Queer Arts Festival
Life Drawing with HIM is an informal, drop-in drawing and sketching social group for men.
For one night only, Life Drawing with HIM is collaborating with the Queer Arts Festival to bring this popular drop-in session to the queer arts community. All skill levels, orientations, and genders welcome. This group is facilitated, but no formal instruction is offered.
Bring your sketchbook and favourite drawing materials (no ink or paint please). Workshop
starts promptly, so please arrive on time.
Queer Arts Festival: Curator tour and Salon
Join festival Artistic Director and Curator of this year’s exhibition SD Holman for an informal tour of this year’s Drawing the Line exhibition, followed by a salon co-hosted by Daily Xtra managing editor Robin Perelle, who will ask participants where they draw the line today, and why. Which lines, if any, are you reluctant to cross? In an age of online social shaming and increasingly common “trigger warnings,” have some lines become too intimidating to challenge?
3pm. Roundhouse Community Centre, 181 Roundhouse Mews.
By donation.
TRIGGER: Drawing the Line in 2015.
Visual Artists:
Afuwa
Aiyyana Maracle
Amy Dame
Bryan Bone
Claude Perreault
Coral Short
Dana Ayotte
Emilio Rojas
James Diamond
Jonny Sopotiuk
Jono Nobles
Kathy Atkins
Kiss & Tell: Lizard Jones, Persimmon Blackbridge, Susan Stewart
Persimmon Blackbridge
Rosamond Norbury
Storme Webber
Suzo Hickey
Toni Latour
Coming with a friend or 3? Get a QAF Flex-Pass. Go to 4 shows, take a friend to two shows, bring a group to one show – at only $69 for a pass, it’s a screamin’ deal.
This event is scent-reduced, and fully wheelchair accessible. For more information on how to support a scent-reduced event.
For a full accessibility audit of the space, visit Radical Access Mapping Project.
QAF’s Pre-festival Fluffer! Back for their second incendiary season, Cor Flammae presents FALLEN ANGELS: sacred + profane choral works by historical and modern queer composers.
The rich religious traditions of choral music mean a participant must confront sacred spaces which have historically defined the queer body as profane, obscene and unholy. Cor Flammae explores this tension by producing two concerts in seemingly opposing spaces, inviting audiences to experience choral music in a space for which it was intended (a church), or in a historically queer space (a social playspace), to see how the works resonate differently.
The choir is thrilled to be led by 2015 Guest Conductor, Stephen Smith.
Coming with a friend or 3? Get a QAF Flex-Pass. Go to 4 shows, take a friend to two shows, bring a group to one show – or any combination! Only $69/$35 for a pass, it’s a screamin’ deal.
QAF pass-holders can reserve seats on queerartsfestival.com or Facebook up to 8 hours before the show. Or live dangerously and show up when the box office opens 30 minutes before showtime. To claim your tickets, please present ID and your valid pass.
QAF Flex-Pass valid for the July 17 Cor Flammae show at St. Andrew’s Wesley. Maximum 2 tickets per pass for this show. PASS ONLY VALID FOR THE JULY 17th SHOW.
To buy tickets for July 18:
To buy single tickets for July 17 or reserve pass-holder seats:
The Pride in Art Society is a registered charity, and will issue tax receipts for all donations of $20 or more. Please consider adding a donation to your ticket purchase, or donate through canadahelps.org.
An introvert’s way to kick off the rowdy weekend.
This event is scent-reduced, and fully wheelchair accessible. For more information on how to support a scent-reduced event, please visit PeggyMunson.com
For a full accessibility audit of the space, visit Radical Access Mapping Project.
Explore your identity through movement in this Dance Out Loud workshop with Kinesis Dance somatheatro.
This workshop is for all those who wish to share and celebrate who they are! Explore your identity through movement in a comfortable, fun and supportive environment with Paras Terezakis and members of Kinesis Dance somatheatro.
To register, click HERE
We’d really like it and it would make our lives easier if you would register – but if ya just can’t, come on down and you can drop in, as long as it’s not full.
The Pride in Art Society is a registered charity, and will issue tax receipts for all donations of $20 or more. Please consider adding a donation to your ticket purchase, or donate through canadahelps.org.
This event is scent-reduced, and fully wheelchair accessible. For more information on how to support a scent-reduced event, please visit PeggyMunson.com
For a full accessibility audit of the space, visit Radical Access Mapping Project.
Queer contemporary dance with Kinesis Dance somatheatro and MACHiNENOiSY’s youth dance intensive.
