Queer Arts Festival
Thursday, June 18th, 2020 — 8:14am PDT | by Rebecca Bollwitt
The 12th annual Queer Arts Festival (“QAF”), Vancouver’s artist-run, professional, multi-disciplinary roister of queer arts, culture and history, will take place online this year from July 16 to July 26, 2020.
Full post here.
Jewish Independent | June 12, 2020
A lot of it feels familiar, said New York-based artist and activist Avram Finkelstein about the current situation in the United States. The same American institutions that failed during the HIV-AIDS crisis are failing to effectively deal with the pandemic. And, when he was a teenager in the 1960s, cities were also being burned in America.
“It’s sad to think that we will be having the same struggles,” he told the Jewish Independent in a phone interview last week. “But, also, as you get older, you realize that progress is not a pendulum swing from left to right, it’s actually a spiral going forward and things do move to the right and they move to the left, but [there is] incremental change. So, part of me feels like we’re seeing the dying gasp of a world that I hope we’re leaving behind, and I see a world in the future that I want to live in. So that’s kind of helping me through this.”
Finkelstein was scheduled to come to Vancouver next month to participate in the Queer Arts Festival.
A founding member of the Silence=Death and Gran Fury collectives, as well as the political group ACT UP, he is the author of After Silence: A History of AIDS Through its Images (University of California Press, 2017). His artwork is part of the permanent collections of MoMA, the Smithsonian, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, to name but a few places, and his work has been shown around the world. He was set to unveil one of his new works in Vancouver. As it is, with the restrictions required to minimize the spread of COVID-19, he will be helping open the festival remotely, as part of a panel discussion chaired by curator Jonny Sopotiuk, which will also provide viewers with a tour of the festival’s art exhibition.
“I have a large mural that was going to be in the exhibition and now it’s going to be in a virtual space,” said Finkelstein. “I’m very excited about this piece and the fact that Jonny chose it – it’s the first time I’ve shown it…. I had a commission to do a work for the Shed, which is a new art space in New York, and, while I was waiting for the weaving tests of the final pieces – it’s a very large jacquard weaving – I decided to start drawing from the same source material as the cartoon for the weaving. I hadn’t drawn since recovering from a stroke; I had a stroke about two years ago…. I then realized that my hand isn’t my own, my body is no longer my own.”
The source material, he explained, “is a portrait of a gender-non-conforming friend who later transitioned. The work was all about corporeality as an abstraction and the ways in which we’re allowed to look at certain things, and what is public and what is private about gender and sexuality. And then, all of sudden, I realized, I’m actually talking about my own body in these drawings because my own body is not my own body anymore. I realized that I had made this sharp pivot from an abstract, theoretical idea of corporeality to this kind of war or dance, or I don’t know how to describe the physical process of having to use your entire body to hold a pencil.”
Despite the health, political and other challenges Finkelstein has faced, he remains hopeful.
“We’re trained to think that, if we don’t have hope, then the only thing that’s left is despair, but the truth is, hope isn’t so much the point – it’s the horizon that hope is sitting on and, so long as you can see a horizon, I think that, to me, is the same thing,” he said.
“I’m Jewish, as you know, and I think that Jews have a very different relationship to memory and to witnessing. If your people have been chased all over the globe for centuries, you take a long view. You sleep with one eye open, but you take a long view, and I think, therein, I’m eternally hopeful.”
In an interview in 2018, Finkelstein predicted that the situation in the United States would worsen before it improved.
“Which is another thing about being Jewish – you learn that there is no such thing as paranoia because it’s all real,” he said. “So, one could have seen, as plain as the nose on one’s face, where America was heading. And, in actual fact, what happened with Trump’s election was, we’ve joined the international march of global totalitarianism…. And, it’s not about to get really bad, it’s really, really bad. It’s really bad and I think that, here again, you can’t be Jewish and not think – not think your entire life, actually – in some way being prepared for, OK, what are the risks I’m willing to take if this happens? How far would I be willing to fight for other people if that happens. The shadow of Nazi Germany never escaped your consciousness.”
So how does Finkelstein conquer the fear?
