Panagiotis Panagiotakopoulos
A hearing
The photograph was taken by Panagiotis after the workshop led by Shirlene concluded at Montréal Convention Centre, during the 24th International AIDS Conference, Canada.
What are the tools of non-drag collectives for societal mothering in the HIV response?
How do they use or not use personal stories in advocacy, and what do they do instead?
In August 2022, I contributed with a dragtivist lecture to the 24th International AIDS Conference in Montreal, Canada. The third day of the conference I participated in a workshop led by Shirlene Cooper, the initiator of the New York-based project Women’s Empowerment Art Therapy Group, which is part of Visual AIDS.
I was inspired by the ways Shirleene created space for creativity, serving as a tool to empower participants and fostering societal warmth among strangers. This environment allowed individuals to open up in an atmosphere that considered the various sociopolitical implications in which each subjectivity found itself.
In November of the same year, I was in New York to give a workshop. I met with Shirleene at her home in Brooklyn, and we had a two-hour recorded conversation, focusing on the questions mentioned above. I learned a lot, and I want to share the first hour as a collective listening activity for everyone present in the room. My intention is that this moment may serve as a learning experience, emphasizing the importance of the conceptual frame: End of violence, creation of joy.
https://visualaids.org/artists/shirlene-cooper
Bio
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. 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 as 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.