Vampires, It’s Nothing To Laugh At, video, 36min, 2023
In the 1960s, an anthropologist thinks he has discovered the existence of a vampire woman in a Kashub community in Wilno, Ontario. Kinga Michalska returns to the village still recovering from the trauma of this coverage, using a skillful blend of archival footage and performance to question the relationship between lived reality and scientific "truth".
The film is a critical reflection on how we tell stories of others and asks who is the real vampire - the scientist, the audience, the tourists, the community or the filmmaker themself?
Screening history
2023 Visions du Réel, International Film Festival, International Medium Length Film Competition - Honorable Mention, Nyon, Switzerland (World Premiere)
2024 InScience Film Festival, Nijmegen, Netherlands
2023 Short Waves Film Festival, International Competition, Poznan, Poland
2023 Festival De Nouveau Cinéma, National Short Film Competition, Montréal, Canada
2023 DMZ DOCS International Documentary Film Festival, Goyang-si, South Korea
2023 30_____70 DOC FEST, Lago, Italy
2023 Muzeum Piśmiennictwa i Muzyki Kaszubsko-Pomorskiej w Wejherowie, Kaszubskie Wampiry, Kaszëbë
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In the 1960s, an anthropologist thinks he has discovered the existence of a vampire woman in a Kashub community in Wilno, Ontario. Kinga Michalska returns to the village still recovering from the trauma of this coverage, using a skillful blend of archival footage and performance to question the relationship between lived reality and scientific "truth".
The film is a critical reflection on how we tell stories of others and asks who is the real vampire - the scientist, the audience, the tourists, the community or the filmmaker themself?
Screening history
2023 Visions du Réel, International Film Festival, International Medium Length Film Competition - Honorable Mention, Nyon, Switzerland (World Premiere)
2024 InScience Film Festival, Nijmegen, Netherlands
2023 Short Waves Film Festival, International Competition, Poznan, Poland
2023 Festival De Nouveau Cinéma, National Short Film Competition, Montréal, Canada
2023 DMZ DOCS International Documentary Film Festival, Goyang-si, South Korea
2023 30_____70 DOC FEST, Lago, Italy
2023 Muzeum Piśmiennictwa i Muzyki Kaszubsko-Pomorskiej w Wejherowie, Kaszubskie Wampiry, Kaszëbë
Upiór and Guests
This 3-channel installation uses the figure of a Slavic vampire as a metaphor for migrant identity and otherness. The work explores the notions of truth and fiction by examining various tools and systems of power that seem to allow us to distinguish one from the other. The piece explores issues of colonialism, academic classism and ethics of representation. It tells a story of losing one’s identity and reinventing oneself anew.
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Discomfort of Evening, installation view, Zachęta National Gallery, curated by Magdalena Komornicka, Warsaw 2022, photo by Hanna Linkowska.
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Discomfort of Evening, installation view, Zachęta National Gallery, curated by Magdalena Komornicka, Warsaw 2022, photo by Tytus Szabelski.
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Discomfort of Evening, installation view, Zachęta National Gallery, curated by Magdalena Komornicka, Warsaw 2022, photo by Hanna Linkowska.
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Discomfort of Evening, installation view, Zachęta National Gallery, curated by Magdalena Komornicka, Warsaw 2022, photo by Hanna Linkowska.
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Installation View, Have You Ever Seen a Ghost?, DMZ DOCS Festival, Korea.
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Installation view, Upiór and Guests, Bande Video, Quebec, 2023.
This 3-channel installation uses the figure of a Slavic vampire as a metaphor for migrant identity and otherness. The work explores the notions of truth and fiction by examining various tools and systems of power that seem to allow us to distinguish one from the other. The piece explores issues of colonialism, academic classism and ethics of representation. It tells a story of losing one’s identity and reinventing oneself anew.
Discomfort of Evening, installation view, Zachęta National Gallery, curated by Magdalena Komornicka, Warsaw 2022, photo by Hanna Linkowska.
Discomfort of Evening, installation view, Zachęta National Gallery, curated by Magdalena Komornicka, Warsaw 2022, photo by Tytus Szabelski.
Discomfort of Evening, installation view, Zachęta National Gallery, curated by Magdalena Komornicka, Warsaw 2022, photo by Hanna Linkowska.
Discomfort of Evening, installation view, Zachęta National Gallery, curated by Magdalena Komornicka, Warsaw 2022, photo by Hanna Linkowska.
Installation View, Have You Ever Seen a Ghost?, DMZ DOCS Festival, Korea.
Installation view, Upiór and Guests, Bande Video, Quebec, 2023.Diary
2013-now
Montreal
I started this series 10 years ago when I first arrived in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal. Having left Poland in part due to the climate of censorship of queerness, I intuitively started documenting my life. Photography has been my tool for facilitating connections as I coutinue to cultivate queer community. A collection of video portraits and intimate photographs and writings, Diary is a queer meditation on home, love, and kinship. This work has been shown in gallery settings in Montreal, London, Warsaw, Kraków, and Poznań. In 2021, the series received an honorable mention at the TIFF Open competition at the Polish Photography Festival.
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Installation view “Poganki”, curated by Agnieszka Rayzacher, lokal_30, Warsaw 2021, phot. Marcin Liminowicz.
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Installation view “Poganki”, curated by Agnieszka Rayzacher, lokal_30, Warsaw 2021, phot. Marcin Liminowicz.
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Installation view “Poganki”, curated by Agnieszka Rayzacher, lokal_30, Warsaw 2021, phot. Marcin Liminowicz.