“I guess I’ve replaced it with anxiety,” he said, laughing. But, he added, “I don’t know why I’m not fearful. I think that I was just raised – a day doesn’t go by that I’m not reminded of another lesson or another incident or another part of Jewish-American social history in the 20th century that my family was directly there for. I almost feel like I’m the Zelig of the left. All the stories you would tell my mother or my father, they’d be like, ‘Oh, yeah, we were there. We were there at the Robeson riots. Oh, yeah, we were there when they closed The Cradle Will Rock and everyone walked down the street’ – exactly the way it was in the last scene in Tim Robbins’ movie. When I saw it, it seemed too preposterous, I called my mother, said, ‘Could that have happened?’ And she started singing the song that Emily Watson sings in the film.
“So, I think I have such a sense of self that one could interpret it as fearlessness, but I think that it would be more accurate to say I was not given an alternative role model. I was raised to feel the suffering of others and, if other people are suffering, there’s no night’s sleep for me. So, there’s really no option – you’re either closing your eyes to something terrible or you’re doing everything you can to try and make it less terrible. And I think that that’s the Jewish condition.”
He described Jews as being like queer people. “We are everywhere,” he said. “We’re in every culture, we’re in every race, we’re in every gender, we’re in every country. We have every type of ethnic community that we surround ourselves with. An Ethiopian Jew is different from an Ashkenazi Jew, but we’re still all Jews.”
Though raised by atheists, he said, “I don’t think you’ll find anyone more Jewish than I am or than my family, but Jews are prismatic. We are many things. Consequently, I feel like I can’t speak on behalf of other Jews, I can only speak on behalf of myself.
“Likewise, I’ve always had people of colour in my family; I just always have. And, I learned very early on back in the ’60s, when the civil rights movement was fragmented between King and Stokely Carmichael and the Panthers, and everyone was choosing sides, I think that’s another example of what I’m talking about – there are many ways in which to be black. And so, I don’t feel like what I have to say about this current moment is anywhere near as important, essential, vital, critical … [as] a person of colour – what a person of colour has to say about this moment is much more important.”
Finkelstein was one of the minds behind the now-iconic Silence=Death poster, which has been adapted over the years by many people. A variation of it could be seen in at least one of the recent protests. The original iteration encourages viewers to use their power and, for example, vote. In general, working towards solutions is an important part of Finkelstein’s activism.
“I think critiques are easier,” he said. “I think also we mistake public spaces, we mistake the commons, as a declarative space. I tend to think of it as an interrogative space. I think that, even in late-stage capitalism, when someone is trying to get you to put your money in a bank or go buy a soft drink, there’s something Socratic about the gesture of trying to get you to do something … you’re responding to it, you’re engaged in it, and that’s the interrogative part that I think is easy to overlook. And I think that’s where the answers are.
“I think that the way that the Silence=Death poster is structured is it’s really like a bear trap. We worked on it for nine months – the colour has certain codes and signifiers, and the triangle has another set of codes and we changed the colour of the triangle from the [concentration] camps and inverted it to obfuscate some of the questions about victimhood. And the subtext has two lines of text, one that’s declarative and one that’s interrogative, and the point size forces you into a performative interaction.”
This poster and other work with which Finkelstein has been involved include aspects that “people are very afraid to experience,” he said, “which is fallibility, mess-making and tension. And I find all of those things as generative, as kindness, support, community. They’re differently generative and … hearing so many people who are trying to figure out how to find their way in, as white people, into the conversations that are happening in America right now, is the same struggle as a young queer person trying to find their way into the AIDS crisis. I mentor a lot of young queer artists and activists and the first thing they say, their immediate impulse is, I have no right to this story, I wasn’t here, I didn’t live through it. To which my response is, immediately, you have every right to the story – it’s your story, it’s the story of the world…. Race is a white person’s problem. People of colour are paying the price for it, but the problem, the genesis of the problem, is whiteness. And we have to figure out how to talk about it…. But I think now is the time for listening.”
He said, “We have to know what our responsibilities are and this goes back to Judaism – our responsibilities as witnesses. You can’t let your discomfort change the importance of this moment or overshadow the importance of this moment.”
