RE: [-empyre-] Tactics and Strategies [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]

["Meziane, Tracey - Benson, Tracey" <Tracey.Meziane@deh.gov.au>]

Hi Renee and all,

Thanks for your post, your emailing difficulties in Stockholm sound
terrible (although the mental image you have provided me is quite
humorous).

-----snip
Or another example, we have been archiving the negative names for women
over several years (ranging from the virgin to the whore)  and have
turned them into a set of T-shirts sold in our webshop.  Our net stats
show us that people often come to our site because they are searching
for porn. (their keywords reveal them ;-)  And oddly enough, they
linger.  We actually get teenagers that email us because they want to
add to our list of words, or they want to buy a T-shirt. 

------- 
I love the idea of reclaiming negative words and reconstructing them
into a positive context - queering the language is one description I
have heard used for this process. 

This reminds me of when I met De Geuzen in 2003 at N5M4. I brought over
some items for their 'swap meet' collaboration, one of which was an
'UNAUSTRALIAN' T-shirt from Canberra based zine collective Argus. This
linkage sparked a discussion that resulted in us making heaps of 'UN'
badges during the festival and people were encouraged to come and
reclaim their own names and make a badge too...

For me personally it was great, spontaneous fun and wonderful to see the
participants walking around with badges declaring them to be 'UNDUTCH',
'UNAMERICAN', 'UNAUSTRALIAN', etc.

Best
Tracey (at work on Sunday - no justice) 

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