Public Displays of Affection

A public display of affection is a term meaning an act of physical intimacy performed in front of other people. As Piskorska points out: “One of the forms of expressing democracy is a public gathering, which allows people to communicate with one another in a special way and to give their opinions. Freedom of assembly is guaranteed by the constitution. In her work, Piskorska focusses on the physicality of the boundaries relating to the temporary legitimacy of a gathering, which determine the demarcation line between the participants and the police units used to protect mass gatherings. These police units, working in synch, are in constant intimate contact of one body with another; their integrity depends on the durability of the connections between them, which must be expressed in continuous movement, turn and action. But closeness and intimacy have a structure resulting strictly from the function of a police unit”. Thus, the artist also asks questions about the functioning of individuals and groups in the public realm, about the formation of individual and collective identities and their public transformations: “The boundary between the two sides, created only for a second, shifts and immediately disappears, only to be recreated elsewhere. In this single structure, the idea of the border, understood both as a place of meeting and separation, is concentrated”.