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Flashbacks, from AIDS to Corona
Jennifer Hopelezz, 15 April 2020

I know some people find it inappropriate or even insulting, but I see weird similarities
between these two pandemics and wonder what we can learn from forty years of fighting
HIV/AIDS.
There are spooky parallels to the early years of HIV. One of the most obvious is the finger-
pointing and stigmatizing. Back then it was the ‘gay plague’ caused by ‘irresponsible
promiscuous gays’ (that would be me), now the blame for the ‘Chinese virus’ is aimed at the
Chinese government and Asians in general.
Back then people could falsely reassure themselves that it was only affecting ‘disposable
populations’ like queers, intravenous drug users, sex workers, and people of colour. Now
the ‘disposables’ are the elderly, the obese and the disabled (and people of colour).
Then, as now, I remember the panic in emergency rooms, and whole wings of hospitals
being converted just for people with the virus. Gay saunas and sex venues in many
countries, like now, were shut down. (Bathhouses in New York and San Francisco, then
ground zero for HIV, actually never did re-open.)
The fears about transmission are back today. One tragic case I remember was the 1987
Oprah Winfrey interview of Mike Sisco, an HIV positive man from small town America who
caused an uproar after taking a dip in the local pool. That panic seems bizarre now but was
very real back then. The swimming pool was forced to close.
The rush today to introduce unproven treatments like the anti-malarial drug
hydroxychloroquine was just like the push to introduce the very first anti-hiv treatment AZT,
which was later shown to prolong life for about a year but was originally given in such high
doses that the toxicity caused a lot of long-term damage.
Some things though are almost funnily inverted. Precautions for sex in Corona times include
no kissing, washing hands and showering before and after sex. Having unprotected anal sex
has no risk for Corona. In other words, showers and hand sanitizers, not condoms and PrEP.
But some good came from this bad. Back in 1982 the first buddy projects were started, like
what we see now with groups forming to help others with shopping and errands, or just to
lend an ear.
Activist groups like ACT UP sprung up and forced government to listen to the community,
influenced policy, and led eventually to a stronger LGBTQ community. The Sisters of
Perpetual Indulgence, an ‘order of queer and trans nuns’ which was formed a few years
before the pandemic hit, organized the world's first AIDS fundraiser benefit.
Jack-off parties and safe sex parties appeared for the first time, and venues like Blow
Buddies in San Francisco opened where only sucking was allowed but fucking strictly
prohibited. Today people are getting inventive again with jack-off zoom parties, Instagram
strip shows, and homemade gloryholes.
Governments learned to work with the communities most affected, making sure that the
most vulnerable people had access to medical help. We all learned we had to fight the
stigma, prejudice, and discrimination as much as the virus itself.
One other thing we also learned – we will survive! To paraphrase Lady Bunny: ‘We got
through AIDS, the swine flu, the bird flu, and all those DJ live streamings – we got this
people!’

Stay safe and take care of each other!

Greek-Australian Jennifer Hopelezz (38) has lived in Amsterdam since 1990. She is the
founder of Pink Point, Drag Olympics, Superball & Streetheart Festival. She is currently part-
owner of Sauna Nieuwezijds & Club ChUrch, board member of GALA foundation, founding
member of activist group PrEPnu & Pride Amsterdam Ambassador. She is mother of more
than 50 children.

Bonus Life, 2020
Jessica Whitbread (Canada/Kyrgyzstan – 1980)
Fabric, sequins, thread
218 x 102 cm

I remember my best friend holding my hand and cracking inappropriate jokes while we waited for my test results. I remember my new lover cuddling me, telling me that it would be okay. I remember being told, ‘best case scenario, you will live to be forty years old’. I remember promising myself, ‘you can do anything in life that you want to do.’ I remember dividing my next twenty years in two, so I could take advantage of youth and desire before I was sick and discarded. I remember doing lots of drugs. I remember learning touch and intimacy all over again. I remember not knowing if I was going to hurt someone. I remember falling in love. Again. And again. And, now, again.

While I have long known that I wouldn’t die of HIV-related complications per se, it does not negate the fact that I spent all of my twenties planning for the end. When you spend a decade strategizing and filling your life with as many experiences as possible, feeling that time is limited, it changes your understanding of the world, of timelines and aging. Now, turning forty, entering what I call my bonus life, I find myself having to consider a future that was never planned for, assumed by some to never be mine.

The banner is a reflection of my relationship with time and feeling alive. It is a loud declaration of my ongoing existence, spelled out in black and white, book-ended by pink triangles (an enduring sign of queer survival) and supported above and below by oceanic panels of gold, each sequin a memory, or a person I am indebted to.