One of the things Finkelstein does is teach social engagement via flash collectives. “I think we’re never put into a position where people mentor our personhood,” he said. “We have people mentor us as computer programmers or healthcare providers or tax accountants or artists or writers, but … there’s something primeval which is missing in the way we’re acculturated, and the flash collective is almost shamanistic in that regard; it taps into this primal thing that is quite astonishing when you let it out.”
Understanding that he will not live forever, he said “the Silence=Death poster casts a very mighty shadow and it makes it very difficult for people to figure out how to make new work, if that’s what they think it has to be…. It became obvious to me that I could be talking about Silence=Death until the day I drop, but, one day, I am going to drop and I want other people to start making those new works and I thought this would be a way to get people to make new work.”
He described the collectives, which teach political agency, as being “like a stew of the top 10 hits of grassroots organizing in a condensed workshop that’s tailored to the individuals in the room.”
He said, “I believe that I don’t necessarily have to change the world because I know that there could be a teenager in 2050 who sees something that someone I worked with did that made them think of something else that I never would have thought of. That is the point of the work, not the how do I fix it before I’m gone, which is the dilemma of Larry Kramer [who passed away last month]. He really thought, and I think it’s really male, but it’s very men of a certain generation also – he really thought that he could fix the AIDS crisis, and it didn’t happen.”
Unfortunately, space doesn’t allow for most of what Finkelstein shared with the Independent about Kramer, who he described as “a complicated person.”
Kramer was a rhetorician, said Finkelstein. “And I’m a propagandist. We’re both rhetoricians in a way, but what was the dividing line that made Larry incapable of understanding the work that I did?… I felt like I understood his process better than he understood mine. And I started to think, well, here’s the difference between a person who articulates their rage with words and a person who articulates their rage with every tool in the toolbox…. Not to make myself sound superior, but I realized that I think of rage as sculptural; he thought of rage as rhetorical. I think of rhetoric as sculptural, I think of it as casting a shadow and activating social spaces. And I think that he was a Jewish gay man of a different generation and a lot of his rage was tied into his personal struggles. And I did not have those. I had other personal struggles, but I did not have them.”
As part of the Queer Arts Festival, Finkelstein will lead a flash collective on the question, “What does queer public space mean in a 21st-century pandemic?” He hopes the resulting work will be shown in a public space.
For more information about the festival, visit queerartsfestival.com. The next issue of the JI will feature an interview with QAF artistic director and Jewish community member SD Holman.
Cozy up for a night of storytelling with talented LGBTQ2+ voices of Canadian literature. Syrian-Canadian author @Dannyseesit returns to #QAF2020 for his fifth year with readings from @arsenalpulp poet Jillian Christmas, @fka_jayesimpson + more. https://bit.ly/2z7rD5Y
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[In Vancouver’s historic Chinatown, across from markets piled high with dried goods and and a bakery that would be easy to pass by unnoticed (if it wasn’t for out-the-door line-ups) is the equally nondescript entrance to the Sun Wah Centre. The brick building is home to a cultural wealth of artists, and is currently housing Yellow Peril: Celestial Elements, a multi-media one-room immersive art show brought to life by Love Intersections, a media arts collective of queer Vancouver artists of colour.
Inside the centre and up a delightfully vintage looking elevator decorated with printed community notices in multiple languages, the fourth floor is home to the SUM Gallery. (Turn right from the elevator, walk straight through the kitchen, you’ll see the door.)
To stand in the small space with vibrant multi-channel video dominating half the room and pieces to explore, interpret and understand, is an experience to open yourself up to. The room brings together Chinese tradition, text, iconography and spirituality with West Coast North American settings, nature and mythos, that contemplate presences that are Indigenous, colonial and pop.
I connected with Jen Sungshine and David Ng, co-creative directors of Love Intersections to talk a bit more about the experience they created.
Is this the first time Love Intersections has curated an arts exhibit?
Jen: Yes! We started in 2014 as a media arts collective, making short documentaries of queer people of colour in our community. This is our first foray into visual arts and curation, and we are very grateful to the Pride in Arts Society/SUM gallery for their faith and generosity!
Your film, Yellow Peril: Queer Destiny debuted at the Vancouver Queer Film Festival in August 2019. A part of this exhibit breaks down some of the visuals from the film into multi-channel video projections. Would you consider this exhibit an extension of the film?