PROX:IMITY RE:MIX & NIGHT
Two dance companies two dance shows
PROX:IMITY RE:MIX is the culmination of a 2-week process in which contemporary dance company MACHiNENOiSY offers skill building in dance, theatre and new media and highlights the unique identities and talents of local youth (ages 15-24).
Our late teens and early 20s are often a time of uncertainty and self-identification. We struggle to figure out who we are, who we want to be and how we can embody that to the world. PROX:IMITY RE:MIX is a physical dialogue that explores notions of gender and identity using the human body as an instrument to challenge the roles it has traditionally represented. These ideas are explored through a setting that combines technology, new media and music. Instead of focusing on the limits of body and gender, PROX:IMITY RE:MIX reminds us of what our bodies are capable of when freed from traditional expectations.
NIGHT
As night falls, another world awakens. With less light, even more of our inner selves is revealed. The innate fear of darkness is quelled by a fearlessness to try new things, to act on our impulses and express our desires.
“NIGHT’ explores universal aspects of life after dark – the freedom, the fun and the fears built into the cultural fabric of our society. the work is edgy, highly physical and very much today.
Buy TicketsComing with a friend or 3? Get a QAF Flex-Pass. Go to 4 shows, take a friend to two shows, bring a group to one show – At only $69 for a pass, it’s a screamin’ deal. QAF pass-holders can reserve seats on queerartsfestival.com or Facebook until up to 8 hours before the show. Or live dangerously and show up when the box office opens 30 minutes before showtime. To claim your tickets, please present ID and your valid pass. Buy a QAF Flex-Pass
The Pride in Art Society is a registered charity, and will issue tax receipts for all donations of $20 or more. Please consider adding a donation to your ticket purchase, or donate through canadahelps.org.
This event is scent-reduced, and fully wheelchair accessible. For more information on how to support a scent-reduced event, please visit PeggyMunson.com
For a full accessibility audit of the space, visit Radical Access Mapping Project.
10:30 am to 1:30 pm
A Writing Workshop for transgressive voices led by author Amber Dawn, Tough Language, Tender Wisdoms invites participants to write under-told and boundary-pushing stories from their personal experience, and to develop strategies to creating safe and celebratory spaces for these stories to be crafted. Hosted by Queer Arts Festival for three years running, this year’s Tough Language, Tender Wisdoms will focus on crafting the Personal Essay – a writing form that combines memoir, light research, and creatively communicating values and identity.
Amber Dawn will use source material from her book “How Poetry Saved My Life: A Hustler’s Memoir” and select other text to lead participants through a series of free-writing exercises, small group work, craft and structure exercises and discussion. Participants should come prepared to share, listen and take risks.
AMBER DAWN is a writer living on unceded Indigenous land belonging to the Coast Salish peoples. Her debut poetry collection Where the words end and my body begins launched this spring 2015. Her memoir How Poetry Saved My Life: A Hustler’s Memoir traverses themes of sex work and survival, and won the 2013 Vancouver Book Award. She is the author of the Lambda Award-winning novel Sub Rosa, and editor of the anthologies Fist of the Spider Women: Fear and Queer Desire and With A Rough Tongue. She currently teaches Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia and Douglas College, as well as outside the classroom through a series of free and/or low-barrier community classes.
www.amberdawnwrites.com
PLEASE NOTE: This is a progressive writing workshop. Pre-registration with an EMAIL contact is critical. Space is limited to 16 participants; only register if you can participate in both classes. Please check that dates and time carefully to ensure you can commit.
PLEASE NOTE: 6 of the 16 available spots will be reserved for new participants, who have never attended a workshop with Amber Dawn at Queer Arts Festival
Intended outcomes: a DRAFT of a 1,000 to 2,000 word personal essay
Requirements: Access to email and ability to read PDF documents online. Students must sign up with an email address. There will be some Pre and Post workshop required readings to participate.
During the workshop, students only need pen and paper – laptop or “pad” device optional.
Workshop time: 2.5 hrs + ½ hour debrief time, per class. 6 hours total
$50 to $250 sliding scale, please support art and pay as much as you can afford
This event is scent-reduced, and fully wheelchair accessible. For more information on how to support a scent-reduced event, please visit PeggyMunson.com For a full accessibility audit of the space, visit Radical Access Mapping Project.
Prepare to be dazzled by the extraordinary talent of young queer and allied singer/songwriters from our fabulous QSONG workshop. With mentors Sarah Wheeler and Ellen Marple.
Coming with a friend or 3? Get a QAF Flex-Pass. Go to 4 shows, take a friend to two shows, bring a group to one show – at only $69 for a pass, it’s a screamin’ deal.
