As a queer performance artist, Jakub Kostewicz directs music videos and stages happenings in Polish LGBTQ+ clubs. His practice embraces expressive visual language, absurdity, dream-like scenarios, and paradoxes of the real-life staging of our own identity. He explores the theatricality of life and the masks we put on to fit into societal norms. Jakub was honoured with the Dokowicz Prize for the best Master’s diploma in animation at the Poznań University of Arts in 2024. Therefore we caught up to learn more about his practice and himself.
Alicja Stąpór: Hi Jakub! Could you introduce yourself shortly?
Jakub Kostkiewicz: My name is Jakub Kostewicz, I am a video artist and a drag performer. During my studies at the University of The Arts in Poznań, I was looking for my own unique film language and I finally found it. This year, I did my Master’s in animated film. Right now, my next challenge is surviving the sun setting down at 3 pm.
A.S.: You work with video, animation, and performance. There is a sense of world-building in your practice. How do you combine all of these mediums in your works? Do you have a particularly close relationship with one of them, or are they all equally important?
J.K.: Animation is the most important, as I have been dealing with it the longest. Understanding its philosophy makes you perceive life and time in a new way. I’d also say that animation, or maybe the study of movement and sequentiality, is already a combination of all the other mediums. When it comes to world-building – I am very much inspired by how life in itself is not linear, many different things are happening at once, yet at different speeds. Some of them conclude, some fade away. My films often begin as inner conflicts that I’m unable to resolve at the time but feel the need to get out of my head. I may not know the answer to them, but I know what question they stem from, the space I associate them with. It’s like doing a puzzle without most of the pieces, just to glimpse what the image will be.
The media I use – video, motion capture, 3D scans, drag – each of them has some interesting specificities, and my job is to find a commonality between them. Let’s say: when doing drag live you can’t just rewind and redo your choreography, you have to keep going with the performance. Similarly when doing camera work and motion capture for my characters – I go with the recording as it is and improvise on the spot. Through such an entertaining process, I end up with a various material to choose from when editing, that I wouldn’t come up with if I were always setting everything up according to some plan.
A.S.: Tell us more about your latest project, the video work ‘Sztuki Sceniczne’ for which you have been awarded the Dokowicz award by our magazine.
J.K.: ‘Sztuki Sceniczne’ (‘Performing Arts’) is a 3D animated film about the relationship I have with my drag-self. When in drag, I always feel euphoric about my gender presentation – I’m no longer restricted by the binary, my body opens up. Yet outside of drag, the cishet gaze makes me self-conscious, so I present myself in a way that makes me feel somewhat safe on the street. How do I regain the level of confidence I feel when in drag and can I ever match the energy I have on stage? Is the stage not a set of tricks and illusions to bring a fantasy about yourself to life? As I start to resent drag due to its temporality and superficiality, I realise the ‘real world’ is also full of such performativities – rituals and policies made up to serve the heteronormative society. The video work is an anthology of short, choreographed scenes that depict myself trying to resolve the arising conflict.
In the ‘Performing Arts’, I mix mocap, photogrammetry, live-action videos, drag makeup and costumes, but also mail poetry, documentaries, and even TV drama pastiche. It’s a bit of everything. The main goal was to create a filmic space for myself where every idea is free to be explored and the right arrangement reveals itself to me at the end of the process. The second – to nuance the depiction of drag, as most of the queer community views it as an everlasting source of gay pride that has no downsides. Finally – to visually showcase the ‘real’ as uncanny, even to question it as a value.
And there’s a problem-solving aspect to it – with a day to finish the preparation, you either cut the idea in half or get a eureka moment. This attitude is very useful when making experimental films – so many possibilities and no guidebook.
A.S.: When was the first time you encountered drag and how did it impact your practice?
J.K.: I had a few so-called first times with drag so it’s hard for me to mark the beginning of this journey. I’ll say that it was crucial when I started watching Polish online drag shows during the pandemic in 2020, like Młyn x Orzeczenie, a set of video works made by drag artists. The effort was very experimental and grassroot, not restricted by academic rules that I dealt with at the university when it came to filmmaking. I admired their freedom of expression, spontaneity and boldness, which I ran out of in my art practice at the time. You can watch RuPaul’s Drag Race all you want, but it doesn’t translate into Polish context But the House of Orzeczenie gave a queer gaze to everyday Polish life and, as I never got to socialise with queer people before, their perspective was like a breath of fresh air. We have to look for these threads in our own country and connect them with our local identity, our language, and cultural sensitivity. For me – drag was something I could explore on my own, without the guidance of art authorities, or the pressure of achieving a high level of craftsmanship. I had never imagined I would perform on stage in front of people, out of my comfort zone. It’s also very DIY as we usually make the costumes and props ourselves. And there’s a problem-solving aspect to it – with a day to finish the preparation, you either cut the idea in half or get a eureka moment. This attitude is very useful when making experimental films – so many possibilities and no guidebook.
