On Storytelling, Recapturing Heritage and Queering History

I first met Karol in February 2020 when he was guiding a group of East European art historians through his brilliant exhibition at Center for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw. That meeting became the cornerstone of the present interview, held in July via Skype, shortly after the Polish presidential election. We spoke about the particulars of queer research in Eastern Europe, about the role of photography in Karol’s practice, but also about his sources of inspiration, archival tools and the paral- lels between past and present Poland.

HB     My first question concerns geogra- phy. You research the queer history of Central Eastern Europe—queering the region’s history, as you say. Why this part of the world?

KR     At the beginning, my focus was on queer Poland, but then I chose to broaden my scope. Over the last three years, I also worked in Brazil and collaborated with friends from Colombia, so it’s more about the global South and the global East, these ‘global peripheries’. It is more practical for smaller parts of the world to focus on smaller areas, like Central Eastern Europe, or Poland and its neighbors, which have a shared queer history and which have lived through communism—these stories are different from those in the West. My goal as an artist and archivist is to rewrite this history and juxtapose it with the Western narrative, especially regarding names and symbols like the Stonewall riots or the rainbow flag. Western LGBT culture does not necessarily match every point and part of history, that’s why I reflect on what was happening and is happen- ing here.

HB     How do you deal with the double danger of exoticism linked to Eastern Europe and queer history? You’ve already partly answered it: you tackle global topics while having the concrete, manageable local history right by your side.

KR     This is a very important question and I am aware of the risk. When I travel to interview people, I am using my position as an insider from another post-socialist country. For example, I’ve been to Romania a couple of times, where some people would start the conversation like this: “Oh, some journalists from Germany came here to cover the region, but in the end they put Borat on the cover”. This level of exotici- zation is not my practice. It is important to go deeper with some issues. I always say that the lives of homosexual men during communism, outside of the context of the gay labels, were queer. Douglas Crimp says, “queer before gay”. The things we now consider homonormative or simply more regular, were queer in communist times. I am also trying to deconstruct the academic, US-influenced approach to the material and the history of the region. 

HB     I guess that with topics like this, you inevitably encounter the question of private vs. public. It looms large in post-war Eastern European history, along with all those problematic terms like ‘official’ and ‘unofficial’ art. Personally, I don’t really trust this division, as it has led to overestimat- ing authenticity and isolation in 1970s East European art history studies. What is your understanding of these terms?

KR     It is a difficult and complicated topic. I came out in Poland in 2005 with an exhi- bition called Fags—it was considered the first openly homosexual exhibition in Polish history. It was about male desire but also the art field—there have of course been queer artists in the past, but they were never openly out. When I did the show, I had already graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts. Although I was playing around with references and art history, me saying that I was gay dominated the reception and became the most important thing. It was fetishized as a private experience. I used to say then that my art was not political, that I focused on desire, sexuality, and a more provocative approach to my identity. I’ve changed my perspective since then, and I can say that everything that is private is also political, but at that time it was differ- ent. Everything that I did was considered gay and, as you said, authentic. I tried to deal with my identity, my family, religion, and myself, which was definitely private. But I realized this was a trap, and started to focus on queering history and on using a more conceptual approach. This was difficult for the curators and art critics, be- cause they were fetishizing and prioritizing those private stories in my projects. It took me many years to get to the point where the strategies that I am using are clearer for others. 

HB     You mentioned your studies at the Academy. Are there any other key sources of inspiration for what you do now—any literature, authors or people you see as strong influences?

KR     I trained as a painter at the Department of Painting of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. I was obsessed with Andy Warhol, and pop as an art that deals with life. It is formally seductive but actually communicates very subversive issues. That’s who Warhol was for me. Now it’s more of a historical reference, but still, I haven’t found that kind of strong influence since. I respect David Wojnarowicz and other more contemporary artists, and authors like Douglas Crimp. But I am mostly interested in people and their stories, and how their emotions can be incorporated in a narrative that speaks to the audience. With Warhol, I could really feel the focus on the audience and on the act of commu- nicating with someone. And he was also archiving frantically, recording compul- sively, appropriating other people’s works, showing drag queens without judgment, and showing a lot of stuff that reflected the times. 

HB    This leads me to another question: how do you integrate other people’s work into yours, and how do you approach authorship?