This event is scent-reduced, and fully wheelchair accessible. For more information on how to support a scent-reduced event, please visit PeggyMunson.com
For a full accessibility audit of the space, visit Radical Access Mapping Project.
QAF’s curated exhibition honours the 25th anniversary of Kiss & Tell’s legendary exhibition, Drawing the Line. 19 participating artists challenge, provoke and push boundaries. What sets you off?
Curated by SD Holman
Artists –
Kiss & Tell: Lizard Jones, Persimmon Blackbridge, Susan Stewart
Afuwa
Aiyyana Maracle
Amy Dame
Bryan Bone
Claude Perreault
Coral Short
Dana Ayotte
Emilio Rojas
James Diamond
Jonny Sopotiuk
Jono Nobles
Kathy Atkins
Persimmon Blackbridge
Rosamond Norbury
Storme Webber
Suzo Hickey
Toni Latour
In the article on “Gay and Lesbian Art” in the Oxford Art Online, one exhibition is singled out as best embodying the spirit of queer arts: the 1990 project Drawing the Line by the Vancouver collective Kiss & Tell. In this project, Susan Stewart photographed her colleagues Persimmon Blackbridge and Lizard Jones, and women viewers were given markers to draw lines on the walls at the point at which the increasingly explicit imagery became unacceptable to them. Audiences, however, responded in a decidedly non-linear way, and impassioned debates flowered on the walls around the images. Drawing the Line toured internationally and had an enormous influence – it is not uncommon for lesbians of a certain age to say this exhibition “changed my life.”
Twenty-five years later, QAF honours this epochal piece of Canadian queer heritage with a retrospective show of the original images, together with a curated exhibition in which artists are asked for contemporary responses to this pivotal exhibition. In 2015, our lines in the sand are very different than in 1990. In an age when the internet has made pornography ubiquitous, the feminist firebombings of Red Hot Video stores that triggered Drawing the Line now seem very far away. Even the distinction of asking women to write on the walls while men were invited to write in a comments book, relatively simple in 1990, would be unthinkable in today’s queer communities, in which the gender binary is increasingly questioned. However, this is not to say we no longer draw our battle lines: today, it is common in our community for “Trigger Warnings” to be placed prior to texts or performances, to warn viewers of content they might find offensive, uncomfortable, or “triggering” of past trauma. The contemporary artists curated into this show will be asked what Kiss & Tell’s project triggers in them, and how they see themselves pushing boundaries today.
Coming with a friend or 3? Get a QAF Flex-Pass. Go to 4 shows, take a friend to two shows, bring a group to one show – at only $69 for a pass, it’s a screamin’ deal.
This event is scent-reduced, and fully wheelchair accessible. For more information on how to support a scent-reduced event, please visit PeggyMunson.com For a full accessibility audit of the space, visit Radical Access Mapping Project.
Little Sister’s exhibits explicit art by artists in our queer communities.
Artists:
Alex Winter
Jane Eaton Hamilton
jackson photografix
Rebecca Blankert
robin
Ron Kearse
SD Holman
Shakti Sama
Coming with a friend or 3? Get a QAF Flex-Pass. Go to 4 shows, take a friend to two shows, bring a group to one show – at only $69 for a pass, it’s a screamin’ deal.
The Pride in Art Society is a registered charity, and will issue tax receipts for all donations of $20 or more. Please consider adding a donation to your ticket purchase, or donate through canadahelps.org.
This event is wheelchair accessible. For a full accessibility audit of the space, visit Radical Access Mapping Project.
Gallery hours:
12pm – 9pam weekdays;
11am – 4pm weekends
Known as the Pride in Art Community Show, it is a Queer Arts Festival tradition. This longstanding event showcases the talents of emerging and established visual and media artists from within the queer community: leading, fresh, innovative, political, charged, edgy, sexy, and strong. We invite you to share your queer perspectives.
This event is scent-reduced, and fully wheelchair accessible. For more information on how to support a scent-reduced event, please visit PeggyMunson.com For a full accessibility audit of the space, visit Radical Access Mapping Project.
