Alex D. Loo is an artivist for women’s and LGBTQI+ rights in Peru. She is co-founder of the feminist collective AFFIDARE and of the drum ensemble Bomba Cuir in Arequipa. She is also a member of the artistic organization Yemayá in Lima. Her work challenges the pervasive hetero-cisnormativity, sexism, and colonialism in Peruvian society through drumming and dance workshops, as well as artistic interventions in the public space that denounce human rights violations and systemic oppression. She has studied under recognized Afro-Peruvian musicians and dancers like Sara Calmet and Rocío Ocasio, as well as theater director and artivist Ana Correa. She’s a linguist, cultural anthropologist, and educator, and she applies this know-how to her activism. 

"I’ve been thinking that this is exactly the direction in which we could take our research: the African diaspora in Peru and elsewhere, and its relationship with different forms of resistance, including gender non-conformity with the European/colonial imposition of gender and sexual binarism. In my group here in Lima, we’re subverting some traditions in Afro-Peruvian music and dance. For instance, some genres mandate that only men can play the drums and women can only dance, and even do this with limitations. And we, as queer people and women, are purposely disobeying this. When we play the drums and dance in public in the roles that were traditionally only for men, we show the world that we can also take up space and do it joyfully and exuberantly, which enrages the fascist, patriarchal, ultra-conservative majorities." 
(Excerpt from an initial brainstorming)

Gerald Odil Ronnie is a curator, producer, and multi-disciplinary artist whose work glides through queer perspectives, Afrofurist manifestations, and regenerative practices that centre community and communal care. They are a founding member of a queer artist collective, Anti-Mass; a collective and label based in Kampala, Uganda. Currently sustained by a collective of subversive artists & DJs, ANTI-MASS reclaims space for queers while exploring new potentials for sound & artistic expression in an increasingly regressive social climate in Uganda. Gerald is a curator in projects like the KLA ART21, Uganda’s only public art festival produced by 32° East|Ugandan Arts Trust. They are also Alumni of the Independent Curators International‘s Curatorial Intensive 2022. They are currently living in exile and are studying their art practice in Munich, Germany. 

"I find the connections running through dance, sound and the body a great place to start. The politics of it. I was reading a very revolutionary book by Kodwo Eshun. “More Brilliant Than The Sun: Sonic Fiction”. He talks about how the idea that we have been lied to through colonialism (politically and socially) to believe that the body and mind are separated. That we hear music instead of feeling it. I think drumming is that practice that is so ancient that it shows how the body has its own modes of communication. Its connection to dance is intrinsic. You hear a drum and your body moves with it too. It’s like the body answers back to the drum. I think that relationship is mimicked in the form of resistance as @Alex LOO mentioned: the non-conformity, the rule breaking. In Uganda there are also these traditions steeped in colonial-Christian ideas that only men play certain instruments. I also think there are opportunities as queer people to create new possibilities in this way. I mean @Alex LOO you are already doing this with your group and I am doing the same in my collective too. What does it look like, feel like, sound like to subvert the traditions we have been given? [...]
For me drums are forever and always interconnected with the body. Just as the drummer uses their body to bring life to the drum and give it a voice, the body of the person listening hears the drum too." 
(Excerpt from an initial brainstorming)