A.S.: Your work balances on the edge between reality and fiction, merging dreamlike escapes with real-life footage, mixing the narrative between what’s real and what’s imaginary. What is your intention behind creating these nearly surrealist visions?
J.K.: Drag itself explores that approach – the stage is a matrix for theatrics and authenticity. The entertainment of club life meets the raw queer expression. The merging is my take on camp sensibility – what’s visibly artificial meets the desperately authentic. If the viewer is given conflicting signals about what’s real and what’s not, they may end up laughing at the realest, saddest part. That’s my goal. My friends and I will often discuss the homophobia or transphobia that we experience and just “scream-laugh” at how stupid it is to go through. It is surreal to partake in queer discourse daily and then go out into the wilderness of real life to realise that none of this exists for regular people. So in the process of making my videos, I will usually offset a sad memory with an exaggerated delivery. I think you get a broader range of emotions this way.
The merging is my take on camp sensibility – what’s visibly artificial meets the desperately authentic. If the viewer is given conflicting signals about what’s real and what’s not, they may end up laughing at the realest, saddest part. That’s my goal.
A.S.: Would you say that through your practice you question or even provoke gender assumptions?
J.K.: Let me start with that I mainly strive for authenticity, especially as a queer person in a time when capitalist media portray us as harmless theatre kids spitting TikTok catchphrases. There’s an agenda to that and I feel very disconnected from the so-called corporate pride. Ever since I started doing drag I realised my lived experience will never be a part of the mainstream portrayals. As a person who wields a range of narrative skills and is allowed some sort of platform, I feel obligated to speak my truth and not censor myself. Although I do explore my identity beyond the binary gender, it’s not that I want to provoke people preferring to stay in the binary or shame them for feeling comfortable about playing the role society has assigned them. If a viewer feels a question arise inside of them, as they watch my works or drag performances, I think it’s more about them already having those questions beforehand. It’s up to them to explore their identity – not me – but if the exploration happens it’s a pleasant side-effect.
A.S.: What is the role of makeup and costume in the process of sparking a discussion of gender and identity in your practice?
J.K.: Makeup and costume are a way of self-creation, just like everyday appearance is. Some of us may not realise the latter, as we are being told that there are parts of self-expression that are natural to our gender and those which are not. The existence of drag allows for the expansion of the spectrum of what kind of expression is possible – drag works on exaggerations, contrasts, subversions, and such. It also gives a sense of agency to reimagine yourself from the ground up, without the arbitrary rules. The dynamic of identity is now reversed, your ‘true self’ no longer matters, what matters is the creation. But I also imagine gender as existing on a slider between 0 and 100 intensity. A classic drag artist will make you see what lies at the 1000 intensity point. But my own goal usually is to explore it the other way – below the 0 point. The drag collective that I mentioned before – House of Orzeczenie – specialises in a drag genre that borrows a lot from horror and trash aesthetics, getting rid of gender-identifiable characteristics, just like monsters, cryptids, and phantasms tend to exist beyond gender. We love not appearing human, but still humanoid – it’s a freeing experience.
A.S.: What was the last thing you saw, heard, or read that deeply influenced you?
J.K.: During my time animating ‘Performing Arts’, I listened a lot to Cass Elliot’s ‘Make Your Own Kind of Music’. Each time I finished a sequence and felt unsure about it, I had to sing the chorus. I love the sentimentality of cult pop songs, they are like basic truths about life you can always lean on. Even though I work with queer themes and experimental film all the time, I will sometimes need such reminders – don’t ask others for their approval, look for it in yourself. To be honest, I’m the kind of person who needs constant reassurance that experimental art is worthwhile, as it’s very much viewed as less. There’s also that David Bowie’s statement I try to work into my practice, that, as an artist, if you feel there’s ground under your feet, you have to push yourself further into the ocean, so that you explore something new and challenge yourself.