Artists: Donal Hebner Andrea Einstoss Dave Jackson Jeannette Sirois Leeanne Wood David Camisa Janeen Hartley Justin Lau Jay Cabalu Jotika Chaudhary Logan Trudeau Sabrina Symington Dzee Louise Benee Rubin Christopher Logan
Literary readings to tantalize and titillate – aka Catherine and Jim’s dirty porn night. Curated by Ray Hsu. Queerotica started in ’99, when SD (Shaira) Holman approached Janine Fuller at Little Sister’s Bookstore saying – hey you wanna do some queer porn readings to support your anti-censorship case at the Supreme Court; if there’s any proceeds we’ll donate it to the Little Sister’s Defense Fund — you in? Janine jumped on it and a hot time was had by all, so hot that the fabulously talented Elaine Miller took on organizing the erotic readings at the festival and branded it Queerotica. When Little Sister’s eventually won their court case (yay) we started giving the proceeds to the artists. This year we’re back with the subtitle Catherine and Jim’s dirty porn night in honour of our Beloved Catherine White Holman and Jim Deva – porn aficionados and great festival supporters. QAF has many steamy years of Queerotica under its belt with past curators including Elaine Miller, Afuwa Granger, Amber Dawn, and Janine Fuller. Artists: Amber Dawn Rian J. Lloyd Polly Anima Christopher Gatchalian Jillian Christmas Leigh MatthewsMonica MeneghettiRachel RoseRay Hsu
Amber Dawn
Amber Dawn is a writer living on unceded territory of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations (incorporated Vancouver, Canada). Her memoir How Poetry Saved My Life: A Hustler’s Memoir won the 2013 Vancouver Book Award. She is the author of the Lambda Award-winning novel Sub Rosa, and editor of the anthologies Fist of the Spider Women: Fear and Queer Desire and With A Rough Tongue. Amber Dawn was 2012 winner of the Writers’ Trust of Canada Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBT writers. She currently teaches creative writing at Douglas College and the University of British Columbia, as well as volunteer mentors at several community-driven art and healing spaces.
Rian J. Lloyd
Rian is a queer, agender, femme hippie. Ey lives in a communal house in East Van with six fantastic people, where ey holds the title and position of House Flirt. A bicycle mechanic by day, Rian spends eir evenings dancing backwards in high-heels (the sparkly, red kind), or curled up at home with eir snake, a cup of tea, and a good book.
Polly Anima
Though new to writing, Polly has a long history of artistic practice and engagement as a performer, creative producer, vocalist, gallerist, copywriter and art therapist. She regrets not being able to add contemporary dancer to the list, but accepts that ship has sailed.
Christopher Gatchalian
C. E. Gatchalian is a playwright, poet and essayist born and based in Coast Salish Territories (Vancouver). In 2013 he was awarded the prestigious Dayne Oglivie Prize by The Writers’ Trust of Canada.
Jillian Christmas
Jillian Christmas (b. 1983; Canada) Born and raised in Markham, Ontario, Christmas grew up watching videos of performance poets such as C.R. Avery and RC Weslowski before taking to the stage herself in her mid-20s. Since then, Christmas earned titles at Vancouver’s Poetry Slam and Bedrocc Poetry Slam competitions, and will be representing Vancouver at the 2014 World Poetry Slam in Austin, Texas. Her work takes many forms, including live poetry performance, poetry/music fusions, and the printed word. Most recently, her work appeared in the anthology The Great Black North: Contemporary African-Canadian Poetry.
Leigh Matthews
Leigh Matthews, also known as L, is a novelist, poet, professional vegan and semi-professional queer living in Vancouver, Canada. She has written two novels: The Old Arbutus Tree; and a modern take on lesbian pulp fiction, Don’t Bang the Barista! Leigh was a participating poet in Art Song Lab 2015, and can be found online at http://www.theinkwell.org/ and @thetastyvegan.
Monica Meneghetti
“We are the hinterqueers, carving out lives far away from urban gay meccas, without benefit of rainbows or parades.” ~ Monica Meneghetti, Plenitude Magazine 2015 Having relocated to Vancouver in search of greater freedom of expression, Monica shares her queer erotic work publicly for the first time. She is a multigenre writer with a penchant for cross-disciplinary collaboration. As a teacher and editor, she has a special interest in enabling marginalized voices to be heard.
Rachel Rose
Rachel Rose has published poems, short stories and essays in Canada, the U.S., New Zealand and Japan. She is the Poet Laureate of Vancouver for 2014-2017, and is currently working on a non-fiction book about police dogs.
Ray Hsu
Ray Hsu (@thewayofray) is author of Anthropy (winner of the Gerald Lampert Award, nominated for the Trillium Book Award in Poetry) and Cold Sleep Permanent Afternoon (winner of the Alcuin Award). He taught in a US prison for over two years, has given a TED talk on creativity and education and is co-founder of Art Song Lab.
