"Sisters Club"
Keywords: female body, body image, standard of beauty, body positivity, sexualization, rape, sexism, gender-based violence, cult of virginity, feminist pornography, female desire, radical intimacy, women empowerment, self-confidence, self-care, self-love
Anna Ádám is a choreographer, artist, and activist from Hungary, founder of the “School of Disobedience”. Tinu Verghis is an artist, farmer, and activist from India, founder of “The Art Farm” in Goa. Mixing community art, education, and women empowerment, the “School of Disobedience” and “The Art Farm” were both created in response to local, specific, and urgent socio-political contexts, in which sexism, rape, and gender-based violence are part of everyday life.
Building on their field experiences, knowledge and tools on empowerment methods, sustainable community building- and organizing practices, Anna Ádám and Tinu Verghis propose to hold a series of workshops for women under the name of “Sisters Club” to break together the silence on rape, sexual abuse, and harrasment. During the workshops participants will be invited to liberate their body and voice, focus on their intimate life and wellbeing, and approach their desires and sexuality with more awareness, respect, and love.
Building on their field experiences, knowledge and tools on empowerment methods, sustainable community building- and organizing practices, Anna Ádám and Tinu Verghis propose to hold a series of workshops for women under the name of “Sisters Club” to break together the silence on rape, sexual abuse, and harrasment. During the workshops participants will be invited to liberate their body and voice, focus on their intimate life and wellbeing, and approach their desires and sexuality with more awareness, respect, and love.
workshop-menu
Desire Club (2h)
This “pussy fitness” will allow you to take care of your intimate wellbeing, get to know yourself on a deeper level, connect to your body, open and energize your sexual centers. Following a short introduction and discussion, you will build your intimate muscles, co-choreograph a vagina performance, and celebrate the diversity of desires, pleasures and bodies.
Activities: techno-fitness, ecstatic dance, movement improvisation, pleasure performance, choreography-making
With: Anna Ádám
This “pussy fitness” will allow you to take care of your intimate wellbeing, get to know yourself on a deeper level, connect to your body, open and energize your sexual centers. Following a short introduction and discussion, you will build your intimate muscles, co-choreograph a vagina performance, and celebrate the diversity of desires, pleasures and bodies.
Activities: techno-fitness, ecstatic dance, movement improvisation, pleasure performance, choreography-making
With: Anna Ádám
Fight Club (2h)
“Play Fight” is an unrefereed contest in which participants try to dominate each other without inflicting injury. It allows one to develop self-confidence, self-care, self-control both emotionally and physically, learn the difference between acceptable and unacceptable, how to say “no” and when to shout for “help”.
“Play Fight” can also help you to recognize and recycle hidden tensions, blockages, vulnerabilities, denials and fears into self-empowerment and courage.
Activities: intensive physical exercise, intuitive martial arts, play fight, self defence, cardio techno-fitness
With: Anna Ádám
“Play Fight” is an unrefereed contest in which participants try to dominate each other without inflicting injury. It allows one to develop self-confidence, self-care, self-control both emotionally and physically, learn the difference between acceptable and unacceptable, how to say “no” and when to shout for “help”.
“Play Fight” can also help you to recognize and recycle hidden tensions, blockages, vulnerabilities, denials and fears into self-empowerment and courage.
Activities: intensive physical exercise, intuitive martial arts, play fight, self defence, cardio techno-fitness
With: Anna Ádám
Women's Erotic Writing Circle (2h)
In the women's “Erotic Writing Circle”, we deal with female desire, repressed and lived sexual fantasies through creative writing exercises. Following simple instructions, we write in our mother tongue erotic texts in various forms (poetry, story, diary...). We name and dare to name what we have, what we feel, what we desire... We make the vocabulary on women's sexuality richer, more accurate and more precise. We rewrite words and expressions from our perspective, appropriate and redesign the language of women's pleasure by women. At the end of the session, participants, if they want, can read and share their texts in a performative way.
Activities: creative writing, lecture performance, sound poetry
With: Anna Ádám
In the women's “Erotic Writing Circle”, we deal with female desire, repressed and lived sexual fantasies through creative writing exercises. Following simple instructions, we write in our mother tongue erotic texts in various forms (poetry, story, diary...). We name and dare to name what we have, what we feel, what we desire... We make the vocabulary on women's sexuality richer, more accurate and more precise. We rewrite words and expressions from our perspective, appropriate and redesign the language of women's pleasure by women. At the end of the session, participants, if they want, can read and share their texts in a performative way.
Activities: creative writing, lecture performance, sound poetry
With: Anna Ádám
Queer Erotic Drawing Studio (3h)
Nude life drawing studio where we become both artist and model, observer and observed. We sketch with pencils, our fingers and our tongue represented, interpreted or imagined bodies and desires. Following instructions, inspired partly by the Bauhaus School’s exercises and by American post-modern choreographers improvisation-based working practices, we will also discover the performative and choreographic potential of drawing and finish the workshop in a burlesque techno party.
Activities: Drawing on different support (different size / color / quality of paper, journal, sketchbook…) and with various tools (pen, pencil, pastel…), performance
Nudity: Some participants may choose to work in full or partial nudity, but there is no expectation that you or anyone will.
