Performance: Paskudnik

“Paskudnik” is a post-migrant drag persona who got lost during the crossing—the crossing of the border between Germany and Poland, between the past and the future. “Paskudnik” is a word that often rolled off the grandfather’s tongue when calling his grandchild. In memory, it shifts between the dinner table, a soccer match, a parasite, and disgust. There is no single, clear translation. Exactly what the term means remains unclear. With the performance “Paskudnik,” Tubi Malcharzik casts a queer gaze on his own German-Polish family history and sets out to explore this familiar yet undeciphered void in the collective family memory. One hundred years after the referendum in the border region of Upper Silesia, fifty years after Willy Brandt’s kneeling gesture, and after the family arrived at the Friedland border transit camp in the Federal Republic of Germany, Tubi Malcharzik takes the word “Paskudnik” as a starting point to retrace German-Polish migration history together with an interdisciplinary team. Through immersive soundscapes, narrative tapestries, and imagination, they open up a queer and post-migrant space of memory. They invite the audience to the dining table of an Upper Silesian family celebration and onto the interface of a dating app, until these spaces merge for the duration of a song. Using a red velvet dress, myths about high cheekbones, and songs by t.A.T.u. and Peter Alexander, the performance explores questions of gender roles and sexuality, queerness and anti-Slavism, as well as Polish-German memory culture.

"Paskudnik" is part of the program celebrating zeitraumexit’s 25th anniversary.