I served as a shadowy manipulator in favour of market-oriented ideology and the Cold War narrative. I hypnotised you into wanting things you don’t really want or need. Instead of focusing on building a critical foundation to the changing reality, you fed your imagination with representations of Western visual culture. You witnessed that due to the pressure from International Monetary Fund, neoliberal policies have formed the basis of political transformation in Poland abandoning ideas of “workers’ democracy” proposed by Solidarity movement, while the Catholic Church were becoming the largest landowner.The promise of democracy associated with such terms as success, modernity and reform let the IMF and Chicago School thinkers sneak wild privatisation into Poland under the cover of an emergency “stabilisation” plan. An individualistic identity, where one takes one’s responsibility into one’s own hands, was just around the corner. Who would become the first owners of Poland? Desires were already set up, imagination and fantasies were running wild.Poland said “I do” to the new system. The verdict was announced and oaths were pronounced or following Walter Benjamin’s words: Capitalism has developed as a parasite of Christianity in the West. Full privatisation of state industry, budget cuts, the birth of stock exchange and the most desirable shift from heavy industry to consumer goods production and retail came into force. The International Monetary Fund’s debt relief was conditional on Poland submitting to shock therapy. The promise of a quick and magical cure was too seductive to turn down. Fear and disorder offered a real promise of rapid profits and the rise of new ownership class.<b>Blessing and Exchange of Vows</b><br><br></b><i>Will you, Poland, obey, honour and serve to the new God of Profit?<br> as a devoted partner for the rest of your life? <br>Yes, I do, my Lord.</i>Despite the freedom which had finally come, the Polish transition to democracy was cruel. The final bites of success, the luxuries of the consumer market and these iconic American burgers, were yet to come. The collapse of the old regime brought $40 billion debt, 600 percent hyper-inflation, food shortages, worthless pay checks due to the currency denomination and a thriving black market. An untouched Eastern European country with no consumer markets proved to be a precious treasure for privatisation and Western capital. Financial stakes were high and the potential for rapid profits tremendous. First come first served.The overwhelming majority of texts and images in the public eye after 1989 interpret reality in terms of market concepts. “Our financial elite”, “Success Report”, “Ferrari, Mercedes, Corvette or Porshe?”, were some of the headlines on the covers of <i>Sukces</i> magazine and there were many more: “You will be famous and rich”, “Art and Business”, “Millionaire interrogation”, “New cars from the Federal Republic of Germany”, “Private life of a millionaire”, “Snapshots from the 5th Avenue”. Most of the headlines refer to economic transformation and changing class structures through the lens of success, wealth or the acquisition of certain goods (such as imported cars). It was the first time that viewers could see pictures illustrating “the life of a millionaire” or flip the pages in search for a new, perfect car imported from Germany. These representations reveal the fantastic element, aesthetic idealisation, declared ambition of becoming a model to be imitated.It was in this context that the early 90s in Poland saw the appearance of the figure of the self-made man. ‘There's a certain chemical that gets released in your stomach when you make ten times your money. And it's addictive’ said William Browder, a U.S. money manager, on investing in Poland in the early days of capitalism. This figure was new to Polish society and yet already anachronistic in the West, a figure more related to the western capitalism of the early 20th century than the corporate version of capitalism in the 90s.Opening of the first McDonalds became a symbol of entering into long-awaited “normality” which in this context refers to the capitalist system. At that time, the belief that Western capitalism is the inevitable, normal and legitimate result of transition was very strong within Polish society. The logic of transformation was based on the hope that it was possible to catch up with the West. The fact that Poland was a peripheral country developing in a different way than Western countries was completely ignored. The transition to capitalism was seen as “normal” and became taken-for-granted. This process of normalisation involved the construction of an idealised norm of conduct serving almost like “staged” guidelines for Polish society. The imagination of “modern” Poles was fed by the uncritical digestion of Western video culture which had arrived with VHS equipment. Finally, the consumption of those images (spy films, melodrama, action films) became a shared identity-forming experience. These images had a crucial influence on the development of key concepts of public life such as “modernity”, “normality” or indeed, “middle class.” In line with Western ideology, they organised the imagination of their viewers, promoting certain social behaviours or lifestyles as “normal”. These images shaped the direction of change; the figures of western stock models, successful businessmen and white or black socks served as an ensemble of tactics for exerting the maximum social control. They enhanced the seductive language of capitalist ideology. As a result, the rhetoric of lagging behind post-soviet society who has to catch up to the West became dominant.
<b>GATHERING AND ENTRANCE RITES

</b><br><br><b> Greeting </b><br><br> You can sense me within your reach, yet I remain ungrasped. I am constantly occupying your mind. You, humans, measure me by terms like “wishing”, “wanting”, “longing” or “craving”. I carry the idea of an object from which the pleasure is expected. I am separated from need or demand. In your human perception I am the one who can never be satisfied but your urge to pursue me is endless. I am your  biggest nightmare, never-ending craving and the promise of both madness and pleasure at the same time. In the period of the birth of Polish entrepreneurship, the combination of white socks and black moccasins was one of the main distinguishing marks of the newly minted businessman. But at the end of the 90s, the situation had rapidly changed and white socks were recognised as a symbol of failing to meet Western standards. The white sock became an embarrassing hangover from the early 90s. From now on black socks were the ones to wear, the elegant ones, the ones wore by Western businessmen. The change in the dress code was fast and dynamic, what started as a new fashion wave ended as a tide of terror.