Jen: The exhibit was inspired by our 2019 experimental documentary, Yellow Peril: Queer Destiny, which follows local drag artist, Maiden China in a non-linear, 5-chapter narrative through the use of the Chinese Five Elements as a conduit for examining race, gender, sexuality, art and cultural “authenticity”.
David: Encouraged by the film’s success, we were given an opportunity to expand the film into a visual art exhibit to further explore what it means for us to be queer Asians of the diaspora. One of the main through-lines of both the film and the exhibit is bringing forth our ancestors/ancestry, into our re-imaginations of queer Asian futures. The four channel format allowed us to expand upon some of what we started with the 5 elements, and explore queerness, time, space, and identity in a different way.
The experience of being in the room, particularly on your own or perhaps in a small group, is very immersive. Can you tell me about the part the sound you chose plays into the exhibit?
David: The soundscape put together by Jamie Abugov is inspired by a mix of contemporary and traditional artists of Asian descent. We wanted to mix past and present music, to again play with the idea of time and space, queer identity, and cultural identity.
Tell us about “yellow peril”, turn-of-the-century racist terminology, and about the choice to use it in both the film and the exhibit.
David: Yes, the “Yellow Peril” was a racist narrative in the west in the early 1900s that framed the influx of Asian immigrants – mostly indentured labourers – as “invading” the West. Literature, film, and media representations would portray Asian people as conniving, drug using criminals, who had sinister agendas to infiltrate and invade the West. This anti-Asian racism is what drove the anti-Oriental riots, and the Asian exclusion acts in North America, and Europe.
Jen: We were drawn to the term “Yellow Peril” because we wanted to reclaim the term, and also turn it on it’s head. We’ve seen a sharp rise in queer Asian cultural organizing recently across Canada, and in a way our reclamation and insistence on enunciating our cultural identities, is “perilous” to white supremacy.
We also wanted to reference Paul Wong’s touring exhibition Yellow Peril: Reconsidered, as the exhibit (and Paul’s work) has been not only an inspiration for us, but paved the way for queer Asian artists today to express ourselves.
Part of this piece, according to the placards, has to do with dislodging Western linearity. Could you speak more about this?
Jen: In putting together the film and the exhibit, we started realizing that the notion of linear temporality – that is, time moving forward, sequentially – has limitations to our imaginations of queer cultural identity. The linear framework of “past-present-future”, for example, delimits our ability to think about how our ancestors dreamed us into the future; and that we are the product of our ancestors dreams.
David: We also wanted to push our ways of thinking about queer Asian identity, time, and space; outside of a Western point of departure. So we turned to the 5 elements in Chinese tradition, which are used in many facets of life, including medicine, spirituality, health, metaphysics, etc. In some ways, the 5 elements became the vehicle that we used to explore queer Asian cultural identity.
Please tell me about anything else you would like to add that you feel is integral to understanding this exhibit and your work.
Jen: We feel extremely lucky to have an outpour of support from the various communities we are a part of. Over 300 people showed up to our opening, holy moly! Beyond just coming to see the exhibit, we really want to create a sense of -space- within the confines of SUM Gallery. In working with, and exhibiting at, SUM, we recognize how meaningful it is to showcase in Chinatown’s BC Artscape Sun Wah building at 268 Keefer, home to over 70 artists, galleries, and culture work spaces dedicated to heritage, education, social justice and sustainability. There is a lot of conversation right now around “Vancouver’s changing Chinatown” and what that means for residents navigating an increasingly challenging, and changing, landscape.
David: We hope to express to visitors the importance of showcasing in such an environment and to ask ourselves, “why am I here? What kind of art, spaces and communities do I want to immerse and spend time in?” and for visitors to consider the meaningfulness of dedicated, artful spaces that we all play a role in curating. For us, it’s sharing and curating with the likes of fellow artists, Paul Wong and Sammy Chien, as well as with organizations we look up to, like Centre A, Full Circle: First Nations Performance, Youth Collaborative for Chinatown, Moniker Press, The Frank Theatre – we see ourselves as one small piece of the social puzzle, each of us weaving together a larger, multidimensional narrative of Chinatown. We hope that visitors will confront what it means to stand up for land rights/defenders, anti-racism, and thoughtful cultural spaces as we continue having wholehearted conversations together.
