May the fashion for being queer last as long as possible [talking]

Paulina Januszewska: How Poland reacted to LGBT+ Zones?

Gabi Skrzypczak: Not the way I dreamed of it. There are no protests at the Municipal Gallery, the right is silent about our exhibition, no MP has decided to dismantle the work and most of the opinions we get are positive. Visitors are pleased that specified a cross-cutting task has been created and can be summed up 8 years of "good change". I fishy that the scandal that the erstwhile government considered the very existence of queer persons prevented the choice of the location of the exhibition.

Poznań is not present called the Polish San Francisco due to its openness.

G.S.: We are all the more pleased that Arsenal and Pavilion, with which we co-organise this exhibition, had their platform on the Equality March in Poznań, where we could celebrate the period of Duma under the name of the local government institution together with another crucial to the community LGBTQ+ entities. Poznań parade It is very different from the Warsaw one, for example. There's definitely less. Capitalistic And focused on the large corporations, so I truly appreciate the combination of circumstances.

Filip Kiev: It seems peculiarly valuable to me to have the enthusiasm of people from smaller towns who frequently travel for respective hours to Poznań just to see the exhibition. I myself was in Koszalin during its opening, where I worked with queer parents to prepare for the March of Equality with choreography, and I besides heard how many people noticed this event. The hunger for queer culture outside large centres is huge, so I hope LGBT+ Zones They will become not only an impulse for trips, but besides wondering how to take care of everyone.

Edna Baud: After the opening, a collector wrote to me, who, under the influence of the exhibition, asked to contact any queer student. He wanted to buy her work to aid our community, which is again facing a right-wing backlash. The exhibition opened on the eve of the second circular of the presidential election and immediately ceased to be archival, although with this presumption it arose – as a communicative about the past period.

Karol Nawrocki has already given a fresh political context to your exhibition, but is it so different from the 1 that has been going on since 2023? Although we no longer have anti-LGBT+ zones, but rights – neither do we. Does your exhibition, however, relate to this?

G.S.: During the construction of the exhibition with Tomek [Pawlovski-Jermolayev, co-curator of the exhibition – for example, cars], we were guided by the request to exposure the strategy of operation in unfavourable conditions that may be useful to others. I imagined our mediate European experience as a valuable clue for Western countries where LGBT+ people had any rights, and now they are observing a large political turn to the right. Let them see that despite all the odds we've made.

I did not think that we would gotta go back to Poland so soon. By the end of the vote, I was reasoning there was no way a candidate like Karol Nawrocki would win. However, I am comforted by the fact that we do not request to start again, but we are continuing to defy and solidarity, and that the exhibition, which was co-financed by the Ministry of Culture, is treated as reparations for times of large ultra-right dehumanisation. At the same time, we know that the current government will not give us anything, due to the fact that even the changes that concern transgender people have paradoxically taken place thanks to predecessors, or more specifically – Zbigniew Ziobrze.

F.K.: In this year's ILGA-Europe studies, which examine the situation of LGBTQ+ people in European countries, Poland achieved 0% in 2 key categories: family, speech and hatred crimes. This means that there are no laws in our country that defend queer people from force or let them to establish relationships and families.

However, the same study contains another interesting category: space for civilian society. Here Poland received 50%, which means that independent voices grow simultaneously under right-wing or centre-right rule. They work more intensively in the form of collective opposition and space to share the experience of artistic environments, collectives, NGOs. The queer art we paper and show, in all political reality is so a origin of practice in dealing with oppression, learning each another and how to live easier.

E.B.: Art galleries should be a shelter for excluded and marginalized people. any of them besides served in the most hard times. specified places include the gallery of the Labyrinth in Lublin. Now Poznań Arsenal becomes a archive of opposition and instructions for the future, but it is ready to grow existing structures with fresh strategies. We will request them, due to the fact that in the face of drowned hopes we already know that neoliberal politics will not offer us anything, and the coming governments of the far right will effort to take distant even more.

Given the fact that there is no single strategy to be a queer in Poland, delight tell me what has personally allowed you to last the time of good change and what has found its place in the exhibition.

G.S.: Knowing that we can describe past on our own terms. We don't request IPNs or another memory institutions for that. This is dedicated Chronicle, i.e. this part of the exhibition, which shows documentation from activities that spread cognition and literature about LGBTQ+ Library of Asylum or the X-Files Collective, which makes available its platform to people who make queer poesy in smaller towns. Bart Staszewski's plan was besides included in this circumstantial archive.

