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

Abstract

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 perfor-mances. The tensioning of black or white threads around naked bodies, the building of a narrowing netting or the ›sewing‹ of a human network were typi-cal 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 perfor-mances 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 sup-ported 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 total-itarianism and a conformist system.