Cultural researcher Julia Austermann discusses the performances of Krzysztof Jung (1951–1998) as queer interventions in the Peoples Republic of Poland. In particular, photographs from the archives of the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts provide a visual perspective of the performances. The lecture focuses on queer iconographies as well as the affective elements of the performances, which can also be understood through interviews with Jung’s friends and companions. Jung’s performances at the end of the twentieth century made important artistic contributions by discussing homosexual exclusion and desire in a performative way. Following a humanistic ideal, ‘plastic theater’ can be understood as a physical protest against a totalitarian and conformist system.

Julia Austermann has been working as a research assistant at the Chair of Media History / Visual Culture at the University of Siegen since 2015. She is currently doing her doctorate on homophobia and queer protest culture in Poland. In 2015 and 2016 she was a Research Fellow at the German Historical Institute in Warsaw. Austermann studied cultural and media sciences at the University of Siegen and at the Warsaw Collegium Civitas.