Walking in the streets of Lavapiés, Madrid: you read the writing on the walls and smile: in violet aerosol, stencil and handstyle: direct and on your face jumping out of the gray: the refreshing street work by AFP (Asociación Feminista Panteras / Panteras Feminist Asociation):
“Femininity and masculinity: two axes of massive indoctrination.”
You get close to the wall and take some steps back: you take out the camera. Let’s consider an idea by Beatriz Preciado: “I think that gender itself is violence, that the masculine and feminine norms, as we know them, produce violence” (2010).
“May 17th: Day Against Homophobia”
“We are friends, we eat our pussies.”
On the one hand, and obviously, the series by AFP announced the upcoming International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia. Let’s remember: On May 17, 1990, the General Assembly of the World Health Organization removed homosexuality from the international classification of diseases. The Day was created in 2004 to coordinate different campaigns worldwide to denounce forms of discrimination against LGTB people and to draw the attention of the public, policy makers, and the media to the intolerable situation still faced by people who do not conform to normative gender and sexuality. On the other hand, this series of graffiti and stencils by the members of AFP propose a re-positioning on the face of the violence of heteronormativity. In the interview “Friendship as a Way of Life,” Michel Foucault observed lucidly: “I think that [affection, tenderness, friendship, fidelity, camaraderie, and companionship] is what makes homosexuality ‘disturbing’: the homosexual mode of life, much more than the sexual act itself. To imagine a sexual act that doesn’t conform to law or nature is not what disturbs people. But that individuals are beginning to love one another–there’s the problem. […] These relations short-circuit [institutional relations] and introduce love where there’s supposed to be only law, rule, or habit” (1981). In violet aerosol, stencil and handstyle: direct and on your face jumping out of they gray walls of Madrid: the refreshing street work by the members of AFP: pointing to the development of new ways of living together: of desiring and constructing, collectively, other sociabilities.
“Lesbianize yourself.”
Lavapiés, 15 May, 2015.