I write this as COVID-19 continues to unfold. The timing does not escape me. Some things about the new pandemic feel the same as the old: the shame, stigma, blame, policing of bodies, and the use of language… ‘It’s okay, I know where they have been.’

While I do not want to die, reflecting on my own mortality, planning for my death, and my bonus life, gives me a unique perspective. I sit in front of my banner, growing more comfortable in my awareness that one day – when it is time – this body of mine will cease being, but the art that I make, the activism I am a part of, and the relationships I nurture with my friends, lovers, children, and communities will endure. My bonus life is now, yours, and forever.

Enjoy.

Bonus Life was made in honour of the nightlife, taking risks, the celebration of different bodies, and feminist practices that have brought me here. It also marks seventeen years of hosting my own personal, queer, utopia, No Pants No Problem – a space created to navigate my understanding of gender, sexuality, and desire in relation to HIV. Throughout the year I will continue to work on this piece. As I spend time thinking and writing about the people who most influenced the last twenty years of my life, from old lovers and former roommates, to others that I randomly crossed paths with along the way, I’ll also stitch their names into the piece.

PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST DYNNO DADA AFTER A HARD NIGHT GAMBLING 2020. (Gerrit Rietveld Academie, BA Fine Arts, 2018.) Photo: Henry W. Laurisch

"Video Contribution for our Hotglue By Dynno Dada who was supposed to performed live at Relating (to) Colour"

A video speech from the archive of Taka Taka which took place at Pride Amsterdam 2015.
Not much has changed from that point except this year Pride was cancelled due to Covid-19.
Nevertheless, our rights should not be forgotten!

Lucian Squid was excited to perform at the Studium Generale cancelled event, this is their Hotglue contribution. (MFA, Sandberg Institute 2004)

Can’t be løst in a pack.

Had it always been there, I wondered for a while ? Pacing up and down, checking the fences for exits, had been my daily routine for as long as I can remember. I’m sure it wasn’t there, this opening. Will I even fit through ? Doubt froze me for minutes. Then I forced myself, as fast as I could through the breach, ripping my skin, maybe afraid I would change my mind.
Once free, I started running, almost right away out of breath, but kept speeding. The cold wind in my fur, my heart pounding, my feet sore. Finally I had to stop. Gasping for air and overwhelmed by sounds and smell, hiding seemed the only option. Where was I ? Would I be able to find my way back ?

When my eyes slowly adjusted to the bright lights, I noticed I wasn’t alone. Cautious I measured the others. They all seemed just as disoriented as me. Curiosity won from fear. Slowly approaching them I felt my confidence growing. And something else, something new, I couldn’t quite grasp. Most of us still showing traces of our history. There was no need to become territorial, we mutually understood we belonged together. A familiar soothing scent.

We began exploring the area carefully clinging together. Taking shelter in an old church. It was populated by a herd, bigger and stronger than us. But they seemed to be too occupied with their mating rituals to even notice us strolling on their hunting grounds. We felt safe.

My muscles were aching, and I hadn’t slept for a long time, but felt wide awake and alive.
Hungry for more, like having tasted blood for the first time, now everything was a possible prey, seducing me. I felt taller, as if this body was new to me.
I began to own this new body, shaking up my fur. Trying the different sounds I could produce, romping with the others, playfully biting their tails.

Now I am restless by nature. At night scratching the concrete walls trying to stretch our grounds, Aware of each little sound, deciphering its nature. I am still puzzled by the bliss when I let my guard down to snooze with the others. This is my pack, where fur, scales and feathers curl up.
We are freer each day. Roaming the streets, we cause commotion by our presence alone. We proudly urinate on the marks of the alphas. Growling and moaning for others to follow. We gnaw at fences, kick against closed doors. Or just peacefully claim our spot in the sunlight, licking each others wounds. This is my pack.

*The text was generated for Bill Please's Collection of drag memoirs for the House of Løstbois.

Hoi beautiful people,

In my mind I've been quite absent since the last couple of weeks about the project which got me wondering about the notion of being absent or let's say not active.

I'm always a person that feels that activity equals activating. Once I'm doing something, things start to roll, the dice of uncertainty starts to tumble and the game starts to play.
For me a goal is something I like to work towards. Don't get me wrong, a goal is not set in date or in a common ''reachable" sense. For me it's more about what I set my eyes on.
This process of the workshop evolving in something that's for me even greater than I thought the initial project would arise, has been actively passing through my minds in on a regular basis. The need that I have to talk about activation or being absent has been somehow quite important to me.
Normally I write and rewrite and write and rewrite and rewrite in order to create a more coherent sense of my thoughts and in order to shape the way I look at things so people easily (or not so much) can understand what I am talking about. But now I feel the need to just write down my train of thoughts.

