Picks of the Week – July 21, 2021

Posted on  by jminter, jayminter.com

Summer swiftly moves along bringing more activities and adventures to us each week.

Stage: The Arts Club Theatre returns to the stage, with I, Claudia opens Thursday. Running until August 15th at the Newmont Stage at the BMO Theatre Centre.

Festival: The Mission Folk Music Festival 2021 – Folk at Home gets underway this Friday, July 23.  The festival features three main stage concert showcases online Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and it’s all free!

Dance: Kokoro Dance’s 27th Annual Wreck Beach Butoh performances with set, costumes, and lighting provided by Mother Nature, will take place July 24th and 25th, on Wreck Beach at the foot of the #4 Trail just west of the UBC Museum of Anthropology

Kokoro Dance Wreck Beach Butoh Photo: Robert Seaton

Pop-Up: Vancouver non-profit, Instruments of Change, is bringing Infectious Gratitude to neighbourhoods around Vancouver in a series of free pop-up shout out events happening this summer.

EXTENDED: The success of the stunning Imagine Van Gogh: The Immersive Exhibition at Vancouver Convention Centre, has meant it has now been extended to September 7, 2021 giving you even more time to see this amazing spectacle of Van Gogh’s masterpieces

Arts: Queer Arts Festival (QAF) is returning for 2021 with Dispersed – it’s not easy being green, opening July 24, 2021 and running until August 13 wth a hybrid digital and in-person suite of visual art, performance, music, literary and workshop events in a dispersed format across the Lower Mainland

Gallery: Interior Infinite, The Polygon Gallery’s first feature exhibition curated by Assistant Curator Justin Ramsey, is on view from until September 5, 2021. A group show exploring carnivalesque expression as an act of resistance against the status quo, featuring a group of 15 international artists whose works span photography, video, performance, and sculpture, including Nick Cave, Dana Claxton, Zanele Muholi, Aïda Muluneh, Skeena Reece, Yinka Shonibare CBE (pictured above), Sin Wai Kin, Carrie Mae Weems, and Zadie Xa.

Audio:  The Arts Club Listen to This series of audio plays adds My Father is the Greatest Man in the World by Tai Amy Grauma, joining Someone Like You, by Christine Quintana,  Night Passing: by Scott Button  and UNEXPECTING: by Bronwyn Carradine for listening online.

Drink>: Until August 1,  Vancouver Foodster Iced Summer Drink Challenge cools your palate as participating cafes are rolling out their best iced summer drinks to complete for the title of favourite Iced Summer Drink.

Hawaii: For a limited time, until August 15th, take a trip to the tropics as Fly Over Canada presents Hawaii from Above, a soaring, sense-awakening journey over islands.

Mystery: Green Thumb Theatre and BC Summer Reading Club are asking youth to help solve, the Misadventure at the Lighthouse an original script, created especially for BC Summer Reading Club participants, and the program’s 2021 mystery theme: ‘Crack the Case!’.

Markets: For your farm fresh produce and supplies Vancouver Farmers Markets at Riley Park, Trout Lake, Kitsilano, West End and Mount Pleasant are now open until the autumn with Downtown opening this week and False Creek market opening soon.

Rides: Playland is open Friday, Saturday and Sunday to provide plenty of thrills and fun for the whole family.

Outside: Get out and enjoy Push Walks, from PuSh Festival unique audio walks with artists through the urban spaces that have given them inspiration, listen and walk to one of the six Walks now available where you find your podcasts.

ArtWalk<:  Get out and about exploring North Van Arts’ North Shore Culture Compass, to find sights, or public outdoor art

Queer Arts Festival: Dispersed – It’s Not Easy Being Green.

WHAT’S ON QUEER BC JULY 9, 2021

2021 Queer Arts Festival (QAF): Dispersed — Vancouver’s QAF announces its first hybrid format festival in it’s not easy being green, opening Jul 24, 2021.

