Category: Past Events
Sun Oct 24 | 5pm
Transdisciplinary music performance | Mountain View Cemetery
Rising from the ashes of this summer’s fire ban, QAF and Full Circle: First Nations Performance will reignite our Piano Burning event on Sunday, October 24 at Mountain View Cemetery. Curated by SD Holman and Margo Kane, Annea Lockwood’s infamous work — where QAF veteran Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa performs a piano as it burns to ashes — is re-envisioned through the lens of historically banned First Nations fire ceremonies and contemporary global warming of unprecedented levels.
Margo Kane and Full Circle: First Nations Performance ground this event with cultural knowledge and a focus on Two-Spirit artists: Sempúlyan, who will speak about the spiritual role of fire to communicate with ancestors; Russell Wallace, who has composed a new piece for the occasion; designer Evan Ducharme, who created Iwaasa’s fire-proof ball gown; and Squamish Nation councillor Orene Askew (aka DJ O Show), who will set the piano alight.
Bring a chair, bring a blanket, and dress for the weather!
Watch artists Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa & Evan Ducharme talk about their collaboration in Piano Burning, from our QAF 2021 interview series Studio (ob)Sessions:
Featured artists:
Russell Wallace
Orene Askew
Evan Ducharme
Sempúlyan
Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa
Eowynn Enquist
This event was postponed from its original date of Aug 8, 2021.
View Statement from theArtistic Director here
Sat July 24 | 7- 10 pm
Festival Opening | SUM & Sun Wah 268 Keefer
ArtParty! returns in-person for the first time since 2019! Regarded as one of Vancouver’s best-attended visual art events, ArtParty! marks the opening night of QAF’s signature Curated Visual Art Exhibition and kicks off it’s not easy being green’s impressive suite of exhibitions, performances and Satellite Academy outreach initiatives.
This year, we’re animating the Sun Wah Centre—from the basement to the SUM gallery, to the rooftop overlooking historic Chinatown and beyond! With DJ O Show spinning, this is one party you won’t want to miss!
QAF’s gala opening party: With music, dazzling views, and art on multiple levels of the Sun Wah Centre to explore, we’re launching the Dispersed QAF in champagne style (have a glass or two or a nibble or three on us)
This event is ASL Interpreted.
DJ O Show
Orene Askew, aka DJ O Show, brings energy and expertise to every event she hosts and DJ’s. She brings professionalism and passion and remains true to her love for hip hop and R&B, incorporating beats to ensure you never want to leave the dance floor! With an outgoing personality and friendly demeanor, O Show is one of the easiest DJ’s to work with.
From Vancouver to Toronto, Las Vegas to Texas, DJ O Show keeps the dance floor packed, working with clients to to put together unique packages and customized playlists for weddings, birthdays, holiday parties, corporate events, restaurant and club openings, charity fundraisers, youth conferences and pride events in her city!
DJ O Show has experience teaching with an inspired approach. She is an inspirational speaker, having traveled across the country to bring ambition and drive to all generations, and is an elected member of the Squamish Nation Council.
Coming from a diverse background, O Show is driven by her passion. She is Afro-Indigenous a proud member of the Squamish Nation. Feeling as though she stood out in a unique way, she has embraced both her cultural backgrounds and incorporates the teachings she has learned into everything she does.
This event is ASL Interpreted.
Sat Jul 24 – Fri Aug 13, from 12 – 6pm
Visual Art Exhibition | Sun Wah 268 Keefer, Lower Ground Floor
Featured Artists:
Beric Manywounds
Blake Angeconeb
Chad Baba
Duane Isaac
Falak Vasa
Grace House
Ho Tam
Isaac Murdoch
Jay Pahre
Kali Spitzer
Katherine Atkins
Kathleen Ross
Manuel Axel Strain
Oluseye
pablo muñoz
The exhibition is open to the public and free to view on the Lower Ground Floor of the Sun Wah Centre for the duration of the festival, open Tue – Sat from 12 – 6pm.
Green. Ascribed with multiplicities such as spring’s cyclical lush green rematriation: growth, hope, vitality, balance – health … to spectrums of radioactive and toxic neons … to pestilent dark greens symbolizing mutation, jealousy, greed and wealth. Green inhabits interconnectedness, relationship with the Other, the seen and unseen, as well as the very lands and waters the West — WE — continue to occupy. Green maturates deviance, neuro-divergence, epoch and paranormality.
Strange pop-cultural oddities/underdog/anti-heroes emerge from fantastically unconventional, metaphorical trappings of the colour green: Elphaba the Wicked Witch of the West; Rainbow Connection Kermit the Frog; Joaquin Phoenix’s invocation of Arthur Fleck’s becomings into The Joker; The Mandalorian’s Grogu (Baby Yoda) taking the visual lexicon by storm — It’s not easy being Green.