I can not stretch more the fact on how grateful I am on being part of this project. This really simple yet complicated thing on an individual level of creating a character, discovering your character and recreating your character has grown out to become a more collective thing. And that's what queering is all about.
This evening I had a talk with a friend that was struggling about finding her place whilst being active in this hyper social society of clubbing, net working, socializing and events. They were not sure about how to profile themselves as a product yet as a friend or someone who has built up an emotional connection whilst taking a part of the creative scene (in a very broad sense: being an artist or designer is not the only thing that makes you creative (please take a note)). I told her about my own experiences. You know, I love to talk. I love to talk about my own experiences and my own findings. But not in a centric way. I think it's stupid to talk about someone else's train of thoughts with a third eye whilst you cannot and absolutely cannot look into someone's mind. So for me relating my own experiences and also reflecting onto other peoples stories and relating that to my stories are important to relate to other people's stories. I don't want to share my personal point of view to get my point across; I share my personal point of view to reflect on other people's way of thinking. In other words, sharing my stories and experiences function as a way of understanding other people's views. It's an exchange in which my life is submissive to someone else's story. It just functions as a tool.
I have been lost and have been searching for a way to comprehend the social aspect of life. My life is all about exchange between people and interactions with people. And in a broader sense, speaking from my point of view of course, that is what the creative ( and non creative but I won't go into that because that will cause me to write another hour long email) scene is about.
Our community, our interactions and all the people we interact or accidentally interact with are based on exchange. I don't mind talking about money as an exchange - which is often looked as something that fits into our current non anarchistic society - as much as talking about ideas as an exchange. What is important for me is to understand what exchange is. Exchange should be fruitful for both parties. Sometimes it's less fruitful for one party, but as long as it's fruitful. Because being fruity is being juicy and being juicy is exchanging.

I realised interaction with people and working with people and being respectful towards their capacities are 100% my way of working. You can be selfish, please be selfish, that's important. But don't forget the people around you.
For my final assessment at Rietveld I'm working with 5 people together, exchanging their abilities in money and other (things), because that's what they deserve.

Anyways thinking about this project as ''together''. It made me think of us together. Or just together. This project is going towards queering a space. For me queering does not necessarily mean to break the norms of what we think is normal. It is about taking up space, approaching things in which we think we can grasp on to but most importantly doing it together. Maybe in a direct sense, maybe in an indirect sense. But queering a space is taking up space. And taking up space is being the greatest.
Try to achieve the greatest. Like me, feeling I am being absent in this project is being the greatest. I needed time to think about this project and how to approach this project. Getting to know the people in this project whilst actually knowing little about all of you. But I got to know you by exchanging. Talking, having conversations and again talking. It's an ongoing exchange and that makes me exciting. It brings out the greatest.
Please don't feel like you're not doing enough with this project or doing too much, being not involved or being as involved as you want. Because it is a project with no end but with a goal. The fact that we are busy with recreating a space is the greatest. And please don't forget that what you're doing right now is reproaching what we now in the long run. Don't frame yourself into being absent or inactive or being active and interactive. Think about your capacity that you have to exchange.

Very long email about thought it was nice to think about these notions and how to approach yourself as the greatest.

Love,
Yorick

Email to our core Hotglue group by Papa Yorick who reflects on our need for this space! Fashion Department 1st year 2020.

Video contribution by our external advisor to our workshop Arthur Guileminot (BA Design Lab, 2017 Gerrit Rietveld Academie)

Photographic representation from the performance of Mingrui Jiang - Foundation Year which was originally made for the public presentation of Studium Generale Gerrit Rietveld Academie.

Screen shot as contribution to our Hotglue from our invited guest teacher Xenia Perek,
Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Fine Arts 2018.

I woke up on a cold winter morning. I threw the blankets off my warm body and went to the bathroom. The freezing air embodied me. While I rested my arms on the sink, I watched myself in the mirror. My face represented the maybe too-long sleep I had had. Staring at my softly muscled arms, my eyes went down my body and observed my chest, the small dark hairs, my eyes went down.
I turned on the tap and formed a small bowl with my hands, slowly sinking my face into the cold water. When was the last time I gave a blow job and was there a chance of doing it again that night or did I have other plans? I stepped under the shower. that felt like fire steaming down my body that had been frozen for too-long. When I stepped out of it, minutes later, it was me who was steaming and freezing again when I entered my bedroom, allowing my scars to turn from healthy red to questionable blue. I always loved cold winter mornings more then warm summer mornings that make me wake up sweating like crazy not knowing wether it is my sweat or not because the whole city is sweating gushing bumping into each other. No I wanted that cold winter morning and I wanted it long and I wanted it that night and I wanted that dark to make me sweat for the right reasons. and I wanted to blow off steam with you or with him or actually yes with you, but first I had to check if I had other plans that night.
Piss me over define my territory
A higher goal, get me there
They are all objects, subjects in my big big self-reflection I won’t be your fallen ego,
surprised as I wish I had been by your suggestion
Clear my territory out,
away from it all,
overcome me flood me over to a parallel being
Piss flood drown me over
to get me there,
that higher goal
My ultimate self-connection
They are all just tools
Wet road, your suggestion
Your body I can remember well, muscled but soften out Your face I probably never have known
Insignificant
Insignificant to my higher goal
It is all mine
A soaked hurricane just overloaded
inside out up and down, me,
it is all mine,
the higher goal they are bringing me there,
wet road
It is all me,
restless ego,
a higher being