Coming with a friend or 3? Get a QAF Flex-Pass. Go to 4 shows, take a friend to two shows, bring a group to one show – at only $69 for a pass, it’s a screamin’ deal. This event is ASL interpreted. To view QAF’s other ASL interpreted events please click HERE. This event is scent-reduced, and fully wheelchair accessible. For more information on how to support a scent-reduced event, please visit PeggyMunson.com For a full accessibility audit of the space, visit Radical Access Mapping Project.
Notorious Vancouver collective Kiss & Tell’s first public appearance together in 13 years. Videos by Lorna Boschman, with talkback moderated by Janine Fuller of Little Sister’s book Store.
Kiss & Tell: Persimmon Blackbridge, Lizard Jones, Susan Stewart
By donation – Please support art and pay as much as you can afford!
Buy Tickets / Reserve Seats
Oxford Art Online (Oxford University Press) on Drawing the Line by Kiss & Tell:
“a group of Canadian artists, operating under the name Kiss & Tell, began in 1990 circulating an exhibition of their lesbian erotica, entitled Drawing the Line. Women viewers were given markers and invited to draw the line at the point where they found the pictures disturbing. Many viewers chose to add comments, so each installation turned into a community debate on the nature of sexuality and its representation. In its acknowledgement of the controversy surrounding sexual identity and imagery, this work may best embody the nature of gay and lesbian art. As a category of historical analysis or lived experience, sexual identity is characterized by change and debate. This dynamism should not be interpreted as a sign of weakness or irrelevance, however. On the contrary, it is because sexual identity is crucial to so many artists and audiences that its visual manifestations arouse such passion and creativity.”
Note: Our liquor licensing requires all QAF attendees must carry a valid membership in the Pride in Art Society. You can buy at the door, or save time, purchase your membership online in advance, and pick up your card at the QAF Box Office. Memberships are $0-$5 sliding scale – and each dollar enters you in a prize draw. Having trouble? We’ve been trying a new ticketing service and there are some bugs in the system. If you can’t reserve or it says the show is sold out, please email us at info@prideinart.ca – we are here to help!
Coming with a friend or 3? Get a QAF Flex-Pass. Go to 4 shows, take a friend to two shows, bring a group to one show – at only $69 for a pass, it’s a screamin’ deal.
This event is ASL interpreted. To view QAF’s other ASL interpreted events please click HERE.
This event is scent-reduced, and fully wheelchair accessible. For more information on how to support a scent-reduced event, please visit PeggyMunson.com For a full accessibility audit of the space, visit Radical Access Mapping Project.
An evening of fearless queer video art curated by international curator Coral Short. Followed by an open dialogue with artists and curator.
Coming with a friend or 3? Get a QAF Flex-Pass. Go to 4 shows, take a friend to two shows, bring a group to one show – At only $69 for a pass, it’s a screamin’ deal.
QAF pass-holders can reserve seats on queerartsfestival.com or Facebook until up to 8 hours before the show. Or live dangerously and show up when the box office opens 30 minutes before showtime. To claim your tickets, please present ID and your valid pass.
The Pride in Art Society is a registered charity, and will issue tax receipts for all donations of $20 or more. Please consider adding a donation to your ticket purchase, or donate through canadahelps.org.
This event is ASL interpreted. To view QAF’s other ASL interpreted events please click HERE.
This event is scent-reduced, and fully wheelchair accessible. For more information on how to support a scent-reduced event, please visit PeggyMunson.com For a full accessibility audit of the space, visit Radical Access Mapping Project.
Co-presented with the Powell Street Festival
Eleven composers share their inner reflections on outer space in Cosmophony, Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa’s solo piano project inspired by the beauty and mystery of the cosmos.
Praised in the Vancouver Sun as “brilliant” and “unforgettable,” the program opens with Denis Gougeon’s fiercely virtuosic invocation of the sun, Piano-Soleil, launching a journey to each of the planets from Mercury through Neptune, with pieces written especially for Iwaasa by stellar Canadian composers Rodney Sharman, Marci Rabe, Alexander Pechenyuk, Jocelyn Morlock, Chris Kovarik, Jeffrey Ryan, Stefan Udell, and Jennifer Butler. Jordan Nobles’ Fragments, a cluster of brilliant miniatures depicting the Asteroid Belt, nestles between Mars and Jupiter. Pluto, now demoted to dwarf planet status, is replaced by Gliese 581c, a distant planet in the Libra constellation speculated to be able to support Earth-like life. Composer Emily Doolittle’s sparkling depiction expresses a tremulous dream of interstellar travel, shadowed by our fears of environmental collapse.
Lit only by the projections of images of our solar system, Cosmophony creates a breathtaking multi-media spectacle. Released on CD by Redshift Records, Cosmophony was nominated for a Western Canadian Music Association Award.