Doors open: 19:30
Start: 20:00
Entrance: € 9/6 (discount)
Many thanks to AfroVibes for facilitating Koleka Putuma's visit
How does one navigate the world when inhabiting an othered body? Are there spaces to be made within the collective violent positioning of the masses for the collective anger, resistance or care demanded by that othered body? The black body. The female body. The queer body.
Perdu has invited Koleka Putuma, Clarice Gargard and Naomie Pieter into a threefold constellation to address and share perspectives on the matter. Through a letter exchange these three voices interrogate how to embody rage, how to move through and resist the historically and structurally repressed mechanisms of anger in relation to the female, queer and black body. Each of their bodies operating in varying physical and cultural landscapes, the conversation inquires different and overlapping forms of fragility of those directly and indirectly confronted with this anger.
On October 9th, alongside a reading of Koleka Putuma’s work, the written exchange will be shared and extended into a moderated conversation between the three correspondents. The evening is a means to reinvigorate a much needed dialogue concerning the space made for the activated black female voice.
Award-winning poet and theatre practitioner Koleka Putuma has taken the South African literary scene by storm with her bestselling debut collection of poems Collective Amnesia. Since its publication in April 2017, the book is in its 7th print run and has been prescribed for study at tertiary level in South African Universities. Collective Amnesia was named 2017 Book of the Year by the City Press and one of the best books of 2017 by The Sunday Times and Quartz Africa. She is a 2018 Forbes Africa Under 30 Honoree. She was recently recognised as a Rising Star at the 2017 South African Mbokodo Awards. She is the recipient of the 2016 PEN South Africa Student Writing Prize. Recipient of the 2017 CASA playwrighting award. She has been named one of the young pioneers who took South Africa by storm in 2015 by The Sunday Times, one of 12 future shapers by Marie Claire SA, the groundbreaking new voice of South African poetry by OkayAfrica, one of 100 young people disrupting the status-quo in South Africa.
Naomie Pieter is an Afro-Dutch Caribbean performance artist, organizer, public speaker and choreographer. She is the co-founder of Black Queer & Trans Resistance NL, Black Queer Archives and the Amsterdam Pride of Color. Through her artwork Pieter examines the black female body, afro-spirituality, activism, and modern emancipation. Pieter advocates for pleasure activism within the BIPOC LGBTQIAP+ community, through her queer dancehall party Pon Di Pride. Pieter has recently been nominated for the ECHO Award 2018.
Clarice M.D. Gargard (1988) is an American-Liberian-Dutch journalist, columnist and programme maker. She has worked for and collaborated with varying broadcasting and print media in the Netherlands: BNNVARA, AT5, NTR, NRC, the Correspondent and some international, like Talk Radio 702 and Afropunk. In 2019 she will be representing the Netherlands as the UN Women’s Representative. She is specialized in politics and social topics relating to emancipation and equality. Gargard's work is centered around providing different narratives and perspectives from a philosophical and humanist point of view.