Strange Museums in a Strange Country. Meeting With Fiona Kelly McGregor

The starting point of the meeting will be a book “Strange Museums” by Fiona Kelly McGregor, and we will discuss, among others, the changes that have taken place in Poland over the years. We will also take a look at our city.

The language of the event is English.

WHEN: 07/06/2022 (Tuesday) at 6:00 p.m.
WHERE: Galeria Labirynt Plaza, ul. Lipowa 13, 20-052 Lublin (entrance from ul. Ofiar Katynia)
AVAILABILITY: The exhibition takes place on the ground floor in a space free from architectural barriers.
ADMISSION: free

There is an unwritten rule: go to the bars to understand the people living in a certain place. Go to the museums to understand the dead. Fiona McGregor came to Poland from Australia for the first time in 2006, and it was her first visit to Eastern Europe. At that time, she encountered the previously unknown economic, political and social perspective of this part of Europe at a very special moment, shortly after Poland’s accession to the European Union. The author watched a changing culture in which people struggle for a good life in the emerging capitalism, in a country where old ideas are expressed in an astonishing concentration of public museums.

The book “Strange Museums” is kind of a diary from this trip. It is a contribution to a conversation with the author about the changes that have taken place in Poland, among others, in the field of space, events and LGBTQ+ narratives, sixteen years ago and now. During her trip, Fiona also visited our city, hence the chapter “Magic of Lublin”. Therefore, we will also be able to talk about the city from the perspective of the past, whether it has really changed a lot, what we think about these changes, how we assess them, and how we see the future. Does the “magic of Lublin” still work?

Fiona Kelly McGregor is an Australian author and performer. She writes novels, essays, articles and reviews. Recently, she wrote “Buried not Dead” (2021), a collection of essays centred around the performance and Sydney. The book contains extensive profiles of artists: Mike Parr, Lataia Taumoepeau and Bev Nicholas (Cindy Ray), as well as memories, accounts and history of the thirty-year culture of queer performance in Sydney. Fiona’s latest novel, “Indelible Ink”, won the Age Book of the Year.

Fiona is known for her rich repertoire of performance art. She started in the 1990s with participation in queer dance events and cultural events. Between 2008 and 2011, she created the multidisciplinary “Water Series”, examining the fundamental substance of water in the context of rising sea levels, environmental degradation in Australia and the human body. Her last performance work was the photographic series “Moving Masks” from 2020, made in response to the arrival of Covid-19.

The event accompanying the exhibition of Filip Kijowski: “AZYL LIBRARY, where shelves are bending under queer books and we leave our bookmarks”.