Vancouver BC, Jun 8, 2021 | Vancouver’s premiere artist-run, multidisciplinary roister of art and culture,

QAF is back for its lucky 13th year in QAF 2021 Dispersed: it’s not easy being green, running Jul 24 – Aug 13, 2021.

Join QAF for a three-week eco-apocalyptic exploration of queer experience and artistic expression in the face of an ongoing pandemic and marginalization. For the first time, QAF’s suite of visual art, performance, music, literary and workshop events will be presented in a dispersed format across the Lower Mainland—from the depths of the Sun Wah Centre and rooftop overlooking historic Chinatown, to Mountain View Cemetery, False Creek and QAF’s usual stomping grounds, the Roundhouse Community Arts Centre. Following the success of last year’s online festival, QAF will also have a streaming component on queerartsfestival.com.

Event highlights include: Jeffrey McNeil-Seymour and SD Holman’s visual art curation; a fabulously punk Japanese folk music and dance performance from Onibana Taiko and Alvin Erasga Tolentino; and a reimagining of

Annea Lockwood’s 20th-century classic, Piano Burning, where fire becomes a vehicle for reclamation and decolonization (yes, we are burning a piano).

Queer Arts Festival | Dispersed

ART-BC.COM

Queer Arts Festival (QAF) is returning for 2021 with Dispersed – it’s not easy being green, opening July 24, 2021.

After a digital-only festival last year, the easing of COVID restrictions allows Vancouver’s premiere artist-run festival to return for its first hybrid format festival.  For its 13th year, QAF 2021 Dispersed: it’s not easy being green, runs July 24 – August 13, 2021, presenting a suite of visual art, performance, music, literary and workshop events in a dispersed format across the Lower Mainland; venues include the Sun Wah Centre and rooftop overlooking historic Chinatown, to Mountain View Cemetery, False Creek and QAF’s usual stomping grounds, the Roundhouse Community Arts Centre.

Following the success of last year’s online festival, QAF will also have a streaming component on queerartsfestival.com. Starting everything off is ArtParty! the Festival Opening Gala at Sun Wah Centre in Chinatown on Sat Jul 24, 7 – 10pm. The Gala launches Dispersed in champagne style with DJ O Show!  Other festival highlights include; it’s not easy being green: Curated Visual Art Exhibition, from Saturday July 24 – Friday August 13 co-curatored by Jeffrey McNeil-Seymour and SD Holman; a punk Japanese folk music and dance performance from Onibana Taiko and Alvin Erasga Tolentino, Saturday August 7th; and a reimagining of Annea Lockwood’s 20th-century classic, Piano Burning, where fire becomes a vehicle for reclamation and decolonization (yes, we are burning a piano), August 8th. The festival closes Friday August 13 with Glitter is Forever, the festival closing from the Sun Wah rooftop with DJ O Show and a final chance to see all the art @ QAF 2021.

For the full QAF line-up, schedule and to buy festival passes, visit queerartsfestival.com

Nine summer festivals that will bring some much-needed joy to Vancouver and the region

by Charlie Smith, Georgia Straight on June 11th, 2021

estival season is underway in Vancouver, minus the communal feasts that have been a hallmark of events like Greek Day on Broadway and Italian Day on the Drive. Damn that pandemic!

However, there is still plenty of sizzle coming at you virtually during the next couple of months, plus some events with a live component. Here are some highlights.

Talking Stick Festival Summer Sojourn

(until July 1)

Last week, we told you about Embodying Power and Place, which is a monthlong artistic representation of chapters in the final report of the National Inquiry Into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. On June 15, the festival will present Dances With Our Ancestors, which includes pieces by Christine Friday, Maura Garcia, and Rebecca Sadowski.

Indian Summer Festival

(June 17 to July 17)

This one has it all: musical, theatrical, and literary events, plus a walking tour of the Punjabi Market, all spaced out over the course of a month. Two highlights? Seven-time Grammy-nominated sitarist and composer Anoushka Shankar next Saturday (June 19) from her home, followed a week later by Indian tabla master Zakir Hussain. Book lovers won’t want to miss Booker Prize–nominated novelist Avni Doshi in conversation with Scotiabank Giller Prize–winning short-story writer Souvankham Thammavongsa.

