CANCELED: DAY 4: STUDIUM GENERALE RIETVELD ACADEMIE

People are the party’s pigment. Today I’ve invited people with whom I party. The spirits without alcohol. One body, no reproduction. A role beyond our authorship. A supporting role that some take too seriously and which becomes the movie itself.

Do you remember the film They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? On the poster was the tagline: People are the ultimate spectacle! The film centres on a winner-takes-all Depression-era dance marathon in which working class people dance until their feet bleed in the hopes of winning a $1,500 cash prize. So many parties can pull us apart. So much politics within a party.

Political parties do not throw a good party, they focus on rallies. Dionysus knew how to throw a party though he was not a drag queen and sadly always aimed at fertility. Political activism in combination with dragtivism- has a long history, a climactic moment being the Stonewall riots in New York that ushered in the gay rights movement. Those riots were led by drag and trans-activists Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson. Drag challenges gender norms, pushes understandings about sexuality and mothering, and is a megaphone for social impact.

Clubs are primarily party venues but can also be houses where queer folk, drag - queens, -kings and -things, transmen and transwomen, HIV positive friends, voguers, misfits, kinksters, the margins of the marginal, activists, doctors, mothers, students, and teachers come and party together. Partying for social X-change, where the party is maybe – hopefully – the vehicle to end violence and create joy.

How do we differentiate the difference? Today we share different infrastructures of our parties and their modes of production. A party where you can grow a fake or real moustache, a party where empowerment happens through donations for facial hair removal therapy, a party where intimacy is created by people wearing no pants, a party where art is afraid to party.

Starring: House of Hopelezz & Dynno Dada & Bustie La Tish-Belle Dommage, Jessica Whitbread, Drag King House of Løstbois & Lucian Squid & Latin X Charm & Silly Dick, Olympia Bukkakis, STAGE, The Kinder Guardians, Jennifer Hopelezz, DJ Arielle Freeman Hopelezz

ABOUT TAKA TAKA

Taka Taka identifies as a professional drag-thing who functions as art director for the House of Hopelezz. He organizes weekly queer parties at cruise Club Church and para-educational strategies for the marginal LGBTQI+ community, including political and gender asylum seekers, friends with the virus, misfits, and party monsters. Taka Taka is a sister for others, a mother of few, and the daughter of Jennifer Hopelezz. Taka Taka is a graduate of the Dutch Art Institute (2017) with a clear interest in Dragtivism as social practice. In 2019 they launched the non-profit Drag king Academy Amsterdam, which resulted in the creation of the first drag king house of Amsterdam, House of Løstbois.

ABOUT STUDIUM GENERALE 2019-2020

Studium Generale Rietveld 2019—2020 focuses on histories, politics, and perceptions of colour in the creation and understanding aesthetic forms, social structures, and embodied experiences. Colour structures our daily life and our actions, our relationships with others and the spaces in which we live. Within different historical and cultural contexts, however, colours have very different symbolic, psychological, material, and socio-political meanings. Relating (to) Colour wants to see colour in art, science, technology, and life beyond the purely symbolic and aesthetic and not as self-evident or universal, but as a physical, material, cultural, and political phenomenon. We try to understand colour not only as visual, sensual, or textual but especially as a lived experience and relational concept that creates affect and agency.

Guest curators: Stefano Harney, Patricia Pisters, Ola Hassanain & Casco Art Institute, Taka Taka.

More information and a detailed program online soon.

Website Relating (to) Colour: https://relatingtocolour.rietveldacademie.nl