I guess he doesn't necessarily identify with the art scene.

G.S.: It is true, but he utilized artistic strategies to scope a wide scope of audiences – including those from abroad, with his photographs of hornstones. On the 1 hand, Karol Radziszewski, with his strategy of documenting queers, including those dating back to the times of the PRL Queer Archive Institute, on the 1 hand, shows that LGBT+ people have always existed and, on the another hand, he uses his highly well-established marketplace position of a recognizable artist for crowdfunding activities. For example, he sold prints of his works, all of which he donated to support the queer community.

The story, in a way, is most likely connected with ChronicleBarn.

G.S.: In this part, artistic people break the available narratives about Polishness by capturing, or simply utilizing their national symbols. After all, queerness does not regulation out being Polish or Catholic. Mikołaj Sobczak does it critically, and Daniel Rycharski does it affirmatively. The strategies are different.

F.K.: And they depend on the context. For me, during co-creation with the local community of the Asylum Library in the Lublin Labyrinth Gallery, the most crucial thing was cognition from the bottom up, that is, 1 that does not come from the experience gained in the cultural institution, but is placed in that institution. We have invited young people, students and people who do not have theoretical backgrounds or professionally deal with art, to offer their own autonomy and implemented on their own terms, without fear of censorship, ideas for performances, exhibitions and another events. This is how I realize the task of my own and cultural institutions. We can function effectively if we trust the social side, enter into dialog with it, and recognise that self-practice and expertism can consequence from queerness itself, not from PhDs or long-term artistic practice. The existence of this exchange is empowering to everyone and builds real solidarity.

E.B.: We frequently think about how to turn back the current of history, looking for large media narratives and groundbreaking academic theories. Meanwhile, the most crucial work to do is to enter into direct relations with real people in the capitalist, heteronormative and patriarchal modernity, the main front of which is to share society.

F.K.: A fewer days before our conversation, I was at the premiere of Taras Gembik's poesy book Infinite Now and I think that this title best summarizes the fight for LGBT+ rights and people in general. She's never a complete project. However, careful participation here and now with others is important. This prompts me to ask further questions: what strategies can we usage to respond to what is revealed to us?

What would you say?

F.K.: I am very inspired in this context by Adrienne maree brown and her book Emergent Strategy, in which the author proposes to act "at a rate of trust". This phrase is metaphorical, of course, and may mean different things to different people, but for me it is simply a willingness to quit any of our desires or visions – either as institutions or as artists – and openness to change direction or intent of action, e.g. influenced by conversation with the local community. It's about being in the constant process of gathering these people. And for this gathering to be truly human alternatively than transactional.

Can fleshiness and sexuality embedded in the context of pleasance besides be queer opposition strategies? And are they the main themes of the next part of your exhibition, that is, Chambers?

E.B.: In my art I mention more than to physicality to an identity concept. I think he's the key topic. Chambers And the issues you're talking about can besides come out of it.

G.S.: The very life of queer life according to its identity is already an act of rebellion. The search for pleasance under adverse circumstances is simply a continuation or expression of this rebellion. I find it interesting, however, that PiS-owska "good change" was a truly good change in representation of another letters in LGBTQIA+ than just "G" and a small "L". For example, Liliana Zeic's work talks about long-term lesbian invisibility, which took place both inside a community dominated by homosexual male cis and within feminist movements. In the 1970s, lesbianism was even considered dangerous for equality, women and their rights. Liliana created a costume inspired by the costumes of Polish hunters, playing with a metaphor of camouflage, which on the 1 hand shows a deficiency of presence and, on the another hand, recognition with a threat.

Today, transgender and non-binar people are in a akin position.

G.S.: precisely – their long ignored existence has become the mark of a hunt from different sides, including the feminist one. However, I think that as a queer community we have gained any awareness of non-normative sexuality, or non-normative sexuality, but implemented in an unnormative way. It's a immense sign of the times. Chamber It does not necessarily gotta equip itself with circumstantial strategies, but it indicates a breakthrough in reasoning about what or who we associate queer with today. In fact, I am referring to the full society, which, at the time of the Law and Justice, learned that the “boy” and “grandmother” were only part of the wide spectrum.

But isn't identity a trap for an artist?