Dancing on the Edge

(July 8 to 17)

Vancouver has emerged as a globally respected centre for contemporary dance in the 21st century, no small thanks to its breadth of talent. At this year’s Dancing on the Edge Festival, there will be commissioned works by Ouro Collective, Raven Spirit Dance, Billy Marchenski, Immigrant Lessons, Generous Mess, Rob Kitsos, and Meredith Kalaman. That’s in addition to presentations by dance artists Wen Wei Dance, Radical System Art/Shay Kuebler, Rachel Meyer, Lesley Telford/Inverso Productions, CAMP, and others.

TD Vancouver International Jazz Festival

(June 25 to July 4)

The Snotty Nose Rez Kids, Tonye Aganaba, Helen Sung, Jill Barber, and DJ Kookum are just some of the featured acts at this grand music festival. And if you’re eager to see how the future of jazz might look like in a world of growing racial consciousness, be sure to check out Irreversible Entanglements, featuring the vocals of spoken-word artist and activist Moor Mother, a.k.a. Camae Ayewa.

Powell Street Festival

(July 1 to August 1)

In normal years, the Powell Street Festival is held over the B.C. Day long weekend in Oppenheimer Park in the heart of Vancouver’s old Japantown. But this is no normal year, so the 45th annual event will be free throughout July before it ends with a bang on July 31 and August 1. That includes a “flash mob” performance of the Paueru Mashup Dance in Oppenheimer Park, opportunities to listen to durational taiko drumming from the rooftop of the Japanese Language School, and Randall Okita’s virtual-reality film The Book of Distance at the same location.

From the comfort of home, people can watch on-demand streaming of Dub This Road with British hapa singer Denise Sherwood and Vancouver’s Sawagi Taiko and Onibana Taiko. Other on-demand shows feature Kazuma Glen Motomura and Sammy Chien; Jody Okabe, Rup Singh and director Aya Garcia; and Shion Skye Carter and Skye Carter.

Mission Folk Music Festival

(July 23 to 25)

Famous fathers Jim Cuddy and Barney Bentall will share songs and family stories with their musician sons, Devin Cuddy, Sam Polley, and Dustin Bentall. For those missing the Vancouver Folk Music Festival this year—and who might not have been in the mood to drive to Mission anyhow—plenty of folk acts are available in your living room.

Queer Arts Festival

(July 24 to August 13)

This year’s QAF is billed as Dispersed: it’s not easy being green, featuring a curated visual art exhibition at the Sun Wah Centre in Chinatown. This year’s fest also includes Bobbi Kozinuk’s interactive Language as a Virus: Queer Isolation Stories (from July 24 to August 13), as well as Queerotica literary readings curated by Josie Boyce (August 2) and music and dance with Onibana Taiko and Alvin Erasga Tolentino (August 7).

Vancouver Mural Festival

(August 4 to 22)

This one is pretty straightforward. Artists are hired to make the blank walls of buildings look far more beautiful. The neighbourhood becomes more appealing. Everyone’s happy, including the property owners, whose land is now in a hip area.

The festival also serves a useful social purpose. For example, the VMF’s Black Strathcona Resurgence Project is offering a tangible reminder of the Black community, centred in Hogan’s Alley, which was deliberately displaced by the white establishment and largely erased from popular memory when the viaducts were built. The new murals going into the neighoburhood are one way to counter this erasure and remind Vancouverites of what once existed in our city.

Carnaval del Sol

(August 6 to 29)

Online and in-person events are planned for the largest Latin American festival in B.C. and the U.S. Pacific Northwest. We’ll provide more information when it becomes available.

Last year, Carnaval Del Sol put on an impressive virtual festival on fairly short notice, thanks to its large contingent of community volunteers and to help from the Vancouver Latin American Film Festival programming director Christian Sida.

