Druckansicht
Queere Interventionen im kommunistischen Polen – Krzysztof Jung und sein ›plastisches Theater‹


Autor: Julia Austermann
[erschienen in: IMAGE 28 Themenheft (Juli 2018)]


This essay contributes to the meaning of Polish art as queer intervention in communist Poland by researching the (semi-) public performances of Krzysztof Jung (1951-1998). It focuses on the specific queer performativity by analyzing photographs of the actions. Furthermore, it concentrates on the queer affective elements and includes interviews with participants and actors of the performances. The tensioning of black or white threads around naked bodies, the building of a narrowing netting or the ›sewing‹ of a human network were typical elements in Jung’s ›plastic theatre‹. I argue that, in reference to BUTLER (2016), vulnerability and the construction of an infrastructure of support were essential aspects of Jung’s aesthetic protest. With his semi-public performances in the late 1970s and 1980s Jung represented homosexual exclusion and desire in communist Poland and established a counter-public (cf. FRASER 1990). He embedded homosexuality into a wider discourse and therefore supported the gay movement. Following a humanistic ideal, it will be shown that his ›plastic theatre‹ can be seen as a bodily and symbolic protest against totalitarianism and a conformist system.