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Installation view, Queer Gaze from Poland:
Portrait of Love and Desire, curated by Grażyna Siedlecka, Bermondsay
Project Space, London, UK
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Winnie, Gen and Bean
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10 Pine
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Sarah, Bear, Bunny, Small Phoque, Big Phoque and Bat.
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Be and Lee
2013-now
Montreal
I started this series 10 years ago when I first arrived in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal. Having left Poland in part due to the climate of censorship of queerness, I intuitively started documenting my life. Photography has been my tool for facilitating connections as I coutinue to cultivate queer community. A collection of video portraits and intimate photographs and writings, Diary is a queer meditation on home, love, and kinship. This work has been shown in gallery settings in Montreal, London, Warsaw, Kraków, and Poznań. In 2021, the series received an honorable mention at the TIFF Open competition at the Polish Photography Festival.
Installation view “Poganki”, curated by Agnieszka Rayzacher, lokal_30, Warsaw 2021, phot. Marcin Liminowicz.
Installation view “Poganki”, curated by Agnieszka Rayzacher, lokal_30, Warsaw 2021, phot. Marcin Liminowicz.
Installation view “Poganki”, curated by Agnieszka Rayzacher, lokal_30, Warsaw 2021, phot. Marcin Liminowicz.
Installation view, Queer Gaze from Poland:
Portrait of Love and Desire, curated by Grażyna Siedlecka, Bermondsay
Project Space, London, UK
Winnie, Gen and Bean
10 Pine
Sarah, Bear, Bunny, Small Phoque, Big Phoque and Bat. 
Be and Lee
Navid
Carmen
Guy and Jamaal
Sarah’s ferns
Crystal’s wig
Moe
Andy
Eliane’s bananas
George, Pomona and Rose
Candi
Alice, Navid and Nima
Sarah Mo
Kinga
Parents
Naomi and Kai
Jordan Brown
Lactatia and Crystal
Vanja
Jamaal
Winnie
E.
Kai and Naomi
10 Pine
Lari
Installation view “The Kitchen”, curated by Polana Institute, The
Clay, Warsaw Gallery Weekend, Warsaw 2020
Installation view, MFA Open Studios 2018
Installation view, MFA Open Studios 20182019
During my residency at the Gay Archives of Quebec in 2019, I came across a press clipping of an add announcing the upcoming release of “Efebos: The First Polish Magazine of Male Nudes (1991)”. When I was in Poland, I searched for that magazine in Lambda Warsaw Gay Archives. I found more of the same adds, but I was sad to realise that regardless of multiple enthusiastic announcements of it's imminent release, the magazine never actually came out. Having learned this, I decided to make an issue of this magazine myself, as a tribute to all the great queer DIY activist initiatives that failed - the art projects that were abandoned and collectives that fell apart before their first action. The result is a work of speculative fiction - a utopian erotic magazine focused on representing some of those whose absance hounts the queer archives: lesbians, bisexual women, trans and non-binary folks. For this reason I renamed it “Efebia”. I did an open call for photo submissions and for participants in an erotic shoot. I received 1 photo series and 6 model submissions. I rented a room at the legendary hotel Czarny Kot in Warsaw. We shot all day and made friends. I placed one copy of the magazine in Warsaw Gay Archives in the 90s section.
Installation view, Tender Debauchery, cutated by Agnieszka Razjacher, lokal_30, Warsaw, Poland, 2023.
Installation view, Tender Debauchery, cutated by Agnieszka Razjacher, lokal_30, Warsaw, Poland, 2023.
Installation view, Tender Debauchery, cutated by Agnieszka Razjacher, lokal_30, Warsaw, Poland, 2023.
Installation view, Tender Debauchery, cutated by Agnieszka Razjacher, lokal_30, Warsaw, Poland, 2023.
Cover image featuring Sonia Milch.
Archival photograph featured in the magazine.
Installation view, La présence de l’absence - Absence is Present, curated by
Virginie Jourdain, Veronique Boilard, Never Apart, Montreal, Qc, 2019.Kinga Michalska (they/them)
kingamichalska@yahoo.com
ig @kinga.mi.666
All rights reserved Kinga Michalska
I’m a Polish queer visual artist and filmmaker based in Tiohtiá:ke, Mooniyang, Montreal. I use mediums of photography, film and video installation to examine shared cultural spaces such as home, kinship, land, memory and hauntings through a queer feminist sensibility. I am interested in the periphery of what and who makes history: queer intimacies, amateur historians, geological processes, personal archives, oral history and speculative fictions. My work is collaborative and rooted in informed consent with the participants. As questions of relations of power are at the core of my work, I am committed to questioning my own position within stories I tell and communities I represent in my work.
I hold an MFA in Photography from Concordia University and a BA in Cultural Studies from the University of Warsaw. Over the last four years my work has been presented in Canada, Poland, Korea, UK, Switzerland, Italy, Netherlands and Germany. My research has been generously supported by Catapult Film Fund, CALQ, Canada Arts Council, Claims Conference Fund and Telefilm Canada. I am currently directing my first feature documentary Nolandia produced by Catbird Productions.
I hold an MFA in Photography from Concordia University and a BA in Cultural Studies from the University of Warsaw. Over the last four years my work has been presented in Canada, Poland, Korea, UK, Switzerland, Italy, Netherlands and Germany. My research has been generously supported by Catapult Film Fund, CALQ, Canada Arts Council, Claims Conference Fund and Telefilm Canada. I am currently directing my first feature documentary Nolandia produced by Catbird Productions.