Was there a time of Utopic Queer being and doing? What are the implications of being privy to pre-apocalypto hauntings? Post-apocalyptic expectations with an evidence base indicating we already have arrived in the end-time — we all have diverse ancestries of forced migration and forced dislocation/relocations along linear entry points, we remain and WE are/can/could still be vanished at any given moment.
Green is linked to power. The currency of Green has the power to legally mark action and activism(s) as terrorism. Settler Environmental ally/accomplices are marked deviant not only for their vote, but akin to Canadian News media’s necropolitical castings of Indigenous land and water protectors as violent. As protester.
We witness the world grappling with end-time realities, seemingly surreal and relentlessly coming into view, as we fight for a world yet to be realized, waiting to be seen — and by one that consistently rejects WE. Green, in its final transformation, exists as representing the supernatural, the great mystery — time and power intertwined. An apocalyptic green glows lasciviously as it courts both eschatological time (Philosopher Byung-Chul Hans’ naming of an apocalyptic/temporal end point) and the status quo’s living in romantic despair that the end of the world in which the existing exalted beings are not free subjects of apocalypticism(s).
Green is the complex terrain of extended kinship ties between Indigiqueer/two-spirit and queer settlers. Green spectrals haunt the hyphenated margins of the subaltern; enduring perpetually frequent gaslighting of post-traumatic settler-colonial and concurrent disorders. Together/apart WE endure our own private apocalyptics. Cataclysmic temporal end-points that exist as seemingly fixed and an unavoidable global terminus, from which Indigiqueer/queer resurgence erupts relentless into the ongoing colonial.
Curators Jeffrey McNeil-Seymour and SD Holman
Visual Art Tour
Tue Jul 27 | 5pm
Come together for our Visual Art Tour with the curators Jeffrey McNeil-Seymour and SD Holman and guest artists
Sat Jul 24- Fri Aug 13
Sonic Installation | around False Creek & Online
Language as a Virus: Queer Isolation Stories is an interactive multi-platform sonic-art installation from artist Bobbi Kozinuk, featuring publicly broadcasted radio programming around the False Creek area as well as online.
Combining music, sound art, and community-submitted recordings, stories become soundscapes that are broadcast on low power transmitters located along the water’s edge. The public will encounter advertisements for the project at transmitter hubs and participating community centres in the greater Vancouver area, where they will be directed on how to participate. The public is invited to take a walk along the False Creek and listen in on their FM radio or QR-enabled phone as well as visit the Isolation website to contribute their own stories and tune into location-specific channels. An experiment in radical storytelling, Language as a Virus explores themes around the Covid pandemic and its effect on queer and diverse communities. It asks us who we are, and how can we move towards a better future?
You can appreciate this Sonic Installation either online or in person around False Creek.
Details of the “walking radio” tour can be found at https://kozinuk.ca/walking-radio You will need an FM radio to enjoy this tour. (Some older phones have FM radio integrated if you use wired earbuds).
Alternatively you can listen online. Visit Bobbi’s website at https://kozinuk.ca/locations to select a location you are interested in.
Posters are available at the various locations with QR codes that, when scanned, give you access to a selection of stories.
Bobbi Kozinuk
Bobbi Kozinuk is a Vancouver-based media artist, curator, and technician. Former Media Director at Western Front, she has also worked on a board level with the Independent Media Arts Alliance (Montreal), Co-op Radio, grunt Gallery, Video In and Pride In Art Society(Vancouver), and has travelled extensively producing workshops on low-powered FM transmission at schools, universities and artist-run centres across Canada. Bobbi is published in Radio Rethink (produced by the Banff Centre for the Arts), Echo Locations (audio art CD produced by Co-op Radio) and Islands of Resistance (New Star Books, Vancouver). Currently, as the Wearables, Interactivity, Prototyping Lab Technician at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design, she teaches electronics and programming. Bobbi has exhibited media installation works in local, national and international contexts including In-Ex ISEA (San Jose), Diffractions, Galleria di Nuova Icona (Venice), and Folly Gallery (Lancaster, UK).
Jae Lew
Jae Lew is a media artist and filmmaker currently residing in so-called Vancouver, BC, Unceded Coast Salish Territories. Their practice is situated at a place of visibility and invisibility; their work deals with spirituality, disability, gender and the absurdity of social constructs. They have recently graduated with a degree in New Media and Sound Arts at Emily Carr University of Art + Design.
Language as a Virus –The Tour
Mon Jul 26 | 5 pm |False Creek
Mon Jul 26 | 5 pm
Audio Art Tour | Roundhouse Community Arts Centre Roundabout
Join artist Bobbi Kozinuk in an exploration of her work, Language as a Virus: Queer Isolation Stories. Language as a Virus: Queer Isolation Stories is an interactive multi-platform sonic-art installation from artist Bobbi Kozinuk, featuring publicly broadcasted radio programming around the False Creek area as well as online. **Please bring a personal device that can access FM radioand/or scan QR codes.
