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Breath of resistance For two nights the Ujazdowski Castle turned into an underground club for techno and rave music. In spring and again in late summer, dance events took place complete with DJ sets and performances, and with a poster sale and a fundraiser for the Campaign Against Homophobia. And it was all for a good reason; pro-queer and anti-fascist themes are vital for the whole project To Be Real, as part of which a temporary “club” was launched that signs up resident artists. This long-term project by two curators, Michał Grzegorzek and Mateusz Szymanówka, is an attempt to produce, within an institution, a space of community and freedom, particularly for members of socially excluded groups. For a couple of years now, thanks to its residency and performance programmes, the U–jazdowski has been a major bastion for Warsaw‘s queer community: a safe place and a space of potential resistance. In 2018, as part of a year-long residency, the collective Kem ran the Dragana Bar here, and the Dutch duo Werker initiated the Queer 2 Peer Cine Club. Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art is showing what has so far not been found anywhere else. At a time when dance has become a key element of many protests and democratic movements around the world, echoes have also been felt here of the recent protest antifascist rave parties in Berlin, anti-hate discos in Poland, Vivienne Westwood dancing to ABBA, or online videos of dancing Iranian women. During the first edition of To Be Real, organised by artistin-residence Simon Asencio with choreographer Marta Ziółek and DJ Zoi Michailova, a temporary conspiracy was struck up between the invited artists and the dancing public. “To conspire means to breathe together” – in an interview featured in this publication, Simon Asencio quotes a message from an Andy Warhol poster as an inspiration for the night-long event. Conspiracy as a collective mental state. “When you conspire, you gain an awareness of the group you belong to and with whom you are plotting,” the artist explains. Taking place as part of the Antifascist Year, the project raises the possibility
