Jan. 13; Mar. 20,
Rietveld’s Gym, from 10am—17pm
Group I, 10:00-13:00
Group II, 13:00-17:00
DRAGGING WARMLY!
Curated and hosted by Taka Taka
Hi, I am Taka Taka a drag thing, drag mother and dragtivist. I created a collective process of dragging to warm up our senses to feel our organs differently beyond our eyes' demands. The aim of this workshop is to reveal the act of dressing/undressing and masking/unmasking as an undeniable personal and social engagement by having fun while understanding its impact, the realities of a character and their production from fingernail to toenail. I will present performative exercises exploring character creation with tools I have developed from my camp-dragtivist educational practice. These tools are for our group's gaze and organs, not for photographic representation. I will also share anecdotes about my experience of being drag mothered by Jennifer Hopelezz and mothering my drag kids as a para-family constellation of mutual empowerment. Let's reorganize ourselves as a warmer individual and softer socially interconnected entity...
How can we relate to certain parts/subjects of society, in order to channel and experience the power and responsibility of getting attention through our altered public "dragged" image?
Panagiotis Panagiotakopoulos (GR), a.k.a Taka Taka, is the godmother of the drag House of Hopelezz, sister for others, mother of the drag king House of Løstbois, proud daughter of Jennifer Hopelezz and co-founder of the non-profit Drag King Academy Amsterdam. Taka Taka identifies as a dragtivist, educator, queer theorist and independent curator who produces performances as art director for the Amsterdam‘s sex positive underground night club, Church since 2013. They were trained as a professional make-up artist, studied Fine Arts at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie followed by Master in Arts at the Dutch Art Institute. Currently researching drag mothering as an artistic educational model together with DAS support PhD programme THIRD. Taka Taka sees drag as an amplified voice, whose purpose is to communicate, problematize and propose methods according to local conditions. They have shared their knowledge and methodologies for drag mothering, gendered character based practices and its intersections with HIV through interviews, lectures, essays and workshops with various Dutch and international art institutions and art academies. They collaborated annually with SOA/AIDS Nederland, Global Aids Village, and more A s well with their blood line mother Dimitra Panagiotakopoulou who is living in the Greek village Saravali and designing and knitting entire outfits for Taka's lectures and performances.