It’s really happening: theatres have started to announce live shows again, even indoors

BY JANET SMITH, STIR VANCOUVER

IT’S WHAT everyone in the performing arts community has been waiting for: announcements from theatre companies that stages will reopen.

The first out of the gates have released plans to host audiences not just outdoors, but to invite up to 50 back indoors again this summer.

In the wake of recent news from provincial health authorities that venues will be allowed to welcome indoor audiences by June 15, Arts Club Theatre Company unveiled a summer season of two solo shows alongside an audio play starring Carmen Aguirre.

I, Claudia, Kristen Thomson’s award-winning tween story, starring Lili Beaudoin, will play to limited audiences at the Newmont Stage from July 22­ to August 15. Beneath Springhill: The Maurice Ruddick Story, a musical celebrating the singing coal miner who kept crews spirits alive after the Nova Scotia disaster of 1958, will greet a live crowd at the Granville Island Stage from August 5 to 29. Aguirre’s audio play Mala, written by Melinda Lopez, is available September 1 to 28. Tickets for the shows will go on sale on June 16, at artsclub.com.

Artistic director Ashlie Corcoran said in a press announcement about the Art Club’s summer lineup, “Once the province announced the plans to lift restrictions, which included allowing limited indoor gatherings, we celebrated the news. Then we got busy doing what we do best—creating live theatre! And all this will be done in the most stable, safe way possible.”

July 8 to 17, the Dancing on the Edge festival has confirmed it will host limited, live events in the Firehall Arts Centre and its courtyard (Immigrant Lessons), at Russian Hall (Rachel Meyer), and at the Dr. Sun Yat-sen Chinese Classical Gardens (dumb Instrument dance).

The Queer Arts Festival (July 24 to August 13) also released news that it would be hosting in-person outdoor events later this summer, including the Onibana Taiko and Alvin Erasga Tolentino Japanese folk-punk and dance show at the Mountainview Cemetery in August.

Meanwhile, the Massey Theatre revealed a full 2021-22 season that kicks off in November with concerts by Martha Wainwright and Bill Henderson. The new year will see touring shows like comedian Shaun Majumder’s LOVE in February.

“We are so proud to have made it through this pandemic as an organization. We’ve pulled together one of our most exciting programs ever to bring people back to cultural experiences,” said Jessica Schneider, the theatre’s executive director,in the announcement. 

ArtParty!

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.

DJ O Show!

This event is ASL Interpreted.

QAF 2021 dispersed:

it’s not easy being green

Jul 24 – Aug 13, 2021

QAF shows artists upcycling & recycling apocalyptic fear & dread into art & social change. Green symbolizes not only our relationship to each other & the lands we occupy, but also difference & marginalization, exemplified by popular culture green underdogs Elphaba the Wicked Witch of the West & Rainbow Connection, Kermit the Frog. It’s not easy being green, fighting for a world that consistently rejects us. With imminent climate catastrophe upon us, we witness the world grappling with the end times, but when were the queered privy to life outside the apocalypse? 

Green is the complex terrain of extended kinship ties of Indigiqueer/two-spirit and queer settlers. Green spectrals haunt the hyphened margins of the subaltern; enduring perpetually frequent gaslighting(s) 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 relentlessly into the ongoing colonial.

QAF shows artists cast as see-ers/oracles/alchemists upcycling/rebranding/reclaiming/transgressing/transforming apocalyptic visions towards queer utopic landscapes, transmuting fear, dread and a collective broken heart of forced disslocations with departures and arrivals, using art as transformative praxis and practice towards social and spiritual metamorphoses.

QAF 2021 Dispersed: it’s not easy being green  runs 3 weeks from your computer, our home base, the Sun Wah Centre in Vancouver’s historic Chinatown, and Vancouver’s only cemetery, Mountain View Cemetery. 

When green is all there is to be
It could make you wonder why,
but why wonder?
– Kermit the Frog
Buy festival PASS here:

2021 EVENTS AT A GLANCE

ArtParty!

