Szymon Adamczak

Szymon Adamczak

Researcher

Department
DAS Research
Research Group
THIRD Cohort 4

THIRD Fellow (Cohort 4), DAS Research

Szymon Adamczak is a dramaturg, theatre and performance maker with a vital interest in HIV-related culture. In the field of performing arts he sustains relationships and collaborations between public institutions and independent artists working across disciplines. Through his work, Szymon weaves poetic imagination, visual sensitivity and socially aware actions taking place onstage and in the public realm.

With a background in organizing and programming in the arts, Szymon is interested in the proximity of artistic practice and civic engagement. In recent years he has been involved with the broad legacy of response to HIV and AIDS. As an artist affiliated with Biennale Warszawa he initiated and runs the research platform “Polish EIDS”. Szymon is also interested in queer thought, reading groups, critical pedagogy, self-publishing. He lives in Amsterdam, works for STUDIO theatregallery in Warsaw as dramaturg, and volunteers for HIV Vereniging, an organization for people living with HIV. 


Research

Rehumanization is the key concept driving my research in the coming years. By that I mean certain ethical principles of working with communities and sources derived from the principles of nonviolent communication. I am concerned with advancing the positioning of my dramaturgical and performance-oriented practice in relation to restorative and rehabilitative practices aimed at improving and/or repairing relationships between people and communities. My chosen focus is concerned with retrieving and re-telling the people’s history in relation to HIV/AIDS in Poland from the 1980s until the present moment. Such is inextricably linked to the history of LGBTQ communities and their (self) organizing traditions, as well as it is concerned with the neoliberal transformation of 1989 and the semi-peripheral status of Poland.

On the practical level, among other activities, I will be pursuing digital display forms of the material understood as intelligence. I am interested in gathering knowledge through archival investigation, field work, oral history and performative tools, such as verbal prompts, instructions, and processually designed gatherings.

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