Artist Mikołaj Sobczak will give a performance of his essayistic work Anti-Fascist Art Manifesto, which will also be presented as a newly published book. Sobczak’s intricate and personal Manifesto articulates an understanding of fascism as a recurring reaction to the unresolved tensions of modernity. The artist proposes history as rhyme, rather than repetition: from Nazi appropriations of archetypal imagery and industrial rationality to contemporary forms of techno-feudalism dominated by global corporations, similar patterns of control, exclusion, and myth-making re-emerge under new conditions. These macro-structures are inseparable from embodied experience, especially where sexuality, shame, fear, and masculinity intersect with ideology. Sobczak examines how political power operates through archetypes – deeply rooted images that structure perception and emotion. Fascist and populist systems depend on rigid, binary archetypes that promise clarity, purity, and order, while suppressing ambiguity and contradiction.
After the live performance, Mikołaj Sobczak will present his new book and join curator Anke Hoffsten for a discussion on his artistic practice and his ideas on queer sexuality and avant-garde art as forms of anti-fascist resistance.
The event is part of a collaboration between nsdoku and Lothringer 13 Halle within the framework of the exhibition project Antifascism: Now. A textual mural by Mikołaj Sobczak is on show at Lothringer 13 until July 31.