I need you to fuck me fuck you
Make love to me make love to you?
But then she looked at me I looked at her
It was only minutes later,
I love the silence love need the silence sometimes, that she asked me how I was doing Everybody around us was
talking
laughing
watching each other
Her question sounded so honest,
but then I want him to fuck me fuck him
I need him to not look at me not talk to me
just let me give attention
It was then when he kissed me, when it all happened,
and it was then when it was solely able to happen Minutes later,
I love the silence of your tongue
really not in my mouth,
and then you fucked me fuck you,
and then you kissed me
and then you kissed me kiss you
Fuck me fuck you while we overthrow the world solely not circling around you solely circling around me
Fuck me fuck you while being in that dark that left me wondering
the first time without any questions
Fuck me fuck you
and I won’t leave me there,
not in total at least
A part of me will always stay there
in that dark that lovely dark
that keeps my mind at ease
Don’t let me stay there
while you fuck me fuck you
my mouth filled
with questions not so much applied to you
It was only minutes later,
I love that silence just as much
as that dark filled with me being fucked him a bit too loud
Let me step aside,
rephrase this all
Let me let you fuck me fuck you
How are you doing?
It is too full my mouth filled with you
not really here with me
It was only minutes later
They kept

talking
laughing
watching
each other
But I solely thought of kiss me kiss you
I love that silence
I love it when you rephrase all
that I told you
Fuck me fuck him
But please step a side now
I need that dark purely filled with me a thousand times me
kissing me kissing you
I love that dark more
then I love you

*The following text was the curatorial statement by Taka Taka for our public presentation with
Studium Generale at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam on 28th March 2020.
Relating Colour to Partying: How Do We Party Each Other?

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
reproduction. Political activism in combination with drag and/or- 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 –
hopeful – the vehicle to end violence and create joy.
How do we differentiate the difference? Today we will 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.

Julius Stahlie contribution for Studium Generale - Textile department 3rd year, Gerrit Riteveld Academie.

A portrait of Sasa Hara for our Hotglue, who was a guest tutor at our workshop and taught
us how to move like animals.

Portrait contribution for our Hotglue by the Drag King from the House of Løstbois and documentary photographer Bill Please / Stacey Yates

From the archive of the House of Hopelezz, a video contribution for our Hotglue. A camp
history lesson on the Sexual Revolution.

GiGi Mirrors is the revival and revenge of every girl that has ever been 14 years old in Stockholm in the early 2000s. A reclamation of the “fjortis” subculture. She was supposed to sing karaoke to Gigi D’Agostino’s L’Amour Toujours at the Stedelijk the 28th of March. This is her performance translated into a mashup music video. (By Ingeborg Kraft Fermin, Fine Arts 1st Year Gerrit Rietveld Academie).

Our invited geust : LatinX Charm and his contribution for Hotglue instead of the planned performance at Stedelijk Museum 28th of March.

Since day one it became a breathing space for me that I was not aware I was in need of. An open place for everybody, which has room to experiment upon your own goals or ideas. I felt connected and I felt understood in another way than from my day-to-day peers.

Creating and playing with my character LatinX Charm made me grow personally and as an entertainer - two important things for me. New connections were made and we all contributed to different aspects of drag king and getting a house-feeling. Another home.
It was a new energy and inspiration which I could bring into my personal daily life as well.

Realness drag king was a quite natural step for me. To be out in drag was also not a big thing since I felt very much comfortable in my drag look. Of course I wanted to improve my makeup, movements and my character, especially for performances, but I felt absolutely hot with my extra beard and the added contouring.

I started to accept the fact that I felt proud of being more masculine, which of course has always been there, but drag let you get a visual change with the extra features which makes your personality extra out and proud. At least for me.

I am now officially a transgender person who still likes to be a drag king and experiment with peoples perception on gender, drag, and masculinity vs. femininity.

LatinX Charm
Member of House of Løstbois

*The text was generated for Bill Please's Collection of drag memoirs for the House of Løstbois.