Commitment: You may sit out of any activity, or participate only to a level that's right for you.
With: Anna Ádám
Nude life drawing studio where we become both artist and model, observer and observed. We sketch with pencils, our fingers and our tongue represented, interpreted or imagined bodies and desires. Following instructions, inspired partly by the Bauhaus School’s exercises and by American post-modern choreographers improvisation-based working practices, we will also discover the performative and choreographic potential of drawing and finish the workshop in a burlesque techno party.
Activities: Drawing on different support (different size / color / quality of paper, journal, sketchbook…) and with various tools (pen, pencil, pastel…), performance
Nudity: Some participants may choose to work in full or partial nudity, but there is no expectation that you or anyone will.
Commitment: You may sit out of any activity, or participate only to a level that's right for you.
With: Anna Ádám
Feminist Kama Sutra: a new tale of new love (3h)
Far from canons and standards of beauty, the objective of this workshop is to make new erotic aesthetics of bodies emerge, transgress stereotypes and normative discourses on sexual representations, while defying the boundaries between genders and multiple sexualities. You will make drawings, cutouts, and collages on desire, passion, and lust, compose a kinky scenography, and write a sensual choreography for your fingers and hands. You will finish the workshop by live-streaming your erotic paper-porn-performance or collage peep-show on the Instagram account of the School of Disobedience.
Activities: making erotic paperwork (drawing, collage, cutout…), set / prop design for making a livestreamed video-performance
With: Anna Ádám & Tinu Verghis
Far from canons and standards of beauty, the objective of this workshop is to make new erotic aesthetics of bodies emerge, transgress stereotypes and normative discourses on sexual representations, while defying the boundaries between genders and multiple sexualities. You will make drawings, cutouts, and collages on desire, passion, and lust, compose a kinky scenography, and write a sensual choreography for your fingers and hands. You will finish the workshop by live-streaming your erotic paper-porn-performance or collage peep-show on the Instagram account of the School of Disobedience.
Activities: making erotic paperwork (drawing, collage, cutout…), set / prop design for making a livestreamed video-performance
With: Anna Ádám & Tinu Verghis
Intimate Yoga (2h)
In order to transform our life force energy towards spiritual enlightenment and become the person we are meant to be, we need to recognise the journey of our spirit through human experience. By embracing the spiritual world and the material world, we learn to accept the body and its desires. Through the practice of mantras, meditation, yoga, food, human connection and rituals, we weave our life as a unified whole.
Focussing on the principle of intimacy, we move slowly, connecting deeply to get a glimpse of our own soul through a heightened awareness of every moment. Thereby cultivating the capacity to consciously respond, rather than unconsciously react to both our fears and our desires. It is in the silent waiting that you reach your utmost sexual delight.
Activities: Hatha Yoga/ Patanjali's eightfold path towards enlightenment
With: Tinu Verghis
In order to transform our life force energy towards spiritual enlightenment and become the person we are meant to be, we need to recognise the journey of our spirit through human experience. By embracing the spiritual world and the material world, we learn to accept the body and its desires. Through the practice of mantras, meditation, yoga, food, human connection and rituals, we weave our life as a unified whole.
Focussing on the principle of intimacy, we move slowly, connecting deeply to get a glimpse of our own soul through a heightened awareness of every moment. Thereby cultivating the capacity to consciously respond, rather than unconsciously react to both our fears and our desires. It is in the silent waiting that you reach your utmost sexual delight.
Activities: Hatha Yoga/ Patanjali's eightfold path towards enlightenment
With: Tinu Verghis
Gun Club (2h)
Guns are seen as an equaliser in society. By reframing narratives and to develop new stories, the female participants are taught to use a gun. The use of a gun as a form of enacted defence asserts the value of the self and the right for women to fight back. Developing new stories of women’s ability to defend themselves provides an important counter-story to the discourse of victimisation. This fundamental shift allows for the possibility to change the discourse that permeates rape culture by undermining the assumption that women are vulnerable and men cannot be defeated in a physical attack.
Activities: Learn the techniques of loading a rifle, preparing the target, taking aim, shooting the target and understanding the recoil mechanism.
With: Tinu Verghis
Guns are seen as an equaliser in society. By reframing narratives and to develop new stories, the female participants are taught to use a gun. The use of a gun as a form of enacted defence asserts the value of the self and the right for women to fight back. Developing new stories of women’s ability to defend themselves provides an important counter-story to the discourse of victimisation. This fundamental shift allows for the possibility to change the discourse that permeates rape culture by undermining the assumption that women are vulnerable and men cannot be defeated in a physical attack.
Activities: Learn the techniques of loading a rifle, preparing the target, taking aim, shooting the target and understanding the recoil mechanism.
With: Tinu Verghis
practical information
- Curators, Cultural workers, Event organizers, Institutions (museum, gallery, theater, cultural venue, art space, university...), Underground & experimental spaces: Make your selection: invite us to hold one or several workshops.
- Participants: Flexible commitment: you don't have to follow the whole program, you can register for each workshop separately.
- Unlearning facilitators:
Tinu Verghis (India)
