Gdańsk’s Initiative has recorded political and social changes throughout the emergence of queer activism in Poland, a very under-documented historical movement. This project aims to begin the acknowledgement of queer archives in order to restore LGBTQIA+ history and to serve as a learning, connective space for marginalized communities.
The systemic homophobia and instrumentalization of history for political purposes by populist and right-wing parties in Poland led in recent years to the exclusion of specific minority groups such as LGBTQIA+ communities from mainstream historical discourse. These factors and the relatively early stage of the LGBTQIA+ movement in Poland stand in the way of the creation of a public, accessible queer archive. The project aims to counteract the vulnerability of ‘queer memory’ and create the first comprehensive queer archive to preserve and present the under-documented history of Polish queer activism from the late 1980s.