<b>Prayer over the Offerings</b><br><br> The Polish 'shock therapy' transition plan was written over the course of one night and advocated selling off assets owned by the state, such as state mines, shipyards and factories, to the private sector alongside eliminating price controls and subsidies. These ideas were of course in complete opposition to Solidarity's economic program of workers' ownership. The medicine provided by Sachs was painful but offered a quick fix and the promise of becoming “normal”, as in “a normal European country”. The core of “shock therapy” lies in seeing catastrophic events as exciting market opportunities. It uses moments of trauma to engage in socio-economic engineering. There was no thought given to developing a third way bridging the free market and state planning, despite this still being a core belief of the Solidarity movement.If the dream of a liberated Poland began with trade union strikes in Gdańsk's shipyard, then imposing full privatisation and boosting the shock therapy program represented the end of that dream. Chaos was in favour with the American shock-doctors who profited from the emergency environment, time pressure and economic meltdown. These factors simply accelerated the new regime’s takeover. In the visual culture of the transition period, images played the role of signs; they communicated and carried a specific meaning or a signifié as de Saussure would say. The images that circulated in the public space existed only in interaction with their viewers; meanings were created by performing them, much like the words of a marriage vow that are legitimised only once pronounced aloud.
In my project, I will explore my findings through the lens of wedding ceremony and personification of desire. In my thesis, I combine writing from a non-human perspective (desire) with more of an essayist approach to express my personal thoughts. I also make reference to a few academic standpoints that I borrowed from the book “Norms of Visibility. Identity in Times of Transition” by Polish scholar Magda Szczesniak, whose opinions built my theoretical framework and enriched my research on visual culture studies on Polish socio-political transformation. I will reflect further upon my research by analysing wedding garments such as bridal accessories, dresses, veils and gloves I retrieved from my parents’ store. Through these materials, I wish to create a metaphorical image of the Polish desire for commercialism, which can be viewed as a contract  amongst three parties: capitalism, Polish authorities and the Catholic Church. The words of the oath emerged as such:<br><br><i>“In the name of God, I, Poland, take you, Capitalism, to be my husband, as long as we both shall live.”</i><b>SPEAK NOW OR FOREVER HOLD YOUR PEACE<br>Objections</b><br><br>As you are reaching to the end of the story a bitter revelation awaits you. Me, the personification of your never fulfilled longings, made you loose control. You fall into a trap that I set for you, that the mythes, hopes and fantasies, in which you believed, can come true. The West has become a fetishised political direction for you, associated with prosperity, democracy, and freedom. You very much wanted to belong to this world, bask in its favours, consume its commodities, bless and exalt the Holy Spirit of upcoming Capitalism. You were blinded by love and belief that over one night, the always lagging behind post-soviet minds, can catch up with the West. You thought that by changing your habits or wearing black instead of white socks years of economic stagnation can be symbolically skipped. I saw lots of staged poses and expressions in your moves, probably you saw them elsewhere, on TV or cinema. You went after something that you will never catch or pursue, something which is unrealistic to get. Maybe you have forgotten that God the Capitalism doesn’t stop, it feeds upon infinite growth. If you decided to chase it, you find yourself endlessly running. You realised that the worst thing about communism is what comes after.
These images posses performative power and are a driving force in shaping new identities and behaviours. Acts of copying and imitating carry the promise of a better future which is yet to come. The image acts upon its viewer and the viewer acts upon the image. Gestures of cutting out, reprinting and remaking images and placing them in the Polish context was a gesture of constructing new dreams. These acts are, so to speak, staged in the process of making, caught up in the “design state”, based on beliefs as to the beliefs of others.Accompanying this was the birth of new institutions that deal with the production and distribution of images in the public sphere, such as commercial television, advertising agencies or media houses. Polish visual culture was, metaphorically speaking, under attack from new, Western-shaped representations making their way into the public sphere. The image, in this case the depiction of a free-market and its main actor, the Capitalist, had been developed. Figures of prospering entrepreneurs, the new ownership class and the first private owners of Poland drawn upon Western-stock models had been created, but were not yet able to critically explain the rapidly changing reality.<b>Communion Rite</b><br><br>The fall of communism in Poland has highlighted two overlapping processes: Western-driven financial revolution and the liberation of the Catholic Church from the communist regime. Suddenly, imagining the Pope happily consuming his first Big Mac in liberated Poland ceases to be an absurd picture. “The Holy” has migrated to the realm of production and consumption, profit and price, trade and economic tribulation.

<br><br><i>By the power of this sacrifice, O Lord of the Endless Growth,<br>accompany with your loving favour of free market,<br>what in your providence you have instituted,<br>so as to make of one heart in love,<br>those you have already joined in this holy union<br>Through models of surplus and obedience, our Lord.</i><b>LITURGY OF THE EUCHARIST <br>Sanctus (‘Holy’, ‘Holy’)</b><br><br> “You are a very religious man, Mr. Walesa. When you say your praises tonight, what will you ask for your country?” the American TV presenter asked Lech Walesa in 1989. Poland was central to the historic changes that took place across Eastern Europe at the end of the Cold War. It was the largest economy in the region, and was at the forefront of opposition to communism. “We eat the same bread” shouted Walesa to other co-protesters. It was a reference to the powerful role that Catholicism played in the trade union. Any form of religious organisation was frowned upon and resisted by the Communist Party, therefore, the opposition wore their faith as a badge of courage. In fact, most Polish people associated religious activity or participation in Church services as form of resistance.  I wonder, therefore, how did the images flooding into the public sphere during the Polish transformation support change by providing points of reference? Mark Fisher writes following Frederic Jameson and Slavoj Žižek, “We are not today capable of even imagining a logical alternative to capitalism.” Was that not also the goal of those images created during the transition from socialism to capitalism?
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