Who are you?

People often ask me if Tine Tabak is my stage name - my parents gave me the name at birth. Between my first day and today there are more than 10. 000 days which has made me become an archive of memories, I am a collection of identities: artist, writer, MA Film Studies student, director, actor, one of twins, friend, poet, Leo, Amsterdammer, queer, sports fan, lover, fan of all the artists and academics on whose shoulders I stand: Andrea Arnold, Johanna Hedva, Lynne Ramsay, Louise Glück, Miranda July, Jack Smith, Kenneth Anger, Audre Lorde, Donna Haraway, James Baldwin, Wong Kar Wai, Paul B. Preciado, Barbara Hammer, Luca Guadagnino, Virginia Woolf, Jack Halberstam, Mohamed Mbougar Sarr and many more. I am the people I meet, who move me, who change me.

What will you be doing at VOX-POP?

Create a beautiful programme! It will be four evenings around queer bodies, with a different focus each evening. Expect informal and interactive evenings where you can listen, participate, think and act. The first evening falls in Book Week, to celebrate this I have invited queer writers to read from their own work: Melissa Knollenburg, Pete Wu, Steff Geelen. Editor Ilse van Oosten of publisher HetMoet will also be present to discuss queer literature and erotica with me. For the second evening titled ‘Lesbian Legacy’, Marguerite Fresq comes to Amsterdam from Paris to talk about her work at Arcl (Archives recherches et cultures lesbiennes) and the documentary she is making with footage from the archive. We explore the activist potential of the archive and the retelling of (hidden) stories. This evening, artist Anke Vromen pays tribute to the legacy she inherited from her mothers. The third evening is a VOX-POP ArtiShock around the theme of ‘shape shifting’, with a creative workshop Annemieke Efdee. The final evening will be hot, intellectual, poetic and focus on queer erotica. With contributions from professors Jacob Engelberg and Sara Janssen and poet Hannah Chris Lomans.

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What are your motivations for creating this programme?

I want to create a space where people can talk and think about all kinds of queerness in a free and creative way. In my experience, queer bodies are quickly and explicitly labelled as political bodies, bodies you can think loudly and unsubtly about, bodies you have to be ‘for’ or ‘against’. For me, art has always been a comforting medicine for hatred and disapproval. Meeting writers, thinkers and artists from different times, places and disciplines gives me a sense of belonging: we are here and we have always been here. It may sound cliché but that's what I want to do with the resources I now get from VOX-POP: spread beauty and create connections between queers and non-queers between people from here and elsewhere, from now and in the past. I want to make a safe haven in a political climate where trans and homophobia and violence against queer people is taking on serious proportions.

Who is this programme of interest to? Why should you go to it and what can it bring you?

Lovers of poetry, film, erotica. People looking for beauty and comfort. For queer people, people who want to broaden their horizons. You should come if you feel like being surprised.

What do you hope this period as student-resident brings you?

That I can bring the world of the arts and the world of science together in one space and bring each other a little closer that way. I hope in this way to make and cause new connections between people, things, thoughts. And most of all, I am looking forward to all the beautiful things that will come along. I hope to be inspired and to be able to inspire others.