Jen: We have programmed several “activation” events throughout the exhibit run at SUM Gallery. Visitors should come to our Community Food Sharing + Dumpling Making activation on March 7, as well as the Grave Sweeping Activation / Closing Ceremony on April 4. All activation events are from 3:30pm-5:30pm.
From now until April 18th, 2020, Yellow Peril: Celestial Elements is on display at the SUM Gallery, with works by Jen Sungshine, David Ng, Kendell Yan/Maiden China and Jay Cabalu.
UPDATE: This show is now available for viewing by appointment only to encourage social distancing due to COVID-19. Contact info@queerartsfestival.com to arrange.
Written for West Coast Curated by Alexis Baran
Yellow Peril; The Celestial Elements is the brainchild of Vancouver media arts collective Love Intersections
Queeries is a weekly column by CBC Arts producer Peter Knegt that queries LGBTQ art, culture and/or identity through a personal lens. It won the 2019 Digital Publishing Award for best digital column in Canada.
Many traditional Chinese fields use five elements — wood > fire > earth > metal > water — to explain a wide array of phenomena, from the interaction between internal organs to the succession of political regimes. At Vancouver’s SUM Gallery, that same system is currently inspiring Yellow Peril; The Celestial Elements, an art exhibit that uses the elements to represent “the emotional, spiritual, and metaphysical properties of queerness within the Asian diaspora.”
The exhibit features a collection of multichannel installations, visual and sculptural activations that are intended to challenge how we view the past, present and future of the queer Asian experience. It’s curated by media arts collective Love Intersections, and if you’re in Vancouver between now and its closing date of April 18th, it’s an absolute must-see.
The exhibit was inspired by Love Intersection’s 2019 experimental documentary, Yellow Peril: Queer Destiny, which follows Vancouver drag artist Maiden China in a non-linear, five-chapter narrative through the use of the Chinese Five Elements.
“[The film is] a conduit for examining race, gender, sexuality, art and cultural authenticity,” Love Intersection co-creative directors Jen Sungshine and David Ng tell CBC Arts. “Encouraged by the film’s success, we were given an opportunity to expand the film into a visual art exhibit to further explore what it means for us to be queer Asians of the diaspora. One of the main through-lines of both the film and the exhibit is bringing forth our ancestors and ancestry into our reimaginations of queer Asian futures.”
Visitors to the exhibit will find four multi-disciplinary works by four different queer Asian artists: Sungshine and Ng themselves, as well as Jay Cabalu and Maiden China (a.k.a. Kendell Yen).
“Each bring forward a different subject of exploration within our own queer Asian-ness,” Sungshine says. “One of the themes of the exhibit is temporality, and how we can think about queer Asian identity outside of western linearity and approach.”
As noted, the exhibit is inspired by the Chinese Five Elements, specifically to explore “emotional, spiritual, and metaphysical properties of queerness within the Asian diaspora.” For example, one part of the large four-channel installation that occupies two of the gallery’s walls shows drag artist Maiden China performing an ancestral veneration ceremony at Larwill Park in Vancouver.
“[This] was the gathering site of the 1907 anti-Oriental riots, as a way to mark an image of the temporal relationship that this exhibit has within a history of anti-Asian sentiments in Canada,” Ng explains. “That ‘yellow peril’ has never really gone away.”
Another installation in the exhibit is “The Wall of Healing; A Race Towards a Cosmic Future,” which features an altar of Traditional Chinese Medicine against a backdrop of joss paper lined floor-to-ceiling.
“Underneath the altar, a cosmic laser projection is overlaid onto a scattering of calligraphy paper in text written by Jen’s father, detailing the evolving of the Chinese language in three different typefaces,” Ng explains. “In a way, we think about our past as not necessarily gone but fully woven into the language of the present, and translating our living as we race toward a healing future.”
The show opened earlier this month, and Ng and Sungshine said they feel “extremely lucky” to have had such an outpouring of support so far.
