SLUT WALK: RED LIGHT BANGZ – GRAND FINALE AT OUDEKERKSPLEIN
17:30* – Slut Walk
Calling all sluts! We’re taking to the streets to make the Red Light sexy once more. The municipality cannot take our windows, our livelihoods, nor our sexiness from us! We refuse a future where our communities are erased in the name of stigma & gentrification! Bring your banners, your lingerie, your leather, & your lace as we remind the city that the Red Light belongs to the people who live, work, organize, and thrive here. Our windows are our resistance. Sluts to the front!
*Gather @ 17:30
Start walking @ 18:00
Reach Oudekerk @ 18:30
18:30 – Swampsterdam Drags (where is the red light)
Sinking is immersing themselves deeper into this swamp called Amsterdam. It’s becoming problematic. Sinking does not discover the swamp alone, it is done together, their friends, Trash Queen and FIFA-friend (more drags and clowns t.b.a.) will help them but hopefully also YOU will RISE UP OUT OF THE STINKy sticky swampsterdam. Some will happilly join Sinking on their path (deeper and deeper into the murky depths), others might protest (?!_) Sinking & Friends will be reflecting on the Oudekerksplein on who we all are and can be together. Expect to become a part/help with this interactive performance/protest Come in drag if you want; the category is: Tourist
19:00 – Chyra
Giving the audience the time of their lives.
19:10 – Poppy Seeds
How do we reconcile our need for ritual with our modern means of (re)production? Poppy seeds is an intimate performance for 30-40 people which explores the complex intersection of ancient folklore, modern technology, and the female body’s relationship with nature. The setting takes place around a white sheet placed on the floor with cushions and chairs arranged in a circle around it. Throughout history, poppy seeds have been widely used for a variety of purposes. Used in rituals, recipes and traditional herbal medicine, poppy seeds are a symbol of death, dreams, visions, sleep, and pain relief. Three female performers, clothed in white lace, attempt to leave their imprint—traces of gender, life, motherhood, death and care—onto a white sheet. The central action is the collective preparation of poppy seed milk, a process that becomes the trigger for a deeper, shared experience with the audience.
19:40 – Strip Theatre
Theatre etiquette is ill advised. The sluts have come to play and you are the toys. Enter our stripper theatre and indulge in the various plays we have for you. We’ve got campy musical reinterpretations from Death Becomes Her, Cabaret, Burlesque, or Sweet Charity. We’ve got “puppet shows” pulling your heart strings and your belt buckles at the same time. And finally, we’ve got strippers at the ready to offer lapdances.
19:50 – Cranky Queer / Red Flag
JD aka The Cranky Queer is a chronically ill and disabled trans Sex God who brings liberatory blessings through storytelling and ritual. This collectively-enacted ritual honors: – Queer and trans ancestors (centering those who have died of HIV/AIDS, COVID-19 and Long COVID) – Sexuality and kink as survival practices – The vulnerability and power of disabled embodiment It opens with a reading from “Sick Fucks and Love Bombs,” a radical and explicit memoir written by a chronically ill and disabled Sex God Dom who knows disabled people’s sexuality is sacred, chronically ill bodies are wise, and power play and pleasure are forms of healthcare that nonetheless do not exempt the state from responsibility. It describes the intense power-exchange relationship between a sick God and his chronically ill acolyte, a site of healing and sacred practice. When the acolyte collapses during sex and is diagnosed with advanced HIV disease, his God navigates his worshipper’s experience of healthcare failure, possible death, and spiritual transformation. The work demonstrates that disabled sexuality, power play, and pleasure are not frivolous but essential resistance: survival strategies, spiritual practices, and refusals of tragic narratives in times of autocratic repression and ongoing pandemics. This performance combines an explicit reading with embodied ritual to argue that in times of pandemics, connection is survival. It foregrounds what institutional culture teaches us to hide: explicit sexual power, vulnerability, the erotic as spiritual practice, the sacred dimensions of queer kinship, the power of disability and impairment. The ritual includes: – Invocation of queer and disabled ancestors – Collective naming/witnessing of people/communities lost or cast aside from HIV/AIDS, Long COVID, healthcare abandonment – Embodied gesture and movement that honors sexuality and survival – Exchange of offerings (written commitments to pleasure, care, resistance) – Optional blessing by a chronically ill and disabled trans Sex God The ritual is designed to be accessible (standing, sitting, video partipation or non-participation all welcome) and to create space for collective healing and resistance. This work engages the history of AIDS activism and its ongoing legacies. It centers disability justice. It refuses shame, tragedy narratives, and the desexualization of sick and disabled people. It is dedicated to Cecilia Gentili, Marco Castro-Bojorquez, Kiara St. James and Ross Thomas.