Bobbi Kozinuk is a Vancouver-based media artist, curator, and technician. Former Media Director at Western Front, she has also worked on a board level with the Independent Media Arts Alliance (Montreal), Co-op Radio, grunt Gallery, Video In and Pride In Art Society (Vancouver), and has travelled extensively producing workshops on low-powered FM transmission at schools, universities and artist-run centres across Canada. Bobbi is published in Radio Rethink (produced by the Banff Centre for the Arts), Echo Locations (audio art CD produced by Co-op Radio) and Islands of Resistance (New Star Books, Vancouver). Currently, as the Wearables, Interactivity, Prototyping Lab Technician at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design, she teaches electronics and programming. Bobbi has exhibited media installation works in local, national and international contexts including In-Ex ISEA (San Jose), Diffractions, Galleria di Nuova Icona (Venice), and Folly Gallery (Lancaster, UK)
Tue Jul 27, 5pm
Visual Art Tour | Sun Wah 268 Keefer, Lower Ground Floor
Come together for our Visual Art Tour of our exhibition it’s not easy being green, with the curators Jeffrey McNeil-Seymour and SD Holman + guest artists.
Mon Jul 26 – throughout festival
Digital Discourse | Online
In the connective void that has been this pandemic pause, QAF takes you on a few house calls. We visit with several festival artists in their creation spaces, a digital dialogue to allow a connection from the artist in their corner of space to you and where you call your place
Participating artists:
Carrie Hawks – Jul 26, 7:30pm (ASL)
Falak Vasa – Jul 27, 7:30pm
Alvin Erasga Tolentino – Jul 29, 7:30pm
Lili Robinson – Jul 30, 7:30pm (ASL)
Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa & Evan Ducharme – Aug 1, 7:30pm (ASL)
Eva Wong & Naoko Fukumaru – Aug 3, 7:30pm
Tejal Shah – Aug 3, 8:30pm
Zachery Longboy – Aug 9, 7pm
Ho Tam – Aug 11, 7pm
Mon Aug 2 | 8 pm
Literary Readings | SUM & Sun Wah 268 Keefer Rooftop
Curated by Josie Boyce, slip into a little green something and enjoy readings by Vancouverite writers.
Queerotica is Apocalypterotica, in all the best possible ways. Survival through living your truth amidst the world wishing you wouldn’t. That’s us, singing, dancing and freeing our spirits in the ways we are able to given the apocalyptic death urge of humanity. Poetry, Performance, and spoken word at the end of the world, or is it the end of the word? It’s not easy being green, is it? Green in the punk sense, being as respectful to the stolen land (aka unceded) beneath you, and around you, the hierarchies of people here at the end of the world. But we can and we do scream queerotica at the structures around us creating our own language of performance. Queerotica need not be sexual or romantic in order to be erotic, and vice versa. Blowing minds since forever, and into never, our desires stoke hopeful fires lighting the Apocalypse of now. – Josie Boyce
This event is ASL Interpreted.
Sat Aug 7 | 8 pm
Dance and Music Performance | Mountain View Cemetery
*NEW* ONLINE | Tue Aug 10 | 24 hours
When Japanese folk tradition meets punk, audience members are invited to commune with the ancestors via Obon dance, song, sensu (fan) cheerleading, fue, shamisen and kick-ass taiko.
Please note: Due to the use of incense, this event cannot be considered scent-reduced.
Onibana Taiko 鬼束太鼓 are three Nikkei veterans of Vancouver’s taiko community, whose performances draw from Japanese traditional arts, festival drumming, and folk music and dance, all with a touch of feminist queer punk aesthetics. Onibana is a type of flower that grows in the grave sites of Japan. Through taiko, the group seeks to transform shadowy elements into beauty, bridging the divide so as to commune with our ancestors with song, dance, shamisen, flute, and kick-ass taiko.
Alvin Erasga Tolentino is a Filipino Canadian choreographer and dance artist, and the founding Artistic Director of Vancouver’s Co.ERASGA. His dance creations are driven from the need to intricately illustrate the human experience of light and dark and the infinitely complex relationship between nature and humanity. His choreography challenges the exploration of hybridity to reveal the private and public territory, identity, gender and the issues within the traditional and contemporary cross-cultural dialogue.
Fri Aug 13 | 7 – 10pm
Closing Party | SUM & Sun Wah 268 Keefer Rooftop
Join us for the festival closing with DJ O Show and your last chance to see all the art @ QAF 2021with us at the Sun Wah Centre, from the basement, to the SUM gallery, to the rooftop (take it all in!! the art, the views!!).
This event is ASL Interpreted.
Sat Jul 24 – Fri Aug 13
Community Art Showcase | Online
The digital culmination of the Kindred Spirits digital artist residency run by and for 2Spirit and Indigiqueer artists. Guided by Faculty members Dayna Danger, DJ O Show, Raven Davis and Art Auntie Shane Sable, this digital exhibition focuses on re-storying 2Spirit identities and futures through community connection and self-portraiture beyond colonial constructs.
Participated artists TBA.