WE. Life between East and West – Kuba Maria Mazurkiewicz

A comic book by Kuba Mazurkiewicz, printed on Riso, about the East and the West meeting at a McDonald's somewhere near Nadarzyn.

Author: Kuba Maria Mazurkiewicz
Format: A5
Pages: 20
Circulation: 300 copies
Print: Riso in two colors
Paper: Munken Pure 120gsm
Sewing: saddle stitch with flaps
Inserts: Poster with a drawing printed on newsprint, insert with English translations

Author's comment:

Here is what Kuba says about the genesis of the WE:

"I grew up in a village outside a district town in the 1990s. Poland looked different back then. There weren't many elements that would mark our belonging to the West—for example, McDonald's. I treat this now-banal chain restaurant as a symbol of the aspirations of the early Third Polish Republic. It was desired not only by children from small towns but also by the political and cultural elites of the time.

At the time when the first McDonald's was opened in Poland, the chain was criticized in the West for the low quality of its products, blamed for causing obesity and contributing to the enlargement of the ozone hole by clearing forests for pastures.

Along with McDonald's, its criticism was imported to Poland. Anarchists, alter-globalists, and environmental organizations protested against the new outlets. Opposition to the chain was one of the slogans of the subcultures of the time, present on popular patches, T-shirts, and stickers, a collection of which I will also present.

Interestingly, when we entered the West in 1992 with the opening of the first McDonald's, the East was bustling right next door."

In the center of Warsaw, near the Palace of Culture and Science, a marketplace was just beginning to open, bringing together people from the collapsing USSR. This is brilliantly documented in Tadeusz Pałka's film "In the Shadow of the Palace."

In the '90s, we lived between the West and the East. Today, it seems we're somewhere else. Although sometimes we return there, and that's what this comic is about."