Sat Jul 24, 7-10pm
Festival Opening | SUM & Sun Wah 268 Keefer

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) with DJ O Show!

it’s not easy being green: Curated Visual Art Exhibition and Tour


Sat Jul 24 – Fri Aug 13, from 12 – 6pm
Visual Art | SUM  & Sun Wah 268 Keefer Lower Ground

Jeffrey McNeil-Seymour and SD Holman curate artists who transmute our collective broken heart of forced dislocations with departures and arrivals, using art as transformative praxis and practice towards social and spiritual metamorphoses.

Tue Jul 27, 5pm
Visual Art Tour | SUM & Sun Wah 268 Keefer

Come together for our Visual Art Tour with the curators Jeffrey McNeil-Seymour and SD Holman, guest artists, and a gallery of intimate friends old and new.

Language as a Virus: Queer Isolation Stories

Sat Jul 24 – Fri Aug 13
Sonic Installation | around False Creek & Online

An interactive audio/radio/networked soundwork from Bobbi Kozinuk that invites the user to explore themes around the COVID-19 pandemic and its effect on queer and diverse communities. Featuring Jae Lew. 

Language as a Virus: The Tour

Mon Jul 26, 5pm  
Audio Art Tour | Creek Side CC (TBC) False Creek

Take a stroll or a bike ride along False Creek and tune in to WENR 88.9FM Isolation Radio with your host Bobbi Kozinuk and explore her multi-layered work, Language as a Virus: Queer Isolation Stories.

Studio (ob)Sessions

Mon July 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.

Screen Greenery

Sat Jul 31, 9pm
Media Art Screening | SUM & Sun Wah 268 Keefer Rooftop

Curated by Fergie and Ben!  Rooftop screening of very queer and rather green short films.

Queerotica

Mon Aug 2, 8pm | Literary Readings | SUM & Sun Wah 268 Keefer Rooftop & Online

Curated by Josie Boyce, slip into something a little more comfortable and enjoy readings by Vancouverite writers.

Attend in person or at home via streaming.

Ceremony for Rebel Spirits – Onibana Taiko and Alvin Erasga Tolentino

Sat Aug 7, 8pm 
Dance and Musical 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.

Piano Burning

*POSTPONED* Sun Aug 8, 8pm
Performance Art | Mountain View Cemetery & Online

With Full Circle First Nations Performance, we build on Annea Lockwood’s conceptual classic music composition with a new commission by Lil’wat composer Russell Wallace, a fireproof ball gown created by Métis designer Evan Ducharme, and a piano on fire played by Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa.

Attend in person or at home via streaming.

Glitter is Forever

Fri Aug 13, 7-10pm  
Closing | 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 2021 with us at the Sun Wah Centre, from the basement, to the SUM gallery, to the rooftop (take it all in!! the art, the views!!). 

SATELLITE ACADEMY : Workshops, Community,  Discourse + 

Multidisciplinary outreach and community programming rooted in the  premise that 2SLGBTQ+ lives are relevant and universal as artistic inspirations. Title inspired by writer Sarah Schulman’s Satellite Academy

Kindred Spirits

Sat Jul 24 – Fri Aug 13
Community Visual Art | 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.

Pride in Art Community Show

Sat Jul 24 – Fri Aug 13, from 12 – 6pm
Visual Art | SUM & Sun Wah 268 Keefer

The community show honours Pride in Art founder, activist, and Two-Spirit artist Robbie Hong’s legacy with an open community exhibition. This year, we’re throwing what was once refused up on our walls. Join community artists in a Salon des Refusés (or perhaps Recyclés) celebrating works that were previously censored or rejected.

Pillows for the Pandemic

Wed Jul 28, 7:30pm 
Workshop | SUM gallery or Online                                                             

Falak Vasa leads us in a pillow-making workshop, based off of their own series of pillows created during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic offering small controllable comforts.