“Over 300 people showed up to our opening, holy moly,” Sungshine says. “Beyond just coming to see the exhibit, we really want to create a sense of space within the confines of SUM Gallery. In working with — and exhibiting at — SUM, we recognize how meaningful to showcase in [a building that is] home to over 70 artists, galleries and culture workspaces dedicated to heritage, education, social justice and sustainability. There is a lot of conversation right now around Vancouver’s changing Chinatown and what that means for residents navigating an increasingly challenging, and changing, landscape.”
They say that hope to express to visitors the importance of showcasing in such an environment.
“We see ourselves as one small piece of the social puzzle, each of us weaving together a larger, multidimensional narrative of Chinatown,” Ng says. “We hope that visitors will confront what it means to stand up for land rights defenders, anti-racism and thoughtful cultural spaces as we continue having wholehearted conversations together.”
Yellow Peril; The Celestial Elements. Curated by Love Intersections. SUM Gallery, Vancouver. Until April 18, 2020. www.sumgallery.ca
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Peter Knegt has worked for CBC Arts since 2016, writing the LGBTQ-culture column Queeries (winner of the 2019 Digital Publishing Award for best digital column in Canada) and spearheading the launch and production of series Canada’s a Drag and interactive project Superqueeroes, both of which received 2020 Canadian Screen Award nominations. Beyond CBC, Knegt is also a stand-up comedian, the filmmaker of numerous short films and the author of the book About Canada: Queer Rights. You can follow him on Instagram and Twitter with the same obvious handle: @peterknegt.
Embrace your too-muchness with bombastic burlesque brought to you by the badass babes of Virago Nation, Turtle Island’s first all-indigenous burlesque collective. Featuring special guests Monday Blues and Lynx Chase! Whether you’ve seen it before or always wanted, now’s your chance to relish the many facets of indigenous sexual rematriation from the comfort of your living room.
Shane Sable “Mover, Shaker, Mischief Maker; the Furiously Flirtatious Force of Nature”
2Spirit Gitxsan artist and activist Shane Sable has slayed stages all over Vancouver in front of and behind the scenes since 2011. Shane has an abiding hunger for audience engagement and delights in the tension created by breaking the 4th wall of burlesque. Shane is the convening member of Virago Nation – Turtle Island’s first all-indigenous burlesque collective and Festival Administrator for the Vancouver International Burlesque Festival.
RainbowGlitz is one of Virago’s Nations founding members and Vancouvers Rainbow Slut spreading her love medicine in a mix of classic, nerdlesque, exotic dance and pussy cat doll hip hop movements. This Haida, Squamish, Musqueam and black artist will leave you wanting to throw your gold at the end of her rainbow.
Scarlet Delirium: Vancouver BC’s Raven Goddess! The Kwakiutl Indigi-Babe! Scarlet Delirium has been enjoying the slow burn of Burlesque and Cabaret since 2010 and is a founding member of Virago Nation. During the daylight hours doubles as Costume Designer for herself and her Burlesque family.
Sparkle Plenty is Vancouver’s glamedian, weirdlesquer, and word-maker-upper who has been delivering beautifully bizarre burlesque acts for over 10 years! This fiery goddess is Cree and Metis with mixed heritage and is a proud sister of the first ever all Indigenous burlesque group, Virago Nation. You can find her teasing and emceeing with the Screaming Chicken Theatrical Society as well as on stages all over Vancouver, Toronto, Las Vegas and more.
Monday Blues is an Afro-Indigenous burlesque artist, and has been performing burlesque professionally since 2011. Monday has traveled the globe as a solo female adventurer and loves to live outside her comfort zone. Her most recent endeavours include being an avid entrepreneur, both in Sex Work and coaching capacities, as well as pursuing her passion on the burlesque stages all over Canada and the US. Monday strives to exist without limits and wants to help others feel just as empowered.
Lynx Chase: A true showpony at heart, Lynx Chase has always been passionate about movement and performance arts. Over the years she has trained in a variety of disciplines ranging from Aerial Hoop, Silks, Contortion, Partner Acrobatics, Bellydance & Capoeira; however it wasn’t until she discovered Pole Dancing in 2012 that she found her true vocation. Lynx has been professionally teaching in Vancouver since 2015 and has also showcased her gravity defying acts at various events and festivals across the province such as Retro Strip Show, Bass Coast and Shambhala Music Festival. It is her hope to continue to share her craft with the world by demonstrating the strength, sensuality, artistry and grace that goes hand in hand with the art of pole and exotic dance.
