Press Conference and Exhibition Opening

Press conference:

As the 2nd posters came out on the streets in many of the billboards, today was the official beginning of the campaign as a whole. I decided to walk to the conference from work to gather my thoughts and enjoy the amazingly mild weather. On my way I saw that the crew from Super Stacja (a new cable station) was filming some footage in preparation. This is a picture of them filming the "What are you staring at, dyke" poster which is right in front of the largest children's store (I can't believe they let us keep that one up!)

The conference itself was poorly attended. I suppose my theory that Giertych's statement will make the press interested in our case backfired since Giertych and the President had press conferences today so we couldn't compete. I was personally interviewed by TVP3, Super Stacja and radio Eska. But I haven't heard or seen any stories by them. The most enthusiastic was Al-Jazeera-Europe, who conducted a 20 min long interview with me for a series they're doing about the rise of the Right in Europe. We'll see how that story comes out.

The Shit Press We've Gotten: Not only were we barely written about in the online press or talked about in TV, but the stuff that is out there is complete shit! Two examples include one article , "Biedroń: poluj na pedała" from the general Polish website Wirtualna Polska that had this as their picture, first of all.

Second of all, probably more importantly, is the completely misleading and misrepresenting title which translates into "Biedron: hunt a fag". It refers to the fact that as part of our exhibition in which we wanted to show people different forms of homophobia, we also included a computer game that can be found on the Internet called Hunt Fags. Biedron (the leader of KPH) explained what our exhibition includes:the newspaper clippings, graffiti on the walls, visual news collages...etc. He mentioned the game ONCE as it's just one small element. Yet they had the audacity to title the article as if Biedron suggests that we should hunt fags.

Not much better was the article "Polowanie na pedała" ma promować tolerancję" from gazeta.pl (the online version of the most widely-read newspapers in PL). I have to remind you all that gazeta.pl is our MEDIA PATRON!!! Our freakin media patron. Yet THEY had the audacity to title their article "'Hunting fags' supposedly will increase tolerance". Not only is this again provoking the reader to think that we want them to 'hunt fags' in the name of tolerance, but the article text almost makes it seem like we came up with the game itself.

Anyway, the journalists approached us later and Daria and I had our few minutes to get whatever we wanted off our chests.

Exhibition Opening:

The opening of the exhibition at the Austrian Cultural Forum went really well.

Here, Lisette and I were greeting our distinguished guests, as they were treated, firstly, a wall of graffiti with slogans like the one behind Lisette which says "PRICKS".

The opening was well attended and was the people whom I spoke to found it very effective and well-done.