The multidisciplinary artist, filmmaker and curator Karol Radziszewski is publisher and editor-in-chief of DIK Fagazine and founder of the Queer Archives Institute. With Béton Bleu Magazine he speaks about the Presidential election in Poland, the growing pressure on queer artists, and the LGBT history of his home country.

Béton Bleu: Karol, how would you describe the atmosphere in your community, now that the elections are over?  

Karol Radziszewski: Personally, I was really devastated. The level of energy was so high, so when we learned that Duda won by just one or two percent, it was devastating. As a community, we finally had hope that things would change. I was very involved, also emotionally, with the pro-voting campaign, mostly on Instagram, where we tried to make young voters aware of what was going on and bring them to the polls. What we did was inspired by the actions of Wolfgang Tillmans and his “Vote together” campaign which I collaborated on in Poland. The people we reached out to were writing to me day and night.  

BB: Poland has had a conservative government for some years. What is different now? 

KR: It’s true, the government was center right before. But they still were neutral when it came to LGBT people. They didn't introduce any laws that helped us, but they were also not openly against us. They just didn't talk about it at all. Five years ago, the government started a campaign against immigrants. During the 2019 European election, they targeted LGBT people for the first time, and they did so again in the Polish parliamentary election later. It was so successful that they decided to do it again this time. The government kind of tested the waters, they played with anti-LGBT rhetoric to see what happens. The most frightening thing is that they succeeded, that a big part of society responded to this in a positive way.

BB: Do you think we will see changes on a legislative level?

KR: During the campaign, Duda openly said that the LGBT community was not human, he vilified us. Of course, he is just a puppet of the government, someone who signs the laws the government and his party prepared. But still, in Poland the president decides  whether a legal proposition is signed into law or not. In Duda’s  first term, he decided not to sign the  law that was supposed to help transgender people. You see, in Poland you have to sue your own parents if you want to have your sex reassignment recognized. That’s a really painful process. These young trans people are already struggling so much, and then they have to fight against their own parents so they can be recognized as who they are. Duda vetoed the law that was supposed to change that. We are already seeing this development in places like Russia or  Hungary, where trans rights have been weakened in the last couple of weeks. As a queer community, we expect a lot of laws that will target us.

BB: Do you have an example? 

KR: The president has already signed a proposal for the so-called “family card”. It is supposed to protect families and family values, but what it will eventually mean is that you can’t spread any kind of “LGBT propaganda” in public institutions. Pro-LGBT NGO’s won’t be able to hold workshops in schools. As a queer artist, if you have an openly gay show in a public museum, it could be considered LGBT propaganda. You can't do lectures, you can't do exhibitions. Of course, it does not mean that it will happen immediately. Even if it is passed, maybe nothing will happen to you for a year. But you constantly have to worry about what you post or write. You always have to be aware of it. If you make a mistake, something might happen.

BB: So they are watching you?  

KR: I just saw that one of the lawyers of the public tv station in Poland is following my Instagram account. It's a constant pressure, a constant threat. For many people, it's not visible. A lot of things are very subtle. But if you dig deeper and are as involved as I am, it's so present that it's giving you this feeling of being unsafe in this country. The message is you have to be afraid, even if you are innocent, don't try, because we will stop you.  

BB: What role does social media play in this?

KR: Just a few days ago, I saw an Instagram account that pretends to be LGBT, but when you look closely, it’s actually very homophobic. They are saying, we are part of the community, we are like you, but we do not provoke people. We don’t kiss in public. We dance with people of the opposite gender, we are Catholics, we don't wear colourful clothes, we don't march, we don't support the LGBT ideology. This is the first time I see this kind of infiltration. And you can’t do anything about it, because they are not breaking any of Instagram’s rules regarding hate speech, but it still does a lot of harm. This is exactly what we see happening in Russia. 

BB: How will all this affect the way artists work in Poland?

KR: I think there will be more and more self-censorship both from artists as well as institutions. The new president has already threatened to take funding away from the cities. So even if some theatres or galleries were willing to show our work, they have to worry that their money would be taken away if they show something more provocative, because many of them are funded by the cities. You can tell by the way the art world communicates with you. They say, “maybe it's not worth it to risk the whole program, maybe we can be open, but not that queer”. This has been happening for the last few years. And I think it will only become more common now.  

BB: Is this censorship affecting your own work?  

KR: Yes. My own exhibition at the Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle was opened last year, it was supposed to run until the end of March, but then the lockdown happened and it was closed and never opened again. The newly appointed director of the CCA is closely connected to the government. He claimed he was neutral and open for all voices. But he allowed the journalists from public TV to come and follow me around. They ended up recording my phone calls without telling me, they were following me into the bathroom, they showed up in my gallery unannounced. They manipulated and published videos from my Instagram without permission. They were trying to pressure me into closing the show. Officially, nobody at the CCA or in the government had anything to do with this, of course. The public TV in Poland is the government’s official propaganda tool.

BB: Are you worried that you won't be able to do your work in Poland in the future? 

KR: I'm in a privileged position, I’m 40 years old, I’m an established artist, so most of my work is presented outside of Poland and supported by other institutions. I publish my magazine and fund my Queer Archives Institute with the money that I have from my artworks. So I'm quite independent and I think I will be able to continue in the same way. But I'm really afraid for younger people, especially in the smaller cities, artists, but also regular teenagers. The number of LGBT teenagers who commit suicide in Poland is already growing.