Wicked 2020 on its way!. July 2 – July 12, 2020. Check queerartsfestival.com for more info.
Get your dress jammies on, grab a drink and binge-watch the entire Queer Arts Festival with us (take it all in!!). Expect surprises and special prizes.
This show will launch online on July 16 and run through to July 26.
Chris Watson
CREATEIIV
Edward Bader
Ilena Lee
Jackson Photographix
Kate Braun
Kyla Yin
Michel Dumont
Mikayla Fawcett
Vladimir Kolosov
In his Swan Song, contemporary dance legend Noam Gagnon sashays the fine line between pain and pleasure in a fetishization of something glamorous and beautifully twisted: a monster beautified.
Synopsis: This piece is a reflection on the quest for love, through revisiting the worlds of childhood, both real and imagined.
How do we feel when we are hammered or deformed under pressure, but not quite enough to break? How can we be malleable and flexible, deform and reform without losing our core selves?
In ‘This Crazy Show,’ the body becomes a place of transformation, of transmutation, and of transfiguration. Alternately agitated, delicate and humourous, Noam Gagnon choreographs and performs, pushing himself to his physical limit to explore and expose “the art of artifice” in a culture obsessed with pretending authenticity. ‘This Crazy Show’ explores just how precarious and ambiguous identity can be, through the evolution of the body and the self as both are continuously morphing, unfixed and boldly celebrated.
“Because I dream, I’m not.” – Léolo
I wanted to take up the challenge of exploring new avenues of creation by playing with the range of humanly possible transformations, transmutations, and transfigurations. ‘This Crazy Show’ tackles the theme of the perpetual quest for love by revisiting the worlds of childhood, real and imagined, through the bionic woman as superhero metaphor.
“We gratefully acknowledge the support of the McGrane-Pearson Endowment Fund.”
Hiromi Goto, an emigrant from Japan, gratefully resides on the Unceded Musqueam, Skwxwú7mesh, and Tsleil Waututh Territories. She’s the author of many books. Her first graphic novel, Shadow Life, with artist Ann Xu, is pending with First Second Books. Hiromi is currently being guided by land-based learning and at work on a second graphic novel.
Erica Isomura (@ericahiroko) is an emerging writer and community organizer living on unceded Musqueam, Skwxwú7mesh and Tsleil Waututh homelands. In 2019, Erica’s work won Briarpatch Magazine’s Writing In The Margins contest, selected by Alicia Elliott. She is coping with the pandemic by drawing quarantine comics and creating poetic installations in her living room window.
The QAF proudly welcomes The Darlings—Continental Breakfast, PM, Rose Butch and Maiden China—to the stage, ahem, screen, with a new performance created around the festival theme of ‘wickedness.’ The multidisciplinary, non-binary drag performance collective has been taking the Vancouver scene by storm for the last two years and is currently titillating social-distancing audiences through aptly titled online performances Quarantine I & II. Their work challenges the boundaries of conventional drag, and explores genderqueer, non-binary, and trans experience through the use of movement, poetry, performance art, theatre, and immersive/interactive installation.
The Darlings are Chris Reed, Desi Rekrut, Rae Takei and Kendell Yan.
Underground Absolute Fiction is an immersive play-meets-punk-concert, inspired by the apartment theatre of 1980s Poland. It invites audiences into a secret meeting at a post-Communist home. There, they join a queer punk band and Lena, a Polish-Canadian settler.
Created by Anais West, the co-writer of Jessie Award Nominated musical Poly Queer Love Ballad, Underground Absolute Fiction asks audiences to grapple with the complex legacies of diaspora, queer rights movements, and white supremacy—in both Europe and Turtle Island (Canada). Directed by Fay Nass as an Associate Project with the frank theatre.
Dramaturgy by Veronique West
Featuring AJ Simmons, Claire Love Wilson, Julia Siedlanowska and Sara Vickruck
Cultural Consultant Julia Siedlanowska
Promotional photo by Kimberly Ho