Gathering of Wishes and 1000 Paper Butterflies

Wed Aug 4, 6pm | Workshop | SUM gallery or Online

Naoko Fukumaru and Eva Wong in Phase 1 of Mass Reincarnation of Wish Fragments 願片大量転生 (Ganhen Tairyou Tensei), where participants create origami and utilize the ink bleeding process to create a butterfly with their own unique patterns and colours. 

Queerer than Queer: Lessons from Nonduality for Deep Planetary Healing

Thu Aug 5 & Fri Aug 6, 7pm | Workshop | SUM gallery or Online 

Is the universe queerer than we can suppose? From the foot of the Himalayas in Himachal Pradesh, Tejal Shah will guide us through this two-part interactive workshop that explores the fine line between illusions and reality. We will explore the possible impact an embodied understanding of nonduality can have on our affective world and on our relationships with ‘others’.

Curated Visual Art Exhibition

Sat Jul 24 – Fri Aug 13, from 12 – 6pm

Visual Art Exhibition | Sun Wah 268 Keefer, Lower Ground Floor

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

Preston Buffalo
Tejal Shah
Tsohil Bhatia

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

Language as a Virus: Queer isolation stories

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 

 

Language as a Virus: The Tour

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)

Curator Tour with Guest Artists

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.

Studio (ob)Sessions

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

Screen Greenery

Sat Jul 31 | 9 pm

Media Art Screening | SUM & Sun Wah 268 Keefer Rooftop

Curated by QAF Associate Artistic Director Fergie and Programs Coordinator Ben!  Rooftop screening of edutainment for the pandemic — very queer and rather green short films.

Animation and environmentalism share a more than passing connection for many of us. From celebrated ecocentric blockbusters like Hayao Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke and Pixar’s WALL-E to popular children’s programming such as Captain Planet and The Lorax, environmental protection is a memorable recurring theme within the medium for multiple generations. As a message, environmentalism presents an approachable moral framework for education and entertainment; the earth is beautiful and sacred and those who wish it harm must be challenged because hurting the planet hurts us all. These programs told us to hold ‘eco-villains’ responsible, and fight for the planet and the little guy. They taught us that we were ‘the little guy’. Both timeless and timely, it is a vital concern to implant in the minds of future generations, and the fact this message is frequently brought to life through the medium of animation feels incidental yet brimming with significance.

Recently animation and queerness have been dancing a similar dance, repeating motions inherited from their environmentalist predecessors. Likewise brought together by radical movements—both figurative and literal—queer animation garners the attention of an accepting audience with a timely message rooted in progressivism and compassion. Viewing such lessons through the lens of queerness, our generation saw that queerness was a fight against the same cruel forces that sought to destroy the earth. That we too could thrive and flower if we removed poisonous villains from the equation. After all, queers are beautiful and sacred and those who wish us harm must be challenged because hurting queers hurts us all. 

Further still, queer animation feels different, more synergistic, more compelling, more substantial. Some have argued that animation has always been queer, exhibiting a methodology compounded by the fluidity of a medium capable of unlimited orientation, by the immeasurable joy of saturated pigments in a hypercolour cornucopia, by the unmistakable touch of the human hand embodied within every frame. It expands us and imbuing animation with joyous queer futures is radical self love, a beautiful statement of queer justice. Queer animators ‘imagine, envision, and describe new ontologies and actively depict them in a way that demands participation’; animation becomes a group exercise, trusting in our ability to question and learn, apply learning, and share said learning. When we embrace the cartoonishly queer, we share in queer liberation.

Featuring films by:

Carrie Hawks
Daniel Sterlin-Altman
Sara Koppel
Sonya Reynolds & Lauren Hortie
Deirdre Keough/IQECO
Al MacKay

Queerotica

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.

Featuring:

Soo Jeong
Tin Lorica
Lili Robinson
Anjalica Solomon
Sajia Sultana Kabir

Onibana Taiko and Alvin Erasga Tolentino

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.

Alvin Erasga Tolentino
Onibana Taiko, photo credit: Toonasa Photography
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