BB: How does your own work relate to the current situation in Poland? 

KR: I'm a visual artist, I graduated as a painter, but I work in many different media. In 2005, I made an exhibition, “Fags”, that was considered the first openly homosexual exhibition in the history of Poland. I'm just mentioning that because it's showing you how short this history is, how unusual it is for queer people in Poland to have this kind of visibility. It's almost a paradox that, with this campaign, LGBT people have gotten this unprecedented level of visibility.

BB: You also founded the Queer Archives Institut. Can you explain what it is?

KR: It's a mix between an NGO and an artistic project. The idea was born out of the magazine I founded in 2005, DIK Fagazine, which covers masculinity and homosexuality in the post-Soviet countries. I was travelling a lot to the neighbouring countries, while also trying to cover issues from a contemporary perspective. About ten years ago, I started to be much more involved in history and began to search for the traces of queer history in the whole region, Central Eastern Europe. That's how I came up with the idea for the Queer Archives Institute, which summarises my research, but also includes the research of other artists and activists. We do interviews, collect photographs and materials from the region. 

BB: Do you think your work as an artist can help bring more awareness to queer issues? 

KR: I’m trying to use my art and my research to influence what will be in the books in the future. I do a lot of work around the queer history of the region, and I collaborate with academics, with friends from different disciplines, to rewrite this history and show that there have always been non-heteronormative people in Polish culture, from the Kings to the writers and composers, some of the biggest names. So much is based on LGBT people who helped build this nation. Recently I portrayed and filmed Ewa Holuszko , one of the leaders of the Solidarity Movement. She is being erased from our history, just because of being transgender. So as an artist, I use a lot of tools to bring the heroes and heroines from the past back, to rewrite the history and change the narrative, because I believe that this is a kind of activism. Not only to criticise the church and the government but to build positive and empowering examples.

BB: Some people say Duda might have won politically, but things are still changing and getting better. Do you agree?

KR: I experienced communism for nine years, that gave me a different perspective growing up. So yes, Polish society today is more open than it used to be. More than 50 per cent of people accept same-sex partnerships. Not same-sex marriage, but partnerships. However, this increased visibility of LGBT people goes in both directions. People are more open, but those who are homophobic, they are also more open and express their views in a violent and very public way. During the campaign, there were several attacks, even on my friends in Krakow. So the visibility that means freedom also makes life more dangerous for us.

BB: When Donald Trump won in the US, we saw a big anti-Trump movement. Is something like this possible in Poland?

KR: I do see a new kind of energy in people. I'm referring constantly to Instagram, but this is my reality, that’s where I get in touch with thousands of young Poles. So I know the atmosphere very well and I have never seen such resistance before. Young people write to me, they get involved politically. That gives me hope that this could evolve into something stronger and change future elections. This is also what I think is different from countries like Belarus, where many of my friends are from. There, LGBT people really don't have any hope. This is not the case here. We have hope and there's a lot of people who are willing to fight. 

BB: We see that right now.

KR: Yes, the recent events related to the detaining of the activist Margot [Szutowicz] from the queer collective “Stop bzdurom” (Stop Bullshit) really shook part of society. The unprecedented brutality of the police against peaceful protesters trying to stop unjust arrest was shocking. Almost 50 people were detained later that night, literally hunted randomly by police officers, several of my friends amongst them. The next day thousands showed up at the protests in several cities. A lot of young brave and pissed off folks, but also allies. It’s not gonna be easy, but many see it as our version of Stonewall, as a turning point. The rainbow flag became the universal symbol of anti-government resistant.

BB: What do you expect from the European Union?

KR: I would hope that they do more than what they did when the Polish government was openly trying to change the court system in its favour. One of the biggest problems is that in Polish law, there is no protection for crimes against LGBT people based on sexual orientation. If you are beaten or somebody is shouting “fucking faggot” at you, nothing happens. There is no law that you could use, like there is, for example, for anti-Semitism. So I do hope that the European Union will force Poland to introduce that kind of law to protect the community. This would give us a tool to call the courts of the European Union in Strasbourg but also for fighting in courts here locally. 

BB: Currently, the rest of Europe can witness how "LGBT" free zones are being established in Poland.

KR: That’s true, many of the mostly smaller cities have declared themselves LGBT free zones. The LGBT people who are in these cities, they struggle even more now because they lost any kind of support. Nobody exactly knows what this means. They might say they want to fight “LGTB ideology”, but for some people living in these places, LGBT free zone could also mean that you have to get rid of all the gays and lesbians in the city. There have been some reactions from the EU, a few of those cities lost some financial support. I’m looking forward to seeing more things like this. 

BB: Have you ever thought about leaving? 

KR: I have been thinking about leaving for fifteen years. Every three months I’m thinking, is this the moment? It would have been easier to leave right after my graduation, but then things developed quite quickly, I had friends, my career was going well and I thought, ok, this works, I can stay. Now I have a partner, so he would also have to find a job. But we are still sitting down every few months and thinking about it. Before the election, we were saying, if Duda wins, we will probably leave, because it's just too much and we were worried about how things would be. But the problem is that it's going to happen anyway. Even if we’re in Berlin or somewhere else, we would just be observing it from a distance. I have students, I have people who attend my workshops, the people that follow me online. They would still be there. So it's not easy for me to go away and know what is happening here.  

Interview: Thorsten Schröder

(c) 09/08/2020

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