KR    Appropriation, as a queer strategy of recapturing heritage and seeing it with a fresh, queer eye, is one critical aspect. Another one is networking with people such as the artists that I invited to my show at Ujazdowski Castle. Like Wolfgang Tillmans. We met in Warsaw and I was his guide through the city. We became friends, and he invited me to several of the group actions he was doing, like Vote Together [a project by Between Bridges, a founda- tion for the advancement of democracy, international understanding, the arts, and LGBT rights established by Tillmans in 2017] and now Solidarity 2020 [fundraising campaign to support venues impacted by COVID-19]. For my exhibition, I asked Wolfgang for his series portraying Russian LGBT activists to present a part of the East that I myself hadn’t yet reached. So he is extending my research, giving his own view on that. For over ten years, I have also been working with Ryszard Kisiel on his archive. He is an amateur photographer who started one of the first queer zines in the region. Sometimes his work is part of my show, sometimes I curate his solo shows, and sometimes I screen my film about him called Kisieland. Then you have Libuše Jarcovjáková. We met in Prague several years ago and I was one of the first people who published her photographs.

HB     How did you meet her?

KR     When I was doing research for DIK Fagazine, I stayed in Prague for a month and was looking for connections. We met, I published her photographs and an inter-view, and then I showed her work in Poland a few times. I especially love her photographs showing non-heteronormative female persons, which I have been unable to find in other countries. There is also Natalia LL. We have collaborated many times. She is eighty-something now, so I was thrilled that she was willing to create new work for my show. AA Bronson and General Idea were also in the show. These artists are not just my friends, they complement my narration with their work. I also collaborate with young artists when visiting particular coun- tries with the Queer Archives Institute. Apart from collecting archival material, I’m also building the QAI collection by exchanging work with other artists. 

HB     We’ll definitely come back to the QAI. But now, let’s talk a little more about Natalia LL. You made a film called America is Not Ready for This based on her trip to the United States. You managed to persuade well- known artists and curators to appear in it.

KR     Natalia LL is an icon of Polish art and I knew her work, but I had never really heard about her trip to New York and the States. Some theorists maintain that it catapulted her into being one of the first feminist artists of the region. So I decided to ask her about it, and found out that there were photographs of herself sitting on a couch with famous artists of the time: Joseph Kosuth, Carolee Schneemann, Hans Haacke. And I was like, oh my God, this is a completely different vision of art history! Why have I never heard about it and why is nobody talking about it? I decided to trace the artists from those photographs. I spent three months in New York, and through different contacts I managed to send them out to the artists. Practically all of them said they didn’t know who that person was, they didn’t remember anything, and they were not willing to talk. I was depressed and began preparing a film about how I’d failed. But then I decided to reach out to other major artists who’d never met Natalia, like Vito Acconci or who met her only in the early years like Marina Abramovic, and they had stories of their own. I interviewed Carolee Schneemann three days before my flight back to Poland. But she also remem- bered very little. It was difficult to make the project happen. 

HB     Let’s talk a bit more about the role of photography in your work. 

KR     I still consider myself an amateur photographer because I don’t have any professional training. It came up quite nat- urally with traveling. In 2005, I started DIK Fagazine, an art magazine about masculinity and homosexuality in Central-Eastern Europe. It was interview-based, so I needed a portrait for each one. For several editions, I worked with photographers, but when I was traveling alone, I had to bring my own camera and take the portraits myself. I like photographing people. For my Studio and Studio II projects, I photographed models and talked about male nudity in the context of Polish culture. In 2007, I started Fag Fighters, a project about a fictional gay gang raping straight guys, about stereotypes of gays, about people who fear them but also fantasize about them. It included a lot of staged photography masquerading as authentic. I also handed out cameras and phones to the participants and the photographs they took became part of my installation.

HB     In 2015, you made a project called Invisible (Belarusian Queer History), which consists of five completely black photographs showing nothing at all. What shaped your decision to present local queer stories in the form of photographs?

KR     That’s the third aspect: a more conceptual approach, queering the work of other photographers. This project appropri- ated the series of Igor Savchenko, a straight Belarusian conceptual photographer. In the 1990s, he did a series called Invisible where he presented very over- or under-exposed photographs with descriptions. Belarus did not decriminalize homosexuality until 1995, and any physical queer traces before that would have been proof of of crime. So there really are almost none. Naturally, I wanted to create something material. I used oral history (recording people’s stories from the past) and appropriation (of a notable local photographer, by queering his series to create a new one). Each photograph has a Belarusian caption with facts from the stories I collected. For example, one of them says that the police were trying to document a painter having sex with another guy on the corner of Lenin Street. It is a real story, but there was no policeman documenting it. There is a specific energy in analogue photographs, people are happy to be seduced, and I can work with their imagination. 

HB    Another example is your project on Taras Shevchenko, which included photos of naked contemporary men...

