Filmoteka Muzeum

Radziszewski shot Backstage during a two-day film session with men who answered his call for participants to a new artistic project. The volunteers were unaware, though, that the project was limited to the very screen tests.

Backstage is a story about these men – about their awareness of being looked at, their need to show off their most attractive face, willingness to sacrifice in the name of being shortlisted for the next stage.

However, this is also a story about the artist himself, who invited the viewer behind the scenes and unveiled himself nearly to the same extent as the men he interviewed – for it is his relations with the models, art and the viewers that lie at the heart of the project.

Backstage also lend itself to interpretation as a record of a queer intervention into the relation – well-instilled in art – between the heterosexual artist and his female model, which is replaced here by the relation between the homosexual artist and heterosexual model.

References: K. Radziszewski, Backstage, exhibition catalogue, Bunkier Sztuki, Kraków 2011.

(ŁM)