How can memories be narrated and staged without perpetuating the normative categories of gender, body and identity? How can the construction of one’s own biography be critically called into question and reinforced by queer narrative modes? Based on biographical experiences, Tobias Malcharzik deals with strategies of queering memory and narration cultures in his artistic work. His solo performance “Comeback” turns the reconstruction of a drag performance in the gym of an elementary school into a symbol of a queer childhood memory between fiction and reality. In a research project, Tobias uses the term “Paskudnik” to look back at his own family history and detect queer discourses. Fifty years on, Tobias traces the migration route of his family back to the Upper Silesian village of Maków to conjure “Paskudnik” as a memory-political and post-migrant drag figure. And in the current zine project “Zweitausend Kilometer pro Stunde auf der falschen Spur,” Tobias marks the twentieth anniversary of the Russian band t. A.T.u., dealing with songs such as “Nas Ne Dogonyat” and “All the Things She Said” and their identification offer between pop culture, queerness and post-East.

Using these and further works as examples, Aron Woldamlak talks with Tobias Malcharzik about the queer potentials lying in individual and collective memories and the artistic strategies with which they can be brought to light and explored.