Krystian Darmach
Assistant Professor
Cultural Anthropologist , University of Lodz, Faculty of International Reations and Political Studies , Anthropography
Lodz, Poland
About
Musician, guitarist of Brown Time band, fan of Portugal and Beat Generation. Cultural anthropologist. Currently an lecturer at the Department of Latin American and Comparative Studies at the University of Lodz, Faculty of International Relations and Political Studies. Research interests: methodological issues of anthropology, urban (night) ethnography, nightlife, anthropography, art-science relations, narrativism, lusopsonian culture. A graduate of the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology of the University of Lodz. In 2012 earned his Ph.D. at the Faculty of Philosophy and History of the University of Lodz entitled "Lisbon Pastelaria. Anthropologist as a participant observer of a foreign culture. Methodological study".
Night Silence as Fieldwork
In the presented article, I problematize and describe ethnographically the phenomenon of “night silence” as a cultural construct with its complex characteristics. This description also includes the interpretation of the phenomenon in question. I describe the sound experiences related to the urban night sphere. I practice a peculiar sonoristic semiotics, at the same time testing the possibilities of the anthropological language of description. Night silence is a double contradiction of everyday life. Silence and night. This is the suspension of the ability to define. There are many kinds of silence. There is silence in music, silence of prayer, a minute of silence, silence as a metaphor closing the human experience within cultural and socially clear associations: silence before the storm, dead silence, deaf, grave silence, silence connoting silence, appreciation and humility, waiting, resignation, elation of love, non-verbal communication or the lack of it. The city night gives silence yet another dimension, related both to biological necessity, experience, as well as social contract, custom, institutional legal protection of freedom, needs and obligations. At night, we enter a different dimension of silence. These (cultural) paradoxes are the subject of the following prosposition. I will refer to my own research experiences located in specific night spaces and cities. Starting from my own home and city through travel, related experiences and observations (in comparative optic