E. B.: Gabi erstwhile wondered if if we could do a gallery where only transgenders doing art on subjects another than LGBT+ would do it anyway. So is queer any art performed by a queer person, or 1 that contains elements of struggle, identity, stories of queerness? I think we request a hybrid approach.

F.K.: And I'll say again: it depends on the context. This Polish is oppressive to the LGBTQ+ community, does not recognise them as full citizens, so our appearance in public space will most likely always get a queer label. This is happening outside our control, and trying to unstick it seems pointless to me. I realize queerness, on the another hand, not even as identity, but as methodology, i.e. creating a space in which care is practiced, listening to 1 another in a ellipse or unhierarchical collectivity.

In the curatorial text, there is simply a thesis about breaking the "status quo established by gay hegemony". This may propose to us who led the lead in queer art shown in Poland. So how is your exhibition different from the others on this subject? The scope of representation?

G.S.: I think this exhibition does not undermine the queerness we have developed in Poland. He does not deliberately question her, does not look at her, or leak through any revealing threads. Of course, the people we invited to participate approach queer in a very innovative way, but the exhibition itself is not. Rather, it is simply a evidence of art history. Of course, our mention point was powerfully based on gay studies and archives of the National Museum in Warsaw exhibition by Paweł Leszkowicz Ars Homo Erotica of 2010. There were fewer women in it, so the full thing truly fell out gay-centric. I'm not judging. Even then, critics called it mediocre and titled Lesbian Imaginarium part of the work shown Lesbian Marginalium.

You can't say she marginalizes any identities.

G.S.: But I am convinced that in the future, according to the lice and to the preached thesis about the reign of (by way of permanent) queer fashion, there will be more specified exhibitions, and any of them criticize ours, even considering it besides conservative or not telling everything.

E.B.:LGBT+ Zones It's an effort to summarize, recalculate votes, people, resources, not make a fresh ferment. This will surely come in a moment, especially since politics continues to inspire. At the same time, I see that unlike another exhibition We're human. in the Labyrinth, which was created in 2021 in consequence to the hateful statements of Andrzej Duda, ours are only queer people. While it seemed completely natural to me at the time that we showed the large works of Mirosław Balka or another cis and consecutive artists, allies, etc., I already have a different sensitivity and conviction that we can talk about our problems ourselves. We don't request anyone's ID.

How crucial was the organization circulation of art at the time of the Law and Justice Government in the construction of your exhibition and your biography, or alternatively the existence of art on the outskirts?

G.S.: Michał Grzegorzek and Anton Ambroziak wrote very interesting texts in the guide to the exhibition, in which they prove that the most crucial bastion of art became clubs and streets, so the organization circuit did not truly play the most crucial violin here. However, as a starting curator at the time, I myself relied on tiny institutions, which, despite the hard political climate, took quite a few large initiatives. After all, they functioned: the Labyrinth mentioned here, Bomb's publishing house, Work Scene. Ujazdowski Castle hosted Dragana organized by the KEM [queer-feminist collective, the active contact of choreography, performance, sound and social practices – ed.], and your hall of political criticism organized exhibition 100 lesb.

E.B.: any people like to say that queer art flourished due to the oppression of a "good change", but I like to claim that it was created in spite of it and that, of course, it required many individual negotiations with reality, as well as activistic commitment. I wonder if this kind of energy can be restored if we are facing the governments of the Law and the Confederation. Will we remember that it is not adequate to just scratch out of the swamp, that we request to change everything to make things better? I don't know, but I hope we've learned something from our earlier strategies.

I erstwhile participated in a panel with Liliana Zeic and Anna Dziuban, who said that queer artistic practice in a time of good change was constantly an act of opposition and especially for young artists the only reality known to them, which in the long run is burning...

G.S.: Therefore, now that no 1 is straight attacking us, we can breathe a little.

E.B.: We request dreams of a large world, where we no longer request to do art in spite of politics and so on, but I think that no substance how good the strategy is, queer lives will always stay annoying. I come from the presumption that we live on a sineoid, and it's better to keep our defender up.

The search for any "normality" or breath, whether in the times of the regulation of the neoliberals or the right, is two-track. I remember that after the outbreak of a full-scale war in Ukraine, I began to construct a bike from scratch to have a rebound from activism, art and politics. At the same time, after the election, I have any form of disappointment and the feeling that we are undergoing a form of mourning that causes greater fatigue of bodies and anxiety about tomorrow. But with this show and even our conversation, I feel like I'm gaining the tools to deal with it.

