Theory — Mar 27, 2021

The afternoon Re-ORGANice our bodies! A day on AIDS / HIV and PrEP activism and their bicultural intersections through a lens of performative practises and dragtivism is hosted by Panagiotis Panagiotakopoulos, a.k.a TAKA TAKA.

Price
All lectures can be attended online via our website and the website of the Studium Generale Rietveld Academie.  Watch lecture
Location
Livestream vanuit Stedelijk Teijin Auditorium
Time
Mar 27, 2021, 1 pm until 4.30 pm
Main language
Engels

The Deed streets 

Streets are never dead. Maybe they're empty from time to time, but streets cannot die. Streets can be read as a diary for action by the oppressed, underrepresented, criminalized, but remarkably resilient different bodies - they that hold histories of these actions within them. How to reorganize y/our streets? 

For the social anarchist Gustav Landauer (1870 – 1919), a "propaganda of the deed" meant the creation of libertarian and social re/forms of community, that inspire to effectively transform society. If the capitalist state can be read as a condition, a certain relationship between human beings, a mode of human behavior; we can destroy it by contracting other relationships, simply by behaving differently.

Today brings together friends, whose emergencies have empowered me, who gave me wisdom and allowed me to reconsider my privilege and what to do with it. My dragmother, PrEP activist and sex positive night club owner Jennifer Hopelezz; AIDS/HIV activist and graphic designer Stefan Silvestri; and bicultural LGBTQIA+/Trans lobbyist-jurist, and sex work activist Dinah de Riquet-Bons will all share some of their knowledges, experiences, and methods of work(ing). Along with my drag kids, who I greatly miss, and this group of students that stick together to explore more and lesser grotesque forms of masquerades for social impact.

We hope you'll enjoy this broadcast, and when the streets are active again you may take a moment and think with us: How can we experience these streets differently? How can we utilize these streets as a platform, to transform their content for our bodies sake?

About Panagiotis Panagiotakopoulos, a.k.a TAKA TAKA

Panagiotis Panagiotakopoulos, a.k.a TAKA TAKA, was trained as a professional make-up artist, studied Fine Arts at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie followed by the MA ArtEZ at the Dutch Art Institute (DAI). Taka Taka identifies as a professional dragtivist and edu-curator who produces performances as art director for the Amsterdam cruise club Church. They see drag as an amplified voice, whose purpose is to communicate, problematize and propose methods according to local (Amsterdam) conditions. As the godmother of the House of Hopelezz, sister for others, mother of the drag king House of Løstbois and proud daughter of Jennifer Hopelezz, Taka Taka sees life through the lens of Dragtivism by producing weekly parties and para-educational strategies for the margins of the marginal LGBTQIA ++ community. Taka Taka is the co-founder of Drag King Academy Amsterdam and they have shared their knowledge and methodologies for gender-queer artistic practices and its intersections with HIV through collaborations with various institutes and collectives.