Doświadczenie nieobecności: na rubieżach architektury i filmu

The experience of absence: on the frontiers of architecture and film This article explores the myth-making potential of architecture and cinema. The starting point for these considerations is the phenomenon of nostalgia that arises through exposure to film art, wherein the most significant symbols of the old New York landscape, namely the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, appear. After the eleventh of September in the year two thousand and one, these images took on special significance, becoming sensitive points on cinematic maps.The first part of the text delves into the meaning of vertical symbolism, characteristic of New York architecture. The second part interprets specific exemplifications of cinematic spaces. Examining productions such as King Kong (Guillermin 1976), Escape from New York (Carpenter 1981), Cenerentola ‘80 (Malenotti 1983), Die Hard: With a Vengeance (McTiernan 1995), Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (Columbus 1992), or Spider-Man (Raimi 2002), the researcher aims to show how the vertical symbols of the Manhattan skyline, fixed in countless film frames, become a spearhead of meaning, a source of enchantment, but also pain for the „lost city”. Important terms for capturing the eponymous „experience of absence” include Kant’s theory of sublime, Barthes’ „punctum” or Heidegger’s „dwelling”.The text invites exploration of images fixed in memory, which, under the influence of time, history, and the magic of cinema, undergo a constant process of mythologization. Nostalgic traversal of cinematic spaces enables the integration of various meanings and the revival of primordial myths. During this hermeneutic journey, the author attempts to answer questions about why certain symbols and images are so strongly memorable and affect the human imagination, how cinema utilizes the symbolic potential of architecture to build collective and individual memory, and how visual culture influences the human ability to „move” between reality and imagination, presence, and absence.