But in the meantime, you had to live with something. How did exclusion from organization circulation affect the economical situation of queer artistic persons?

G.S.: In fact, to all its participants, the planet of art is roulette. possibly that's why then Wojtki Bąkowskie says that there is fashion for queers and that it's easier for them. At the same time, organization circulation is not peculiarly friendly to anyone. Sometimes you can make good money like 7,000 for 1 show, but in a year it's nothing.

E. B.: There is no recipe for a dignified experience in the art world.

F.K.: In the context of economical organization support, I am most curious in how public entities can learn long-term support for bottom-up projects emerging from social needs in consequence to a circumstantial minute in history. I see the problem with the fact that there is simply a desire and means at a reactionary "hot moment" to set up initiatives, and erstwhile tension and media interest are decreasing, it turns out that the budget is ending.

NGOs know this best erstwhile it turns out that there is no request to subsidise equality erstwhile power is changed to a little right-wing one. But let's go back to this "fashion for queer nativity", announced by artist Wojciech Bąkowski, regretting the expected ubiquitousness of elgiebets in the field of art and spreading over them a critical protective umbrella in fear of cancelling. How do you respond to akin charges?

G.S.: erstwhile I read about it, I found that another artist is trying to neoliberally convince us that art will verify the market, so just let everyone open their wiener store and see which ones will sell. most likely the queer ones – no, so let's not make them. However, I do not know how, in this case, in Wojciech Bąkowski's universe materializes, for example, that Karol Radziszewski has achieved a large commercial success. Does this mean that the marketplace has not verified or verified wrongly queer nativity scenes? I don't know if it makes sense to talk about it. Let's just say there's fashion for human rights or being a decent individual and a feminist. Only a very privileged individual can say something like that.

F.K.: erstwhile I hear comments like that, I feel like all I can feel is an unpleasant cringe. A fewer years ago, I was the first to participate in akin discussions. present I realize that I would gotta talk to individual who does not only have knowledge, but besides a desire to realize the real situation of queer people dealing with contemporary art and activities around culture in Poland. It's a waste of energy. It is better to usage it as an exchange with people willing to engage in dialogue.

E.B.: For me, this is just 1 of many “edgy” conservative statements on the Internet. I remember another interview Wojciech Bąkowski, in whom he told that he could not imagine a planet without police. I mean, somebody's got to beat the crap out of people who don't perceive to you, right? In the collision with this queer jasque does not contact me, but is only proof of what in Polish, accused of the left hand of artworld there is diversity, rich in voices besides from the right.

The dream effect you're hoping for after the show is...?

G.S.: As I said earlier, I look forward to being totally critical of our exhibition. 1 that says that Tom and I are old conservative grandparents who gotta go to lame due to the fact that the discourse around queer art will make so much.

F.K.: I would like young people, students who will see our exhibition and hear in art studios from their professors that there is no future and career in queer art, to verify this view and to decide on courses of practice according to their own intuition.

E.B.: possibly they'll want to separate themselves from us, and that'll be very valuable. all communicative and culture must develop. It can't be made up of just the ladies. I think I'm counting on that.

G.S.: It would besides be good to make a practice in which curators would place any milestones erstwhile in a while in different areas of art and check where we are. In 2024 a cross-sectional and partially retrospective exhibition of Polish feminist art opened at the State Art Gallery in Sopot. We besides managed not only to look back, but besides to make fresh orders, specified as the symbolic banner of Daniel Kotowski, combining anti-fascism, “fade” and the culture of deaf people. Let's just hope this is the gateway to developing intersective aspects of queer theory.

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Gabi Skrzypczak (she/her) – co-curator of LGBT+ ZONE, Queer art in a time of good change. Poznań historian and art theorist. technological interests make around intersective aspects of feminist explanation and queer.

Filip Kiev (he/his) – improviser, performer, and artist socially involved. Inventor and founder of the queer Asylum Library in the Lublin Labyrinth Gallery. Depending on the context, it examines the factors contributing to the creation of an embodimented community. She studies MA Dance: Participation, Communities, Activism, at The Place – London Contemporary Dance School.

Edna Baud (her/her) – visual and sound artist, postgraduate of cultural studies at UMCS in Lublin. She is fascinated by the relation between people and machines, linguistics and phenomenology of mystery. In his practice he draws topographies of amazing allegories, creating semiotic dense and suggestive works.