Izabela Trojanowska: Jestem Twoim Grzechem (I Am Your Sin) 1981 (Eastern Bloc Songs: Party, Pop...)

This video was synchronised from sound, TV and film footage re-cut to form part of an archival showreel for screening in an exhibition at Centrala Space, Birmingham. The exhibition - ’Eastern Bloc Songs: Party, Pop & Politics’, ran from 8 September - 03 November 2018, and explored the popular music of former Communist states during the years between 1963 and 1988. A publication accompanied this archival exhibition, gathering around 65 translated song lyrics, mainly from Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, presenting each song with a short introduction to the recording artist, songwriters and events surrounding its release. The publication as a whole offers a chronologically ordered sampling of the stylistic range, political complexity and musical quality achieved by artists working under the frequently strained conditions prevailing within official cultures, telling the familiar story of post-war popular music from a perspective on the other side of its standard Anglo-American looki