KR     That’s an example from the first half of the nineteenth century. I spent two months in Kiev doing research and I was getting tired of the typical stories from communist times, so I tried to dig up something more. At a checkout counter, a friend of mine said: “He was gay.” On the banknote was Taras Shevchenko, Ukraine’s national hero. I found some LGBT blogs that were telling part of the story. My queer eye also caught a few things here and there. There’s this drawing of him lying on the couch with a half-naked soldier posing for him. In order to add some flesh to the historical material and to play with the museum way of imposing narration, I came up with the drawers installation with the combination of Shevchenko’s drawings with my own photographs of young Ukrainian guys. 

HB     You founded the Queer Archives Institute in 2015. What are your archiving methods and why is it important for you to collect real objects?

KR     When I came out, I was more explicitly focusing on my identity. I often got the response that it’s a Western thing, it never existed here, that we are the first depraved generation… Digging into history and revealing something was a matter of personal identity. Then I started approach- ing people like Ryszard Kisiel, and suddenly hundreds of photographs appeared which the world had not seen since the 1980s. I gradually realized they required a different, non-academic approach. QAI is also about representation. Faced with the lack of archi- val material related to trans or non-binary people, I’m giving them a voice by filming interviews to reshape the narrative and complement history. That’s how I activate, develop, and perform the archive. As with photography, I feel like an amateur, but sometimes it makes me more effective. 

HB     You’ve also initiated research in Colombia, Brazil, Croatia, Belarus. How do you deal with the items collected there? 

KR     I couldn’t just take the stuff from there, there was so little of it. I usually digi- tize it and extend my archive through copies. 

HB     How many items does the archive currently hold, how are they stored, digitized and presented online?

KR     The most valuable things, such as Ryszard Kisiel’s collection (vintage prints, photographs, negatives, slides, notes), are stored in my bedroom, some of the archive material is in my studio, mostly double cop- ies of magazines and books. I have quite a lot of physical stuff, about a thousand items. When I showed the archive, I also created copies. I lack the resources to build a huge MOMA-like website with scans and so on. I might get there in the future, but you just can’t do it in a year all on your own. Still, we all need to see the imaginative and real heritage under the glass display. It’s always going to be different on a screen.

HB     Speaking of the future – does institutional support appeal to you, or would you rather keep the archive as a private artistic activity? 

KR     I want to keep it as a private artistic activity for as long as possible. To activate, to perform, to be able to play with it freely, and exchange material. I am conscious of its financial and physical value, but I don’t want it to become a kind of gay museum with a gift shop. Rather, I envisage a foundation that would keep this heritage safe, organize shows and research, as well as take care of rights and ownership. 

HB     You present the archive using the formal strategies of an institution, complete with a logo, etc. What about other (archival) strategies such as keywords, inventory numbers, inventory books?

KR     When I present the archive, I use key- words to organize the displays: privacy, AIDS, zines, clubs. Then I sort the material from different countries around that. I do need a system, but someone would have to help me with it and I’m not there yet. I don’t keep any records, but I ought to. It is total chaos.

HB     So that’s the next step. 

KR     Yes, I am aware of the valuable knowledge it can bring… The most interest- ing, provocative, experimental, queer work is currently being done by Polish kids on Instagram. You will not find any of it in the galleries. But switch to Instagram, and you have cool queer artworks made by people who don’t even want to be artists.

HB     Do you find your knowledge of histo- ry helpful in the current Polish state of affairs? 

KR     One of my personal heroines is Ewa Hołuszko. She turned seventy this year and she was an important member of the Solidarity movement, but just because of her transition in 2000, she began to be erased from the official history. I inter- viewed her for the exhibition, and she is literally describing how to behave in a crowd at a rally, what to say or not to say when you go to jail. When you see what is happening in Poland now, and how they are treating young activists, this practical information might be useful. The only good thing about Poland now, after the presi- dential elections, is that there is more and more resistance. People feel that they have to respond under this pressure. Ryszard Kisiel’s work from the 1980s, the way people reacted to AIDS, or played with their bodies, dicks, sexualities—it was braver and more provocative than many things you see now. It’s an inspiration.

Text | Hana Buddeus

IMAGES CAPTIONS

1 | Karol Radziszewski, photo Aleksandra Vajd
2 | Ryszard Kisiel, photography, 1985–1986, courtesy of the Queer Archives Institute
3 | Karol and Natalia LL, 2011, courtesy of the BWA Warszaw
4 | Vlad, portrait for DIK Fagazine No 12., Minsk, 2016
5 | Was Taras Shevchenko Gay?, 2017, installation view at The Power of Secrets exhibition, 2019, photo Bartosz Górka, courtesy of the artist and CCA Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw
6–7 | DIK Fagazine No 11., 2017; Ryszard Kisiel, photography, 1985–1986, courtesy of the Queer Archives Institute