Kisieland consists of several independent elements: a colour video and an acrylic painting on canvas. The first part is a record of Radziszewski’s meeting with Ryszard Kisiel, an amateur artist from Gdańsk, a pioneer of the gay culture in Poland. The second part of the work is a painting interpretation of Indianka-Szamanka [Indian-Shaman], one of many photographs documenting Kisiel’s performative activities at the turn of 1985 and 1986.
Kisieland fully illustrates not just the field of Karol Radziszewski’s interests, but also the methodology of his work with archives, consisting in queering history, norms, and institutions.
Kisieland is an attempt to build a relationship between the present and the past, revealing forgotten non-normative threads and heroes. Pointing to historical continuity thus becomes a performative activity – it helps to identify and construct the identity of the contemporary queer community. For Radziszewski, the queer archive is an anti-ethnographic, fluid creation that complements and verifies normative narratives, but which, above all, has emancipatory potential.